...Hulse, Playfair and McGarry, the premier funeral parlour establishment in Ottawa. "Death is part of life, dear," my Mother used to say when she started taking me there. I was no more than six years old.
When someone she knew died, she took me along and I remember large, quiet rooms, smelling of flowers, with Kleenex boxes on every table. I also remember gazing at the corpses lying in repose and thinking they didn't look asleep, they looked dead.
 |
| A familiar sight for me from a very young age. |
That's where I learned what you do when someone in your circle dies. You send a note, you call, you show up at the funeral home. You show concern.
That's why I read the obituaries every day in 'The Ottawa Citizen'; there's often someone I know in there. That's how I learned that Louis Huneault's wife had died. Louis was the deputy minister to whom I reported when I worked at Customs and Excise and he was the best boss I have ever had.
During my weekly meetings with him, my rule was one minute per item. Very smart and savvy, that's all the time he needed to make a decision. Because they were so short, my meetings were never cancelled. He didn't like people who babbled and prattled.
Not to brag (well, OK, I'm bragging), but I was the one tapped to pen all the cab docs and issue papers. I could always find and articulate the issue, which, contrary to what you might think, was not an ability everyone possessed. Instead of capturing the issue in one, succinct sentence, most people ramble on with all sorts of background and blah, blah. Ask me to state and articulate the actual issue and I always did it.
I also wrote all the deputies' and ministers' speeches for the same reasons: I was bloody good at it.
But back to funeral homes. I quickly posted a condolence and then picked up the phone and called him. He answered -- shocked, but probably not surprised. I had done that when the late Dick Fulford's wife died; I immediately sent a sympathy card, even though I did not know her. That's just what you do, that's how I was reared.
I think that sympathy card played a role in why I was tapped for the job of manager, Communications and Client Relations for the GST. Louis told me he and Dick had been out playing golf and when Louis talked about who would be good at the job, Dick said, "What about Nancy Marley-Clarke?" I got the job. Was it because of that card? Could have been.
Funeral homes are part of my background and heritage. My great-grandfather, Charles Lord, was an undertaker in Brockville, when my grandmother was growing up. Their name was "Lord" and she used to be teased: "The Lord came down to bury the dead," her classmates would chant.
Back then, the deceased was laid out in the front room of the home, which is why they became known as funeral parlours. If you've ever watched 'Mon Oncle Antoine', a beautiful film by Claude Jutras, you'll know how it was done before the advent of commercial parlours.
Writing a condolence, I checked for others by people who worked for him. I was the only one, at least in 'The Citizen'. Where was Suzanne Parent? What about Marie-Josée Martel? Why didn't they write in sympathy?
Guess they weren't fortunate enough to have had a Mother like mine.
Rest in peace, Rachel.
