They burn bodies here. It costs a lot more than you'd think. It’s a family business and they are all extremely well groomed. The sister is falsely accommodating - impatient with my grandmother and her folder of paperwork. Paintings of weeping children in the chapel. Soft dull light streaming through fake stained glass. The décor is neoclassical like some casinos or the home of a soap opera character. The crematorium is industrial, like a cafeteria - all brand new stainless steel and concrete.

My grandfather is on a stretcher with wheels that scissors up and down. My uncle, touches his face with the mouth wide open. The funeral director zips up the bag. He is slid from the stretcher into the oven still inside the bag. The digital readout hovers around 1500 degrees. The doors open twice for us onto a view of his body which has no flesh after an hour. The skull and ribs still recognizable - and glowing. There is a brush for sweeping out the oven with ashes still on its bristles. A refrigerator with corpses. Racks with giant trays and on them bodies in white bags with zippers. And boxes with the cremated remains on shelves with ids held on by rubber bands.

The ex-boxer funeral director gives us a tour of the facility. It is any other light industry office and work area. The embalming room has two stainless steel tables and pumps and tubes and charts of the circulatory system. There is a showroom of urns and one of coffins and a rack of attire for the deceased and a hallway of tombstones. There are brochures in little stands. Insurance packages for if you happen to die overseas or out of state. Certificates line the hallways. Certificate of certified Cremators. Certificates certifying ones cremation. Certificates of credentials. Embalming credentials. Funeral directing credentials. Pictures of softball teams they sponsor line the stairwell.

1500 degree vapors scream skyward next door is jazzercise and a fleet of hearses, one light blue. The color of his eyes.