Death takes a holiday

Two moments that place the sanctity of life and death in perspective when it's part of the cogs of business...

(1) The day my mother died, I handed the funeral director my credit card to cover the expenses. It was declined -- courtesy of the vigilant fraud department at Household Bank. As Michele said at an impromptu wake that night, "You know, if someone actually steals my credit card and tries to use it to pay for a funeral, could you just... let them? I'm willing to cover it." The take-away message here is that if you need to swipe someone's credit card to pay for a bootleg funeral, the folks at Capital One won't stand in your way.

(2) I've been waiting three weeks for a death certificate. The funeral home tells me that the Hospice people are backed up on signing paperwork. I am kindly disposed toward that, they're busy people. Yesterday when I called them directly, I learned that the medical director is on vacation. Which I'm also kindly disposed to, I'm sure that's a tough job. But it does seem to me that when you are in a business where all of your clients die, a contingency plan for producing death certificates wouldn't be a far-fetched idea. Just a suggestion.