Wilton Mortuary

After Mom died, she went to Wilton Mortuary, and I'm here to say they did a good job with the visitation and funeral.

There's someone on staff there who does a hand-drawn portrait of the deceased from a photograph provided by the family. We gave them a picture of Mom from her wedding five years earlier. The result looked really good, and many of the folks who came to see us remarked on it.

When we were making the arrangements, my aunt asked the woman who was helping us a little about her background. She said that she'd wanted to do this work since she was a little girl, and she went to college knowing that's what she'd be doing. The story she told was that when she was nine, a relative of hers died, and she saw the people at the mortuary being rude and inconsiderate to her surviving family members. She thought that was wrong, and she wanted to create something different.

Before she told this story, I took the good treatment of the mortuary more-or-less for granted. They deal with people in grief every day, I thought. They have their moves down like car salesmen. They're delicate and considerate, and it's all part of the job. After hearing the story, it was more personal. Here's someone who saw injustice in the world and dedicated herself toward eliminating it. It's not a front; she means it.

Here's more about Wilton Mortuary.