(In large Texas counties which have medical examiners the justice of the peace transfers responsibilities for investigating and certifying death.) ‘It stays in your mind’ Duties of the justice of the peace include presiding over small-claims courts, performing civil weddings, conducting inquests and certificating deaths. Rather, the Texas Constitution calls for justices of the peace to be elected for four-year terms. Texas, unlike other states, does not have traditional elected county coroners. Something that might put Uvalde on the map.”Įulalia Diaz serves as justice of the peace in Uvalde County. None of them, at breakfast Tuesday morning, had said, “I sure hope we have some excitement in Uvalde today! Something out of the ordinary. In Uvalde, Texas, Eulalio Diaz and a group of embalmers whose names I do not know stepped forward. Those words make up an increasingly common cliché: the latest school shooting.Īfter every “latest school shooting,” amazing individuals step forward. Those last four words never should have been strung together in a phrase or sentence. I think about those moments - moments that convinced me that I never could make a good embalmer - when I hear about the latest school shooting. And then our work day over, we were among family and friends, and were asked polite questions, “So, how was your day?” The heroes you never see We made that little girl look so much better than when her parents had last seen her. Her parents, her extended family, had expected a “miracle” at the medical center. Now we suffered as we prepared her corpse. That toddler had suffered, and her parents and grandparents had suffered through her illness and dying.
![unity funeral chapel shooting unity funeral chapel shooting](https://www.tennessean.com/gcdn/-mm-/f34ae9c9797f803cc47e95036c2908e8c132d808/c=0-0-3827-2162/local/-/media/2017/11/17/TennGroup/Nashville/636465305206410894--NAS-burnette-nurse-minerva-01.jpg)
After being reminded that that medical center had the power to close down the funeral home and end our careers, we were sworn to secrecy. There was even a question of how long she had been dead and why her body had been kept so long in a freezer. The toddler, a girl, had died in a medical center after receiving substandard care. In fact, the funeral director did not even say, “Well done, boys. Hours later, a mother, whom I never met, held her baby again. Now, if you don’t have any more questions, get to work!” There is a broken-hearted mama who wants to hold her baby one more time.
![unity funeral chapel shooting unity funeral chapel shooting](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/db5837_25124c17ce654ca78ea5d7a91610445d~mv2.jpg)
![unity funeral chapel shooting unity funeral chapel shooting](https://www.unityfuneralchapels.com/fh_live/12200/12237/images/loc_6756_20142.jpg)
“No, it will not be a closed casket.” When we started to protest, he snapped, “Boys, I tell you why this will not be a closed casket. In those years before seat belts for adults and car seats for babies, in an automobile crash, the baby had been thrown through the windshield. In both cases, we (I was embalming with two others) quickly assessed the corpse.