Strawberry Milk- A disgusting post about how an Embalmer used canned milk to treat jaundice.

Strawberry Milk- A disgusting post about how an Embalmer used canned milk to treat jaundice.

(1998)


Long before darkening the halls of a mortuary school, I did a summer job at a well-respected, local funeral home. I answered the telephones, set up the morning events on the old felt board with push in letters and numbers, ran errands- typical summer job. One morning, I was asked to go to the grocery store and return with 10 cans of Eagle Brand Milk- basically condensed milk… in a can.


It was a typical morning. I had just opened the thick, drawn curtains that looked out over Main Street. The front door was unlocked, porch swept. I sat in solidarity at the front desk, anticipating a few hours of silence ahead. Suddenly, the garage door sprang to life down the long, back hallway of the funeral home, creating a gentle hum across the building. Voices, shuffling, van doors opening, the clattering of metal as a cot carrying the deceased is rolled out and into the prep room. Doors closing, muffled voices. They were obviously huddled in the prep room: Greg, Steve and Brad. Greg was a 3rd generation Funeral Director/Embalmer (Mortician), Steve an Apprentice, and Brad was just another kid that took a summer job.


Greg’s mother, Bettie, a licensed Funeral Director herself, had entered the building. She spoke to her son briefly in the hallway, greeted me at the desk and asked me to go to the store for Greg. She handed me cash and a slip of white paper.

Upon my return, I approached the wide door to the prep room. This was where everything happened. The bathing, the embalming, the dressing, the cosmetics… the smoke and mirrors; THE MAGIC. It had a numerical keypad entry, to limit accessibility to the public due to the contents it held inside. I nervously knocked. My interactions with this room so far had been limited. Brad opened the door a crack and peered out at me, eyes wide. He was still getting used to the hidden secrets behind the door. He looked back at Greg, and then opened the door and motioned me in.


I was asked if I wanted to watch. This was my first invitation, and it was a unique experience indeed. What was about to go on behind the prep room doors was by many accounts only an old embalmers tale, one of the old school tricks of the trade, per say. This is NOT the schooled way to treat a body with Jaundice.


The man on the table before me was a unique shade of yellow. After raising the vessels in the mans neck to inject into the artery and drain from the vein, Greg began to pour each can of condensed milk purchased at the local grocery store into the tank of the embalming machine. I stood off to the right side, watching the drain channel of the porcelain table run with water. Steve flipped the machine on, and the water suddenly became a river of dark red blood. The machine began to push the milk through the tube, into the *cannula clamped in place, infusing the circulatory system with the creamy sickeningly sweet liquid and pushing the blood out into the river my eyes were fixated upon. It flowed directly into a drain to normal city waste system below. After what felt like an eternity, the river shifted again. I watched as the former clear river of water became a torrent of blood, and was now, comically, a river of what resembled strawberry milk.


According to Greg, by running a tank of condensed milk through the circulatory system to flush out the blood before embalming, it would help eliminate the yellow pallor the man was afflicted with due to Jaundice.


After the strawberry milk concoction drained from the man’s system, the tank to the embalming machine was then filled with the typical bottles of embalming fluid and proper proportions of water. It was at this point I was excused from the room to continue my regular mundane assistant tasks.


I saw the deceased man later, before they had dressed him and put a natural coat of cosmetics over his face. The Eagle Brand Milk hadn't worked, to my untrained eye. They still used a generous amount of color concealing cosmetics on his exposed hands and wrists, which held fast to the strange yellow tint. To this day, I have not and likely, will not, see Eagle Brand anything anywhere without immediately recalling the strangest embalming I have to this day ever witnessed.


Vocabulary:

