The Sanitation Staff

Photo by Scott Rodgerson.

They called him “The Sanitation Staff.” 

He wore a beige worn-out Tilley hat, work boots, and blue coveralls two sizes too baggy for his slight build; the back-pocket, torn and peeled back, lay flapped down against his right ass-cheek. 

I think he’d been in his late twenties for the past fourty years, and until I saw him I’d worried my outfit was too casual for a funeral. 

In Breton folklore, a tall haggard figure called Ankou is responsible for protecting the souls of the people in a graveyard — and for calling on the dead when it’s their time. He’s described as either very gaunt or a skeleton capable of turning his head 360 degrees. In both descriptions, he wears a big hat that covers his face –– a big hat similar to a Tilley. 

If Ankou is real, he works in downtown Toronto and is called The Sanitation Staff at the little graveyard I visited earlier this year. He has a slinking way of walking, as though he’s snooping about in the dark, rather than burying a person in front of their family. 

After lowering the casket, a metal frame was to be removed, and our Ankou beckoned someone over; a woman in her early twenties wearing a white t-shirt, short cut-off jeans, and sneakers. He reminded her to lift with her knees and together they remove the large steel frame while the silent onlookers stood and watched. 

A funeral worker in a 3-piece suit announced that friends and family would be allowed to place soil atop the casket. This announcement triggered a half-hearted but firm exclamation from the grave-digger, informing them to wait. 

He relaxingly made his way to the grave to remove the straps used for lowering the casket and bent down onto his knees to try to shake it loose. It wouldn’t unstick. He lazily shook the dirt out of one of his gloves, and while the crowd of mourners stood silently observing, he lay on his belly and reached down into the grave. 

But he couldn’t quite reach the straps, so he slithered forward — deeper into the grave until only his rear-end, with the peeled back pocket, was visible.

Half in the grave, he was. 

It dawned on me, as I watched him in a sort of giddy disbelief, that he was a symbol of death itself –– disinterestedly and pragmatically doing what needed to be done, with no respect for pageantry or emotional attachment. The straps couldn’t be left in there, that would be a waste of perfectly good straps. 

The funeral continued, with heartfelt hymns and shovel loads of soil dropped onto the casket with flowers and brief goodbyes muttered under the breath. 

And then it was announced that the funeral was over, and it was requested that family and friends please clear the graveyard. 

But certain friends and family are only ever gathered at funerals, and in recognizing the temporality of life –– they mingled and chat and remind one another that they’re still here for each other. 

These kinds of emotional connections may be appreciated by The Sanitation Staff, but it’s only in his heart. 

The shrill and pulsing beeeep-beeeep-beeeep of heavy equipment rang out and echoed off the tombstones. We watched as a small bulldozer wove its way between the names of the previously deceased, and eventually reached the pile of dirt next to today’s grave. 

The dirt was simply pushed in, just like dirt gets backfilled against the foundation of a house or shovelled into any valley that’s no longer required. 

How did you think the Valley of the Shadow of Death was to be filled it?

No, Death waits for no man.

Nor does The Sanitation Staff in our little graveyard in downtown Toronto.