Show Transcript

Two Classes One Teacher

Narrator Don't you just love standing in the fresh grass under the red-golden leaves, panting, holding your knife? Oh, the slimy feeling of fresh guts beneath your fingers, the ropey innards, the chunks, the goo! I crave it all year. It makes me feel so alive. Come closer. Put your hand right inside there and scoop out some more guts before I cut this bad boy up. It's Halloween, the best night to stay in and carve pumpkins.

Narrator You see, I can't go past these cemetery gates. Eternal curse, something, something. So, no trick-or-treating for this which, no sordid soirees for this soul. No, when I want to explore something in the flesh, I have to send a proxy. And in tonight's story, I wanted to check up on an old friend of mine.

Narrator So I sent Steve, someone you've heard before, on a little mission. Do you remember Steve? He was a little boy in the curly wig and dress. You met him here a few nights ago. Well, since he seems to be so eager to do my bidding, I arranged for him to go and meet this old friend of mine. I didn't tell him much about the task, just that he was going to be my good ghoul and learn some lessons. Then come back and tell us all about it. And when Steve has a chance to try something new, he can't help but say "yes Mistress."

Narrator Now take your blade and plunge it into my pumpkin! Let's cut it together as we listen to Steve tell the true tale of two classes, one teacher.

Steve At the beginning of this story there were a couple things I didn't know. First of all, I didn't know that I wanted to learn how to make pasta. I also didn't know that I wanted to learn about embalming. You know, how to preserve a human corpse? I especially didn't know that I wanted to learn about both of those things at the same time. And yet, here we are.

Steve And we're in this together now because I bet you hadn't been thinking about pasta, and the same goes for corpses. And that's just the fun part about curiosity, because now that I've mentioned it, wouldn't you like to know how to make delicious pasta by hand? You're a little curious about that, aren't you?

Steve And also, uh, embalming. The process of preserving a corpse for the purposes of viewing. Maybe you haven't thought about it much before but if you've ever been to a funeral or a wake with an open casket, that body had almost certainly been preserved.

Steve And if there's one force more powerful than curiosity, it's morbid curiosity. Wouldn't you like to know how that gets done to those bodies? Especially if I told you that you'll get a quick and free lesson, right now, from a great teacher? And that it's the same teacher as the pasta teacher? And that the lessons happen simultaneously? Come on, when are you going to have an opportunity like this again?

Steve When I heard about this person, this pasta chef-slash-embalmer, I immediately asked them what I assume is a common question. "Can I watch you embalm someone?" I was told that the request was actually very unusual and that doing so would be, quote, extremely illegal, unquote. So next I asked, "Can I watch you make pasta?" and I was told that would be, quote, fine.

Steve My prior pasta experience is mostly macaroni, and I've never met an embalmer. I heard this embalmer likes spooky things and wears mostly black. That seems too good to be true, or maybe too obvious to be real. And if I'm being perfectly honest, and this is difficult for me to admit, when I imagine this embalmer's home I'm picturing the house from the Addams Family, only with Martha Stewart's kitchen.

Steve Her actual home is on the third floor of a cheery blue and white apartment building in Long Beach, where Snoop Dog is from. The only clue that I'm in the right place is hanging on the door. It's a decorative seasonal wreath. But Martha would not approve.

Daniella So we have a Halloween wreath up all year round. We bought one that was like, already made, and then we kind of like added some things to it.

Steve And what does it look Little?

Daniella Black, with like feathers and roses and leaves and spider webs. Very goth romantic, I don't know.

Daniella Meet Daniella.

Daniella Hi, I'm Daniella. I'm an embalmer and I do cooking tutorials.

Steve Behind the door, in the kitchen, I see Daniella is prepared to give me a hands-on pasta demonstration.

Steve Will you tell me about your dish towels here, too?

Daniella Oh, yeah. So, I always buy my dish towels during Halloween. I buy like all of my home decor during Halloween. Kitchen stuff, I mean, like, we have all kinds. We have this little which for the spoon.

