This Sunday was Easter Sunday. I was in the singing group so wound up sat at the front, all keen-like.
And the scripture was, unsurprisingly, John's account of the resurrection. And we were asked to consider why Mary was crying. She cried for the death of her friend (who is a saviour if not a friend of sinners). She cried because his body was not there. In that, I think perhaps she cried for herself. She had been deprived of the touchstone for her grief. If we deal with death by dealing with our dead (which I hope we do) then not having a body to grieve over hampers our grieving. Like the families of soldiers blown to smithereens in the trenches, where there wasn't enough to identify or bury. Like the friends of teenagers who disappeared and were never heard of again. Like the relatives of the victims of the recent air crash and ferry capsizing.
It is good to notice when experiences or people we can relate to show up in the Bible. And I like to think that we are all included in there without too many stretches of the imagination. Of course, I also like to stretch my imagination.
Showing posts with label dead people. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dead people. Show all posts
Tuesday, 22 April 2014
Thursday, 25 July 2013
My First Dead Body
I saw my first dead body at the age of 19 in an anatomy dissection room. I thought I had left it rather late to have that kind of seminal first experience, but my Dad didn't see his first dead body until 11 years later. His first dead body was his father. Who was either some number well in double figures for me or number 18 depending on whether dead bodies that were in the room but at whom I didn't actually interact with count.
And those are quite different experiences.
A cadaver (that's a technical term) in an anatomy department looks like what it is - a preserved specimen. The skin is yellowed and loses its familiar texture in the embalming process. The head has been shaved for better access to cranial anatomy and improved cleanliness (or because certain embalming techniques turn the hair to gunge). They lie on metal gurneys draped in damp sheets and oilcloth to prevent drying out. The facial features are unaltered - the jaw drops open, the eyes may not be fully closed and the eyeballs have probably slumped. They are unfamiliar.
A grandfather in a funeral director's chapel of rest looks more like who he was. He is dressed in clothes that were his own (although he got a new tie for the occasion) and what little hair he retained past his grandchildren's arrival is trimmed and combed. His skin is cold and pale but skin coloured and his hands are folded. There are probably eye caps keeping the eyelids (which may have been sewn or superglued shut) from sinking. The jaw is held closed by a suture around the jaw or a plasic device. He is recognisable as himself.
The anatomy dissection room I studied in was a large, high space with a parquet floor (you could do yourself some real damage if you were feeling woozy and fainted) and huge frosted windows. It was a place to learn and felt sort of venerable but also exciting. It smelled, just a little, of gammon and pineapple. There were blocks and dissection kits and bone saws and brain knives to hand.
We viewed my grandfather in a chapel of rest that was small and softly lit, a place to see someone's body for the last time. It smelled of air freshener and flowers. There were tissues to hand. A place to take my grandmother to help it all sink in. A gentle, unthreatening place for my Dad to see his first dead body. We spoke about it a little - the change in someone once their features are no longer animated, how the person we knew was gone, how in many ways he had been gone for some time. I kissed his head, as I had when he was alive, and we left.
I recognise that my experiences are somewhat unusual, but they have meant that I am reasonably comfortable around dead people. Perhaps not as comfortable as my forebears, who would have laid out relatives themselves (although I would like to think I could do that for someone when the time came), or as comfortable as those who deal with the dead on a daily basis, but comfortable enough. And I think that's good. Perhaps there's a place for coming face to face and hand to hand with our dead, in the world today where to die is seen as losing a fight, as a failure of medical staff to keep you alive. Perhaps I understand a little better my own mortality. Or perhaps I like to think I do, while merrily denying that I will one day die.
And those are quite different experiences.
A cadaver (that's a technical term) in an anatomy department looks like what it is - a preserved specimen. The skin is yellowed and loses its familiar texture in the embalming process. The head has been shaved for better access to cranial anatomy and improved cleanliness (or because certain embalming techniques turn the hair to gunge). They lie on metal gurneys draped in damp sheets and oilcloth to prevent drying out. The facial features are unaltered - the jaw drops open, the eyes may not be fully closed and the eyeballs have probably slumped. They are unfamiliar.
A grandfather in a funeral director's chapel of rest looks more like who he was. He is dressed in clothes that were his own (although he got a new tie for the occasion) and what little hair he retained past his grandchildren's arrival is trimmed and combed. His skin is cold and pale but skin coloured and his hands are folded. There are probably eye caps keeping the eyelids (which may have been sewn or superglued shut) from sinking. The jaw is held closed by a suture around the jaw or a plasic device. He is recognisable as himself.
