Angelus News | October 25, 2019 | Vol. 4 No. 36

the family 100 percent when they do
the interment.”
Having to regularly confront the
reality of death for a living has given
the 48-year-old a special perspective
on life.
“I mean, when God calls you, you’ve
done your mission here on earth,” he
said. “It can be for 80 years, 18 years
or six months. But everyone has a
mission. I’m here to tell the families,
‘You can go in peace. Your family
member, he’s resting in peace, in the
right place, the right way.’ ”
He waved to the driver of a backhoe
coming back from scooping out a
grave. Later, on the far side of the
grassy grounds with the visitor, the
golf cart stopped to check out private
family plots. A row of them have
cinder-block walls on three sides with
a wrought-iron gate in front.
Morales, whose own family belongs
to St. Philip Neri Church in Lynwood,
said he feels the same way
about respecting grieving families
when he’s cutting the grass, keeping
up the gardens, or trimming flat-lying
markers.
But the main task he does is digging
graves, 4 feet down for a single
interment, 7 1/2 for a double. The
standard width is 40 inches for both,
however, because with a two-body internment,
one is stacked on the other.
Depending on the soil, it usually takes
a team 30 to 45 minutes to dig a grave.
“You see life different,” the grounds
supervisor mused later, after the ride.
“That’s why I don’t change my job
for nothing. Every day it’s different
— different cases, different cultures.
You see how the families are going
through these bad moments, so you
try to do the best job you can because
it’s a ministry.
“Because my work is connected to
my faith,” he added. “It’s very important
for me and my family.”
to really help people? The thought
led her to enroll in a local community
college mortuary science program.
“Once I got on the path, I knew
where I belonged,” she recalled.
As the embalmer and director of All
Souls Mortuary “care center,” the
place where bodies are brought and
prepared, Sault also sees her role as
a ministry.
“I feel strongly about that, and
that’s how I run the care center. I believe
it’s giving them to God in the
best light that you can,” she said.
“Everything from birth to death is
transition to eternity. So everything
being handled and honored is imperative
for a decedent.”
Struggling to find the right words,
she continued, “Everything about
them — the life they lived — I
mean, it’s way bigger than I am. It
really is.”
Specifically, Sault’s job entails embalming
bodies for burial, a role that
required a two-year internship before
she could get an embalmer’s license.
The first year was at a small mortuary
in Covina. She met with families
as an arrangement counselor, acted
as a funeral director and did many
other jobs in the field. Sault said she
loved them all, but it was during her
second intern year at All Souls that
she settled on the area she wanted to
specialize in.
“It’s a very fragile balance in embalming,”
Sault pointed out. “Every
decedent is different. And high levels
of medications can affect the embalming
process. Also different types
of chemotherapy. And if they had
liver failure or jaundice, it’s difficult
to embalm. With more chemicals
in the body, they can have different
consequences with reactions during
the process.”
At times, the four embalmers on staff
at All Souls also have to act as detectives.
They often don’t know the exact
cause of death or the medications and
medical procedures associated with
the deceased persons leading up to
their deaths.
“But with experience, you can tell
what a person died of just by looking
at him, generally,” Sault said. “Not all
cases. But we always have to determine
what type of chemicals we’re
going to use. So we’re always judging
the possible cause of death so we can
formulate our chemicals.
“After a while,” she added, “you get
really good at assessing.”
Kristi Sault worked for a law firm
and a bank, but didn’t feel like
she was helping others in any
significant way.
Eventually, she realized that helping
people during the hardest time of
their lives — dealing with the death
of a loved one — was one sure way to
change that. What better place for her
Kristi Sault supervises the care center at All Souls Cemetery and Mortuary.
VICTOR ALEMÁN
October 25, 2019 • ANGELUS • 17