Living among the dead: Hamilton man finds new meaning working in funeral industry amid pandemic

The call came in like any other: a person was dead and needed to be picked up.

Only this one turned out different.

An unidentified homeless man was found limp, emaciated and lifeless in a worn down east-end shed, near the Centre on Barton.

Joseph Scott arrived with the gloves and body bag.

A director's assistant for a funeral service provider in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area, he was used to the dead, maintaining their remains and transferring them to morgues.

But when Scott laid eyes on the tall, thin man in the shed, the ground beneath him shook. Something wasn't right.

It reminded him of what could have been.

He was about two inches taller than me and weighed about 100 pounds less," said Scott, his voice cracking. He didn't have ID. He looked mummified. I deal with death every day, but this one, it was different. I haven't been able to stop thinking about it.

I've been homeless. That could have been me."

Scott lived rough - on the street or on any couch that would take him - for more than eight months in 2018 after a workplace injury forced him to quit a decade-long job in manufacturing.

He found his financial footing in late January, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic's second wave, when he spotted a driver's ad for a funeral service provider in the GTHA.

The Spectator is not naming the company out of respect to client confidentiality and to prohibit potentially identifying clients or their families.

I thought, Oh, cool, I'm going to get to drive a hearse,'" he said.

Not quite.

Scott, 37, instead walked into a job that would challenge everything he thought knew about life and death, dignity and grief.

Overdoses. Suicides. Heart attacks. Hiking accidents, car accidents. Coronavirus deaths in long-term-care homes, in retirement homes, in family homes and in apartments.

Scott has been called to all of them and more in the past six months, safely storing the dead in a body bag, stretcher and then a big van before driving them to a morgue, funeral home or the coroner's office.

The sudden career shift - from working with machinery to retrieving, identifying and transferring a half-dozen corpses a day - has exposed him to the frailty of life.

It's completely different from anything else I'm used to," he said. It's helped me reflect on how I can adapt to being more caring, more compassionate, more sensitive to others, because I come from environments, in terms of employment, where that wasn't required."

But at times the job has also left him afraid.

There is a lingering feeling of uneasiness when your only clients are the dead, Scott said, and particularly during a pandemic when death persistently creeps in all corners of life.

In his first month of work - during which COVID-19 fatalities were at an all-time high - Scott was sent into the trenches beyond the front lines, removing the dead from hospitals and long-term-care homes while placing himself at risk.

Mississauga," he said, it was really bad there. I went to a long-term-care home there to pick up a body, and they had already lost a ridiculous number of people in the first wave, more than 50. It was like a mass death."

Dazed residents and drained staff watched as Scott pulled a body from a room and through the halls, carrying it on a stretcher to the van outside, their corpse casket-ready.

My heart sunk," he said. Walking in there, people looked at me like the Grim Reaper ... like, It's not my turn yet, is it?'"

He wondered: will I get sick?

It was just terrifying going into that place, so many questions going through your head ... How this could happen, and how can I keep myself safe?"

Those questions too loomed over Scott during a recent pickup call, when he entered a large family home that was entirely infected with COVID-19.

One person was dead upstairs, alone in a bedroom. A sick relative greeted Scott inside.

I have to communicate with them in a way where I don't feel threatened or worried, but at the same, I'm there to remove somebody who just died of what they're struggling with," he said.

It is a reality of the pandemic that many don't see, Scott said.

There are people behind the numbers of dead and infected, families shattered and in distress. There are those like him who pick up the pieces and wonder if things could have been different.

The pandemic is real and I honestly can't understand how there's people who are anti-maskers," said Scott. I see the reality of this pandemic. I see how it's affected so many people's lives and families, and I've heard so many heartbreaking stories.

I don't want to see more families get hurt by this virus, this plague."

When Scott comes home from a long shift, he flips on the TV - not for enjoyment, but distraction.

You need something to decompress," he said. Funeral care workers are some of the most inspiring, humbling people I've ever encountered. We talk and it helps. But when you want to talk to other people in your life, no one ever wants to hear about death."

He often asks himself if the job is worth the emotional toll it brings him.

But then he thinks about the dead, the people without a choice or say. He thinks about how they would like their last remains to be handled. He thinks about there being responsibility even in the darkest moments of grief.

I keep remembering this is the first step in the last part of this individual's life," said Scott. And it makes me start to reflect on my own life a lot. When I get to the end of my life, how do I want to be remembered? How do I want to be treated?"

Sebastian Bron is a Hamilton-based reporter at The Spectator. Reach him via email: sbron@thespec.com