The anatomy dissection room I studied in was a large, high space with a parquet floor (you could do yourself some real damage if you were feeling woozy and fainted) and huge frosted windows. It was a place to learn and felt sort of venerable but also exciting. It smelled, just a little, of gammon and pineapple. There were blocks and dissection kits and bone saws and brain knives to hand.
We viewed my grandfather in a chapel of rest that was small and softly lit, a place to see someone's body for the last time. It smelled of air freshener and flowers. There were tissues to hand. A place to take my grandmother to help it all sink in. A gentle, unthreatening place for my Dad to see his first dead body. We spoke about it a little - the change in someone once their features are no longer animated, how the person we knew was gone, how in many ways he had been gone for some time. I kissed his head, as I had when he was alive, and we left.
I recognise that my experiences are somewhat unusual, but they have meant that I am reasonably comfortable around dead people. Perhaps not as comfortable as my forebears, who would have laid out relatives themselves (although I would like to think I could do that for someone when the time came), or as comfortable as those who deal with the dead on a daily basis, but comfortable enough. And I think that's good. Perhaps there's a place for coming face to face and hand to hand with our dead, in the world today where to die is seen as losing a fight, as a failure of medical staff to keep you alive. Perhaps I understand a little better my own mortality. Or perhaps I like to think I do, while merrily denying that I will one day die.
Tuesday, 23 July 2013
Dead people are people too
Actually, are they? I'm not sure. So I won't be addressing the personhood of dead people in this particular blogpost.
What I want to talk about is how wonderful the generous people are who donate their bodies to medical science when they die.
My first degree was in Biomedical Sciences. This included a course in human anatomy with a practical element of cadaveric dissection. I then went on to do an honours project in anatomy during my final year, dissecting elbows for 10 weeks. As such, I have learnt a lot from several dead people and I thought I might pass on some anecdotes and insights.
It is a very strange feeling when someone who you know has been dead for quite some time holds your hand. And that was what happened to me during the carpal tunnel dissection on my anatomy course. Of course she only held my hand because one of my lab group was pulling on her flexor tendons, but it was one of those moments that bring home the humanity of the people who choose to donate their bodies to a medical school. And I'll never know whether our little cadaver was the sort of person who would hold your hand in life but, to come over all maudlin' for a moment, in death she held our hands as we discovered the marvels of the human body, of her body.
Likewise it is somehow humbling to hold in your hand the heart that kept someone alive for eight or nine decades. To my shame I forget how old 'our' cadaver was when she died. All a dissection group learns about their donor is their age at death and cause of death. And I remember taking her heart over to the sink to wash it clean of clots, embalming fluid and extraneous tissue and just holding it for a moment. I don't think about my heart very much. I think about the hearts of my loved ones when they are medically interesting and might consider my own when it is pounding, whyever that may be, but in the main my heart sits beneath my ribcage and quietly gets on with keeping my blood running. And that's amazing.
You get a very strange picture of someone when all you have to go on is their cause of death, age at death and naked, shaven, preserved body. Admittedly, our donor still wore the vestiges of pink nail varnish and still had her false teeth in. but that's not a lot to go on.
What I want to talk about is how wonderful the generous people are who donate their bodies to medical science when they die.
My first degree was in Biomedical Sciences. This included a course in human anatomy with a practical element of cadaveric dissection. I then went on to do an honours project in anatomy during my final year, dissecting elbows for 10 weeks. As such, I have learnt a lot from several dead people and I thought I might pass on some anecdotes and insights.
It is a very strange feeling when someone who you know has been dead for quite some time holds your hand. And that was what happened to me during the carpal tunnel dissection on my anatomy course. Of course she only held my hand because one of my lab group was pulling on her flexor tendons, but it was one of those moments that bring home the humanity of the people who choose to donate their bodies to a medical school. And I'll never know whether our little cadaver was the sort of person who would hold your hand in life but, to come over all maudlin' for a moment, in death she held our hands as we discovered the marvels of the human body, of her body.
Likewise it is somehow humbling to hold in your hand the heart that kept someone alive for eight or nine decades. To my shame I forget how old 'our' cadaver was when she died. All a dissection group learns about their donor is their age at death and cause of death. And I remember taking her heart over to the sink to wash it clean of clots, embalming fluid and extraneous tissue and just holding it for a moment. I don't think about my heart very much. I think about the hearts of my loved ones when they are medically interesting and might consider my own when it is pounding, whyever that may be, but in the main my heart sits beneath my ribcage and quietly gets on with keeping my blood running. And that's amazing.
You get a very strange picture of someone when all you have to go on is their cause of death, age at death and naked, shaven, preserved body. Admittedly, our donor still wore the vestiges of pink nail varnish and still had her false teeth in. but that's not a lot to go on.
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