There is No Appropriate Title For This Post

I’m going to start this post with a warning… I’m about to get a bit morbid. I’ve probably piqued your curiosity, and if you’re like me, you’re going to keep reading. But just remember… I tried to warn you!

Sometimes I think about dead bodies. I don't know if it's a normal, healthy amount or a weird amount. Maybe by the end of this blog post, someone can tell me. 

I haven't been around a lot of dead people in my lifetime. Aside from viewings, the first person I saw deceased was my grandpa, and I was in my 30's. When he died, I got the phone call and was told the mortuary wouldn't be coming for another hour or so, and I could go see him if I wanted to. I just went and sat in the room with my family and my grandpa. It was peaceful. I didn't touch him or even get very close. It wasn't scary - it was just... fine, I guess. He lived a long life. It was okay that he had passed on. It was a necessary and welcome release. 

I've always thought that viewings are strange. I've never really understood why we display our dead. But even worse, I don't understand why we make the families stand in a reception-style line and greet us. I never go through the lines at viewings. However, I recently had an experience that helped me make more sense of viewings. 

When my grandma passed away, we just had a "family only" graveside. When they brought the casket to the cemetery, I started to wonder... how do we know she's in there? There hadn't been a viewing. I started asking around to my aunts and uncles... do we know that Grandma is actually in there? Did anyone confirm this? Everyone just laughed like I was making a joke, but I was dead serious (no pun intended). 

To make things all the more interesting, the cemetery was so back-logged with burials that they couldn't bury my grandma after her graveside. Our family was given the option to either postpone the graveside service to the next week or do a "mock" interment where they bring the casket to the cemetery for the service and then take it back to the mortuary until they can schedule the burial. My family opted for the mock interment, so after my grandma's graveside, they loaded the casket back in the hearse and took it away. 

A few days later, we came back to the cemetery to unload her and have her buried. But again... was she really in there? Once more, I went around asking my aunts and uncles if anyone confirmed that Grandma was really in the casket. I mean... it was taken out of sight for several days and then brought back to be put into the earth. 

YOU JUST NEVER KNOW!

And after all of this overthinking, it dawned on me that that is one purpose for a viewing. You see the body, and then, in most cases, the casket it sealed up while everyone is present, it's wheeled into the funeral, delivered to the cemetery, and buried. You know the person is in there. 

Now, it's not like I think my grandma is secretly alive on the island with Elvis (I'm still holding out for the Elvis conspiracy, it would be the BEST THING TO EVER HAPPEN ON THIS EARTH), but there's this little ounce of me that's like what if? What if she wasn't in that casket? I don't know where she would be... it would have to be some weird case of body swapping or illegal organ harvesting, but no one seemed to be able to tell me with confidence that she was in that casket!

Therefore, a viewing suddenly makes sense despite being totally weird. 

I'm hardly knowledgeable about death and cadavers, but I'm definitely curious. A few years ago, I read the book Stiff by Mary Roach and found it quite fascinating. 

Did you know that corpses can fart, pee, and even groan? I can pretty much guarantee I'll be a farting corpse. My husband will concur. 

My whole life, I've imagined what it would be like to find a body. 

Last year my book club read a book wherein one of the characters stumbles across a dead body wrapped in duct tape. As readers, we knew that the duct taped individual was one of the characters of the book, but we didn’t yet know who. The character that found the body had to choose whether to remove the duct tape to see who it was. We asked each other at book club, “What would you do? Would you be able to remove the tape and look or would you wait for the police?" 

I immediately declared that I wouldn't be able to look. 

As you may recall, last year, I did, in fact, find a dead body in the park on my morning walk with two of my friends. We didn't feel comfortable getting close to the body. This was, in part, because we were shaken and a little confused and disoriented about what we were seeing. Without too much description, it didn't look the way we thought it would. I spent the next several weeks on the Google learning everything there is to know about that type of death. My search history for June 2022 is nothing but sketchy. 

Now that I've had a year to rehash the experience, I often think about what obligations we have to approach the body and check for a pulse. In this case, I think we were okay to not check. She wasn't alive. We couldn't have saved her. BUT in other situations, it could save a life. 

Sometimes, my imagination gets the best of me, and I envision this type of scenario. Yesterday I was walking through the park (the same park - I don't have any qualms about being in that park, but I never walk past that spot without thinking about our girl), and I kind of needed to go to the bathroom, but only to the point where I was making a game plan just in case. I started wondering if I was going to open the door to the park bathrooms and find a homeless person, and once I started imagining that scenario, I imagined that the person was non-responsive, possibly dead, and oh great! I now have to decide what to do about it. 

I don't think I can check. And I didn't check when we found our girl. 

(I call her "our girl" - I'm not always sure how to reference her, so that's what I say. "Our girl." I know her name, and I think of her by her name, but when I talk about her, I usually say "our girl"). 

I think if it were someone I knew, I could check, but when stumbling across a stranger in an unexpected place, not so much. The circumstances are a big factor in that. Let's hope I don't have to make that decision again.

So how does one end a blog post about dead bodies? I'm not really sure. But this is the point where I ask... normal and healthy? Or weird?