Having excellent driving skills and putting oneself in the shoes of the deceased and their families are the guidelines
of Beijing Babaoshan Funeral Home Car Team
Body pick-up driver escorts life's "last mile"
A group of people, who kept a low profile, drove black funeral vans between hospitals and funeral homes in Beijing day and night to meet the needs of transporting the remains of the deceased. They were the carcass pick-up drivers. On the eve of the Qingming Festival, several body pick-up drivers from the Beijing Babaoshan Funeral Home car team told the Beijing News reporter the story and understanding of escorting the "last mile of life".
Excellent technology, in order to grasp the road conditions, cycling to count red light seconds
Ma Jun, deputy captain of the Babaoshan Funeral Home car team, is a "teacher" with more than 30 years of experience. He briefed reporters on the process of the work of the car fleet. Generally, the family of the deceased calls the funeral home negotiation room to book business, and the negotiation room transmits the business information to the fleet dispatch room, which is dispatched to the fleet driver. Before departure, the driver calls the family of the deceased to check the business location, etc., and then drives over.
"In fact, this line is very hard, the work is irregular, what we can do is to do the work well." Ma Jun said that according to the business situation, the driver usually arrives at work at about 5:30 a.m. to clean the vehicle and check the safety of the vehicle. Normally, work ends at 3:30 p.m., but in many cases, work is not left on time. The night shift is also very hard and I have been working.
Funeral car driving to seek "stability", can not change lanes casually, sometimes there are family members behind the funeral car to follow the car, need to keep an appropriate distance from them, drivers must have excellent driving skills.
Families in different places follow different customs and habits, driver Yang Zhanqi told reporters that once the family of the deceased asked Chang'an Avenue to get on the car can not stop, which is a very test of the driver's skills, need to predict the road signal lights. He once rode a bicycle, held a book and a pen, counted the red lights one by one from the funeral home to the second ring road, and he could memorize the seconds of the red lights during the traffic flow and rush hour.
Change clothes and move the body and put yourself in the family's shoes
In addition to picking up the remains, the drivers will also do what they can for the families of the deceased, such as assisting the families to dress the deceased and carry the remains.
Li Jian, a member of the car team, talked about an experience when he first became a funeral car driver. That day, upon arriving at the business location, he found that the deceased's clothes were disheveled due to his chronic illness. Just when the family members were worried about how to change the deceased's clothes, Li Jian immediately cooperated with the family and soon changed into a new outfit for the deceased. The family of the deceased held his hand and was moved to tears.
On a hot afternoon last year, after the driver Gu Zheng arrived at the mission site, he was stimulated by the strong, choking smell of corpses. The deceased had been living alone for many days and had been dead at home for several days when he was found. The decay of the remains is serious, and the existing equipment and vehicles cannot safely enter the mortuary, and the transportation of the remains faces great challenges. After Gu Zheng calmed the collapse of the family, he asked the car team for help, and the car team quickly set up a 4-person team led by driver Qi Lei, prepared body bags, paper coffins and various protective and disinfection tools, rushed to the scene to support, and 5 people worked together to put the body into the mortuary, and successfully invited the hearse to transport it back to the museum. The team members fought for nearly 40 hours in three-layer protective suits in the outdoor heat of nearly 5 degrees Celsius, and the bereaved family cried and thanked the staff many times after seeing the sweat-soaked staff.
Putting oneself in the shoes of the deceased and their families is an accepted norm in the minds of car fleet drivers. Yang Zhanqi recalled that once he received the body of the deceased from the hospital and found that the driving route passed by the deceased's home, so he asked the family members accompanying the car if they wanted the old man to go home to "see". It turned out that the deceased had been lying in the hospital for two years due to illness, and he had always wanted to go home to see, but this wish was not fulfilled until his death. "Thank you so much, our sons and daughters failed to help the old man realize their wishes, you thought of it for us and helped him realize it." Yang Zhanqi remembers that the family was very grateful to him at that time, and later they often walked around each other, just like relatives, forming a good relationship.
"Now many families are only children, children are experiencing this for the first time, it is normal to be helpless, and they also trust us, I feel that we cannot live up to this trust and dependence, and we must do our best to let the deceased take this last journey." Yang Zhanqi said.
"There must always be someone to escort the deceased"
"Doing this is often in a very depressing environment, and we need to regulate our emotions ourselves." Ma Jun said that because it is a funeral car, the body is transported, the family's emotions are usually very sad, the funeral car driver can not chat or joke with passengers like other drivers, his facial expressions must also be controlled, and the family's emotions will also infect the driver.
Yang Zhanqi told reporters: "Our emotions can not be released, more depressed, in order to solve and adjust, our drivers often chat, greet, if there are any problems also communicate in time, young drivers to chat with teachers can also have long experience." ”
Sometimes, family members are in a bad mood in the car, and drivers should also pay attention to their safety situation, and deal with emergencies in time, as Yang Zhanqi has encountered. The body he picked up that time was a married man with a happy family, a good relationship between the husband and wife, and a child who had just reached adulthood. His wife had been washing her face with tears in the car, and her emotions broke down, and suddenly she wanted to open the door and jump down despite the fact that the vehicle was moving, but fortunately, Yang Zhanqi had rich experience and locked the door in advance to avoid accidents.
"It is normal for people to live, old age, illness and death, although this profession is relatively unpopular, many people do not understand, but they do things that accumulate virtue and do good, and there must always be someone to escort the deceased. What we can do is to do our job well and serve the masses with all our might. Ma Jun said.
Beijing News reporter Ye Hongmei