cannula- a metal tube for insertion into the artery



New Paragraph

By Modern Mortician Admin July 1, 2025
When the “mushroom shroud” first hit the funeral industry, I was intrigued, albeight briefly. A burial garment laced with spores that claimed to neutralize toxins and help decompose the human body faster? It sounded revolutionary. But I was closer to the mushroom suit than most. I was in the room, so to speak. I watched the marketing balloon inflate, and I saw who benefited. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t the consumer, and it certainly wasn’t the planet. That early mushroom shroud turned out to be more PR than practicality. It relied heavily on the public's love for nature-inspired innovation but had very little transparent science to back up its promises. I didn’t see any peer-reviewed data or detailed decomposition timelines. I saw branding. I saw $$$. I saw hashtags. I saw funerary folklore dressed up as eco-tech. So, yes, my involvement left me deeply skeptical of any product touting mycelium as a miracle solution for green burial. Then came Loop Biotech , with slick design and viral marketing. Their “living cocoon”, a coffin grown from mycelium, was being shared widely across social media, lauded as the future of sustainable burial. It looks futuristic, soft, and gentle...a decomposable cradle for the body. People in my inbox were tagging me constantly, excited by the idea. But once again, I had questions. Loop Biotech is based in the Netherlands. These mushroom coffins, as lovely as they are in theory, are being shipped across oceans to American consumers. That’s not sustainable—that’s greenwashing . When your "eco coffin" travels 3,000+ miles in a box, your carbon footprint isn’t shrinking. It’s just hidden under compostable packaging. It was after a respected casket supplier shared about offering Loop Biotech coffins, that I was then introduced to Setas Mushrooms in the comment section  . Quietly working out of Pennsylvania , this small business is making mushroom coffins right here in the U.S. Their approach is humble, local, and genuinely rooted in regenerative design. Setas isn’t trying to dominate the market with buzzwords—they're cultivating solutions, literally. Their coffins are grown, not built, using mycelium and agricultural waste. They’ve focused on keeping things local and sustainable from beginning to end. No flashy campaigns, just a small American company doing the actual work. And that’s what frustrates me. The funeral industry has a habit—whether from laziness, ignorance, or greed—of looking overseas for flashy solutions while ignoring what’s growing in our own backyard. Why are we giving clicks and dollars to Dutch startups when there’s a team in Pennsylvania already offering better, more accessible alternatives? As someone who has spent years fighting for transparency, ethical pricing, and environmental responsibility in deathcare, I’ll say this plainly: If we’re going to go green, let’s go local first. Because compostable doesn’t mean ethical, and biodegradable doesn’t mean better—unless you’ve taken the time to know the source, the science, and the story behind the shroud.
Image of cremated remains spread over existing grave in a cemetery.
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Bella Lugosi ~ written in 2015 I don’t know when she was born… when I adopted her, she was estimated to be about a year old, and that was back in 2001, putting her around the age of 15. Over those 14 years, I spent more time with this creature than any human companion in my life. She understood me better, too. She knew when I was sad; becoming the pillow for my face, allowing the tears to soak her fur, my arm in a vice grip around her warm body. She knew when I was happy; we had a special song… “My Bella My Bella”. I’d sing it to her, as she would sit on the counter watching me go through my morning routine. She was a calm and comforting being in my life. She wasn’t “just a cat”. Bella Lugosi was diagnosed with the C word in June, and the next day, my Bella was dead. When the doctor uttered that word, cancer, I felt my stomach freeze and begin descend into a thick, black hole. Like I was hurtling into darkness and no one could see it, but I could feel it. My core went numb. I could feel the emotion drain from my face. He guessed she had three weeks… if I didn’t choose to attack it aggressively with tortuous procedures that wouldn’t necessarily prolong her existence, but might, at least I’d be doing something, right? Wrong. As much as I loved her, I loved her enough to know when to let her go. To let her comfort and needs come above my own selfish ones. We went straight home. I turned on the YouTube series, “Ask A Mortician”, and watched Caitlin Doughty, founder of the Order of the Good Death, tell me how she performed an in home euthanasia and wake for her cat, The Meow. I wanted to be ready. I wanted to give Bella the Good Death. But I didn't need this information after all... it came naturally as I dipped into my human death care knowledge. I called my friend Ellen, owner and caretaker of Eloise Woods Community Natural Burial Park. We would get together to pick a spot for Bella’s body in the next few days. I begin to reach out to mobile vet technicians, leaving messages, emailing… looking for someone who could come to us. I didn’t want Bella to go back into the car and to an unfamiliar place. I wanted her to die comfortably, in my arms, in her home. That night, I sat up on the couch with Bella sleeping on my chest. I slept sporadically, monitoring her labored breathing, making sure she was comfortable. She shuffled off to her bed around 5am, her gait wobbly. I watched her struggle from the couch, and my eyes began to fill with hot tears. I shrugged the thought away, certainly we have more time… he said 3 weeks. I went about getting ready for work. I looked in on her at 7:30am that morning. She was curled up in her cat bed, and seemed restless. She shifted positions a few times before settling down. I opened a whole can of tuna, set it at her bedside, and left for work. When I came home at lunch, it was clear my Bella was rapidly deteriorating. I began reaching out to the mobile veterinarians again. It was time, and if I didn’t act quickly, she would continue to suffer and decline. I finally got an appointment, and set about spending the last hour of her life doing everything she loved most. I called my roommate, Jessica, who came home to be with us. Bella and I sat outside on the concrete, and she sunned herself. She nibbled a little tuna, though she hadn’t touched what I left out for her that morning. She watched the birds and the squirrels. Then the vet arrived. We all went inside. I positioned myself on the couch where we spent the night before. I had a towel, and her favorite blanket. The vet was very soft spoken, very reassuring. She explained every step of the process about to take place. Then she began the first injection. Bella took her final breath comfortably in my arms. I don’t know how long I sat there, holding her limp body. The vet continued to talk… soft, soothing. Uh-huh. I don’t know what I was agreeing too… uh-huh is my default answer. The vet gently excused herself and exited the home. I remember going into autopilot. The tears had stopped. I positioned Bella in her bed, favorite blanket beneath her. I went about double bagging ice packs to lay under her for the night. I called Ellen, we agreed to meet at Eloise Woods at 7:30am. I ran an errand for work, eager to take my mind of the lifeless body off of my best friend laying out in the living room. Several hours later, emotions took hold, as I found myself alone at home with Bella’s body. It started with simply being seated at her side, softly stroking her fur for what I knew would be the last times. I had a human fingerprint kit at the ready, knowing I wanted to secure her paw print for a future memorial tattoo, and a pair of scissors to trim fur from her tail. What would have been a simple task of inking and pressing her paws to paper turned into sobbing child’s art project gone awry, as I distressed over the ink not coming clean of her soft fur and jelly bean toes. I found myself mumbling apologies to her incoherently, crying and mourning. After what felt like hours, but was certainly no more than 45 minutes, I pulled it together enough to realize I would not be spending the final night at home with Bella’s body. I would never get any suitable sleep. I was grief stricken and couldn’t keep my hands off her soft body, which was now stiffly posed in full rigor, a good 6 hours after her last breath. I placed her bed upon mine, where she used to sleep, closed my bedroom door, and retreated to the comfort of a friend for the remainder of the night. I woke early after a surprisingly deep 5 hours of sleep, and drove home to take Bella to her final resting place in Eloise Woods. 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As I drove away, my heart felt heavy, but my spirit felt lighter. I had given her a beautiful life and death- but the life she gave me I will never forget.
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