Steve And there's a big cauldron, uh, I mean pot, filled with simmering sauce, and a large dough mixer. Except Daniella's mixer, instead of that photogenic red model you might be picturing, is painted a lifeless gray and accented with glossy black bats, permanently applied in vinyl. Actually, it's very Martha Stewart.

Daniella And all kinds of the Halloween decorations. I'm trying to think... we have this that doesn't really work. It's for garlic. It's called a 'gracula', and it's a garlic crusher. It's really cute. It looks like a Dracula, but it's really not very functional. We have like a really cool Ouija board that was given to us for our wedding. And he only made 13 of them, and we got the 13th, and we were married on Friday the 13th in October, in a cemetery, so it just seemed appropriate.

Steve There's only two ingredients in this pasta, and I see both out on the counter; flour and eggs.

Daniella You just make a well with the flour, and then you add your eggs, and then you mix it up with the fork. Two eggs per one cup of flour. And this is a special flour, it's called Doppio Zero, it's an Italian flour and it's milled really, really finely, and it's semolina flour. So I prefer that. I mean, technically, I guess you could use all-purpose flour, but it's not gonna be the same.

Steve Daniella mounds up the flour in a ring shape, and and cracks the eggs into the center, right on the counter.

Daniella So I'm gonna put the eggs in the well.

Steve Daniella mixes the dough as we talk, slowly mixing in more flour from the edges of the well until it's all incorporated. Then she kneads it until it's smooth like a baby's bottom.

Daniella It will feel like suede, I guess.

Steve I thought for a split second she would say the dough is smooth like the skin of a freshly embalmed corpse. I guess the baby line is more relatable.

Daniella It's really soft.

Steve I learned quickly that Daniella, unlike me, isn't the type to make such crass comparisons. She has too much respect for the dead and, really, too much respect for pasta to make any jokes about how they might be similar.

Daniella So I'm going to cheat and I'm going to use a fettuccine cutter, but I don't think the ancestors will care. So I'm going to turn this on now.

Steve As soon as we start talking about embalming, it's clear that Daniella's reverence for the deceased is genuine, as is her reverence for the work itself.

Daniella Embalming is a simultaneous process of draining fluid and injecting a preservative solution into the body for means of temporary preservation.

Narrator Also, this is the part of the story where we start talking about dead bodies and what Daniella does to them. If you're squeamish about that kind of thing, now is a great time to start listening to something else.

Daniella And an embalmer basically prepares the decedent it for their final disposition.

Steve The decedent and their final disposition?

Daniella Yes. So, "decedent" is just the name, obviously, for the person who's dead. We call it a case, most of the time. And "disposition" is just whatever happens to them at the end of the process. So they're either getting buried or they're getting cremated. They're going in a columbarium, in a niche, which is basically like an aboveground curio for dead people. The world is your oyster.

Steve I don't actually know what the room that you do that work looks like, and I kind of am imagining a creepy basement.

Daniella No, I mean, I think it looks like a creepy basement, I think that's accurate. Have you ever seen Six Feet Under?

Steve Sure.

Daniella It's just like that. The room that Frederico works in, it's just like that. There's a table that has a drain in it. It's connected to like what's called a hopper, which is basically like a urinal that can accept semi-solids. So... I guess it's like a garbage disposal for viscera. Sounds really bad. I shouldn't say viscera, because you don't literally put organs in there.

Daniella First thing you do is remove their clothes. Put a towel on their genitals. You know, we have to respect the decedent's dignity. I mean, it just depends, everybody has their own, like, steps and the order in which they do them.

Daniella I would usually; close the mouth, put eye caps in, clean all of the orifices, their hair.

Steve The next step is to get all the blood out of the body and replace it with embalming fluid. That's a major part of what keeps these bodies from decomposing too quickly.

Daniella You want to drain as much blood from the body as possible, because the more blood that's in the body, the more prone they are going to be to decomposing. I mean, you're going to decompose anyway. But, you know, for viewing purposes.

Steve Daniellla is attaching a bright stainless steel instrument to the accessory port on the front of the big mixer. It's no exaggeration to describe it as medical looking. This is the dough roller which will take the big baby-bottom of dough and press it into a flat sheet.

