About Two Floors Above Grief: A Memoir of Two Families in the Unique Place We Called Home by Kevin M. O’Connor
When was the last time you played in a casket room? Removed a dead body from the bed in their house? Practiced playing the organ in a funeral home chapel?
These experiences were some of Kevin O’Connor’s experiences living with his family in apartments above their family funeral home business.
As a child in the 1950s, Kevin O’Connor knew his house was different than his friends.
A stately, three-story, nineteenth-century Victorian. His bed was tucked next to a stage in a former ballroom. His uncle and aunt lived with their three daughters on the floor below. A massive electric organ stood stately in a corner of the first-floor mortuary business. Stacked caskets and an embalming room filled the basement.
Nobody had a house like his.
Set from the 1920s to ‘80s, Two Floors Above Grief is full of fascinating details and anecdotes about his upbringing as a funeral home child, brought to vivid life through a compelling collection of letters written by various family members who lived and worked together at the O’Connor Funeral Home in Elgin, Illinois. Blending the twenty-four-hour business of death and its constantly ringing phone with joy experienced through music, radios, pets, backyard basketball games, co-parenting, faith, and celebrations, O’Connor offers a reflective tale affirming the love of family and embracing life.
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