Lynne Houston (LH) and Greg Houston (GH)

LH: You placed an order over the phone and said, ’Can you deliver some lunch to the funeral home?’ The door was unlocked, so I came in with meatballs marinara, and you were doing some kind of autopsy or something. And I remember I just stood there staring at you in your white gown with blood all over it.

GH: When you walked in I didn’t think anything of it.

LH: You were coming toward me with blood on your hands going, ’It’s okay. It’s okay.’ [laughs] So I dropped the food and ran out of there.

GH: Uh-huh…

LH: But later on you asked me out to dinner. And, back then, every day you were on call.

GH: And then we got a call.

LH: We were at the restaurant. I was like, ’I’ll wait here. I don’t want to go pick up a body.’ And you said it was nothing to worry about. I remember bringing the gurney in and you put it in the back of the van. We were driving and you stopped at the red light real quick. And then that gurney, and whoever was on there, rolled right up between us. Who feels like eating after that?

GH: Me?

LH: Oh my God.

GH: Well, he wasn’t going to dinner with us. I wanted to see if you would hang in there because that was my lifestyle. And if it would freak you out, then there was no reason to go any further.

LH: But that was the second date…

GH: Yeah… Like a Band-Aid, right off…

LH: [Laughs] At that time a lot of women would have run for the hills. But I remember you said, .Hey, you want to go up to Long Island for a weekend?’ But you didn’t say that we were going to go to a military funeral. You came to pick me up in a hearse and you said, ’We just got to go drop off the colonel, then we’ll have the whole weekend.’

And when we did finally get to this cemetery, those gates opened, and you knew everything. You knew what to do and what to say to them and all of a sudden, I see you in a whole different way.

To me, that was my weekend because after that it was like, how is he going to top this?

GH: They’re all special. That’s why I like doing an average person because that person’s not average to that family. And that’s why it’s so important when you make arrangements to listen — you got two ears and one mouth, use them in proportion. Get them talking, so they’ll find that, Okay, I know I can live on.