Daniella I mean, you don't actually don't even need like anything to make pasta. You can do it all with your hand and a rolling pin. But I mean, I'm like really anal and I want everything to be perfect, so I prefer to use a pasta laminator, which makes the dough completely even and flat.

Daniella With every number on the dial here, the higher that you go, the thinner that the dough becomes. But you obviously can't do that straight away, so you basically just run it through six or seven times until you get it the consistency that you want.

Steve It takes multiple passes to get the dough thin enough. And while that happens, back in mortuary land Daniella is getting to the next big step in the process. And this is where things get a little gross.

Daniella And then, aspiration is, um, kinda gnarly. I mean, it never bothered me, but when I've explained this to people they kinda get really grossed out. So, there's an instrument called a trocar, and a trocar is basically a long hollow tube, and at the end of the tube there's a sharp point that has holes in it. So, you basically pierce the thoracic cavity, like two inches up and like two inches to the right from your belly button.

Daniella So I'm going to stir this sauce.

Daniella And so basically that's going to remove gas, semi-solids, liquids. A lot of people have a build of like just gross stuff or like gas, or whatever. So you want to get as much of that out as you can, and then you refill it. So you use what's called a gravity injector. It's a long "U" thingy. There's like a tube that you connect to the trocar, and then you hold the bottle above your head and, you know, you do the trocar and the gravity causes the fluid to go down into the body, or into the thoracic cavity, abdomen, whatever you want to call it.

Daniella And then you wash the body, wash the hair, make sure that, you know, you get all of the nasties off of them, and wrap them in a sheet, and then cover their face with massage cream, which is basically like an emollient moisturizer for their face, because, you know, they dry out very fast because of the embalming fluid is very dehydrating.

Daniella OK. So I'm gonna turn this on now. And then... can you actually hand me that bench scraper?

Daniella So once it gets really long like this, I'll cut it in half and I'm actually going to go up to seven. Don't like super thick noodles, and then they also they also don't cook properly.

Steve After several passes through the machine, the pasta dough has become quite flat. And frankly, these chalky, pale sheets laid on the counter are looking more like dead human skin than ever. It's great timing for Daniella to start telling me about the cosmetology aspects of embalming.

Daniella You know, we have some different makeup that's specifically for decedents. Yeah, we just try to make them look as natural as possible because I mean, the majority of people that we're working on are older people, and this seventy-five year old lady is not wearing full glam makeup every day. I mean, she might be, and in that case we can definitely do that, but that's not going to be your average.

Daniella You know, I was a makeup artist before, which I absolutely loved, but I hated approaching people and like trying to sell them things. I remember I was interviewing with MAC, and they were like, "can you sell us this lipstick?" And I'm like... and I just sounded like an idiot, because they put me on the spot and I just felt so nervous. I obviously did not get the job. But, I mean, I was just like, "aw, but like, I really like to do this, and actually I'm good at it." But, I mean I'm glad that I didn't get that, because I probably would have gone a completely different direction, you know? And then I'd be miserable, because I'd be around people all the time. And I'd hate that.

Steve Daniella switches out the roller attachment for a slicing attachment. Mercifully, the skin like sheets we rolled in the last step are swiftly sliced into skinny strands. It's a much more comfortable appearance. Daniella could probably let these strips fall and pile up on the counter, but that wouldn't be like her. Instead, we fall quiet as she guides the dough tenderly through the slicer. I don't say anything, or ask any questions. I just watch her guide the dough. She doesn't say anything either. She doesn't have to. The moment carries its own weight.

Narrator All long journeys have an end, and Daniella deeply understands the importance of endings. As the dough passes through the clutter, she cradles it in both hands. Their jobs complete, the machines fall silent as Daniella reverently carries the noodles through the kitchen. She lays them to rest on the gently dusted granite slab.

Daniella My aunt passed away in 2007. And when we were at her funeral, it was open casket, and it was so bad. Like she didn't even... she looked awful. And I just remember thinking to myself, I have to I have to be good because I can't ever let somebody experience this again.

