In France, a grave digger is referred to by the compound word croque-mort, which literally means “biting the dead.” According to a folk legend, undertakers used to bite the deceased’s toe hard to make sure their client was truly dead. No reaction was supposedly proof that the person had moved on to the other world. In reality, this word has a different origin… and what it is you will learn from this book.
A funeral is not an ordinary event. The family and friends of the deceased say goodbye to him—and they will remember this moment as the last chapter of his life. But at every funeral there is also a person whose job is to make sure this sad event goes properly.
Guillaume Bayi is a modest employee of a funeral home in Ladernaux (France). Cemeteries, mourning ceremonies, morgues, hearses, crematoriums, grieving families—these are part of his everyday work. At funerals, he encounters sad, touching, strange, ridiculous, and even mysterious situations. And relatives of the dead behave differently too: someone is crushed by grief, someone quarrels and fights, while someone calmly shifts their weight from foot to foot waiting for the ceremony to end.