Daniella So I think every time that I went in to embalm somebody I always thought of my aunt, and like, I've gotta make this person look awesome.

Daniella The only fear that I experienced was related to work. Like, "am I going to fuck this person up?" you know, or "this is a really challenging case and how do I do this?" and, "this is a closed casket, how do I make it open casket?" or, "what can I do to correct this trauma?" or whatever. You know, it's more like, I guess, anxiety or, you know, just worrying. Because, as I said, I'm a perfectionist, and if something isn't perfect then I, like, feel like I'm gonna freak out.

Daniella But it takes on like a whole other level, because I actually was diagnosed with Autism spectrum disorder last year, which I went my whole life not knowing that. So I'm like very, very, like, calculated and particular about things, just because that's the way my brain is. But yeah, I mean, I feel like maybe my school experiences would have been a little different, because everywhere I went, it was like, oh, Daniella's weird, or whatever. And, you know, that sucked. And I had a lot of social issues and I was bullied really badly, so, I left.

Daniella I just told my parents. I came home and I'm like, "I'm not doing this anymore, I'm going to makeup school," which they weren't too happy about because they wanted me to get, you know, an academic degree. And they were like, "Well if you go to makeup school, then you're on your own." And so basically I was like, all right, you guys are calling my bluff here.

Daniella But I kind of had all of these different interests. You know, I was very interested in science, but I was also interested in art, but I really wanted to do make up. And so I kinda was just, I don't know, in a bunch of different places. And one of my instructors at FJC, we're talking one day and he's like, "Daniella, have you ever considered being a mortician?" And I was like, "No, but like, that sounds like what I want to do!"

Daniella And so I immediately, I think that day, went and looked into mortuary school. That just seemed like the the most evenly balanced of all of the things that I was interested in.

Steve Daniella picks up a salt mill and starts grinding.

Daniella Whenever you're doing pasta, you obviously want to have really salty water. Most people don't have the patience for this, but I just really like to do repetitive things, it's very therapeutic for me. I think that embalming feels therapeutic because it allows me the peace and solitude of not having to deal with things that I find to be overstimulating.

Daniella So I have, I think, auditory hypersensitivity, and tactile hypersensitivity as it relates to other people touching me. I hate hugs. And you don't want to put your salt in right away. You want to wait until like your water starts getting steamy. I think that's probably good.

Steve Now Daniella drops the noodles into the boiling water.

Daniella Fresh pasta cooks very, very fast, so you just have to put in there for a couple minutes. But anyway, the first time that I embalmed somebody it was just like, wow, this is what I'm supposed to be doing. You know? Because I feel so much safer, with dead people, because nothing can happen to me in the room, you know? And I just feel so calm, and it's very therapeutic for me and, I don't know, I just... I prefer to work around... I prefer to work by myself, or with people who don't talk.

Daniella I find this process enjoyable, so I'm just cleaning. You cannot submerging these in water. So you just have this little brush. You get all the flour out.

Steve When I started this story, I didn't even know I wanted to learn about pasta, or embalming. But it turns out that I did very much want to know about both of those things. I also didn't expect to learn so much about what connects those two activities in Daniella's mind.

Steve One thing was clear as Daniella ladled the sauce onto the pasta. She cares. And if someone is preparing pasta for me, I learned that I want that person to care about it. It actually seems to matter. And I also learned that if someone is preparing me for my final rest, I'd want that person to care about that process, too. If you're lucky enough to have Daniella make you a bowl of pasta someday, you'll see what I mean. Mine was delicious. And if you're lucky enough to have Daniella get you ready for the great beyond. Well, consider this;

Daniella I went to go see like this spiritual... her official title was that she was a spiritual therapist. And she was like, "There's like over a dozen spirits attached to you right now."

Steve You may be dead, sure. But if Daniella does the embalming you'll be in great company.

Narrator Stay a Spell is made by Valerie Ramos Mills and Steve Nelson, with story editing by Alexis Ettner. Additional credits can be found in our show notes. Special thanks to Larissa Mills and embalmers everywhere for doing that dirty work on the night shift.