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{dead body management} ann tinkham My fiancée is dead. I’m not speaking in hyperbole, either. He’s lying on the floor not breathing, which is, I suppose, what dead people do—stop breathing—which I guess you already knew. But, given that I’ve never seen an actual dead person, the not breathing part is highly disturbing. I’m not yet a trail of tears or a collapsed, crumpled widow. Can you be called a widow if you were never married? I was a bride-to-be. But am a widow-right-now. I’m frozen, the walking dead, which is technically alive, but emotionally not so much. What the hell should I do? Call 9-1-1 and say, “My fiancée’s dead. Or, I have a dead man in my apartment. He just collapsed without warning. What am I supposed to do with him? Do I drag him by his feet, roll him like a log, or yank on his arms to move him the desired location? Which is where, exactly? If you come, will you take him and store him in a deep-freeze him in a slide-in, slide-out compartment with an identifying toe-tag, followed by the embalmer, the fryer, or the slow-torture wormy decayer?” How can I decide which ending is the best for him when he never specified? All he ever did was wax poetic about death and the meaning of life, but never, not once, did he say, “When I’m dead, send me to the zapper. Promise?” You can’t blame him. No one, except morbid Goth types, has a death plan at 31, unless diagnosed with a terminal illness, and even then, they pray for a miracle, which isn’t really a plan but is better than nothing. At 31, death is a far-away, theoretical state that may never occur because someone right now is on the verge of inventing eternal life. It will come in little-blue- pill form that everyone will buy, not so much because they want eternal life, but because they’re afraid of death. The fear-of-death pill will be so popular that the stock market will go haywire when the pill goes public, and there will be a market spike, followed by a plunge when people realize the planet will get ridiculously crowded when most people refuse to die. My fiancée was undecided about life after death, but was formulating a post-mortem existence he could live with, one sandwiched between reincarnation and frolicking with angels on fluffy clouds that don’t give way and feel like down comforters with a heavenly bounce. The celestial beings he envisioned were cute, sexy angels, not nun-like angels, who, in my opinion, are more likely to be the ones monitoring the pearly gates. And not naughty nuns, either. No one ever taught me what to do with a dead body. I saw hundreds of top ten belly and bottom busters, things to eat, to wear, places to visit, stuff to do before you die, to do with your money, to say on a date, to never say during an interview, but never, not once, did I see the top ten things to do with a dead body. There should have been a dead body course in school, because no subject—not algebra, not chemistry, not geometry, not world history, not Latin—was likely to be as useful as Dead Body Management. And, shit, isn’t it a little late to master the subject when you’re standing over a dead body? Should I choose a funeral parlor because, after scouring parlor listings, its name doesn’t sound too morgue-ish, and, in fact, is slightly life-affirming, and say, “I have a client for you?” or do I have to have an appointment first? Am I the client, or is my dead fiancée the client? If it’s me, who’s he? Do I shop around for the most competitive price on body disposal, probably called “resting” or “in repose” by the parlorees as I’m hovering over him? Is the funeral parlor the first or the second-to-last resting place? If second-to-last, what’s first? The hospital? Thing is: hospitals probably don’t admit dead bodies, because docs and nurses aren’t in the dead body biz. All I’ve seen them do on medical dramas is close the deceased’s eyelids, and then, who the hell knows what happens after that? The scene is cut. Before someone comes to take my sweetheart away, is it okay to bake a pepperoni pizza on a stone, whip up a Caesar salad, and drink Merlot in front of the TV while he’s lying in repose upstairs? Do I shower, shave my legs, brush and floss with my dead fiancée unattended to? Is it disrespectful to leave his side, even to go tinkle? Once I call the appropriate party, is it like waiting for the cable guy to show up? What will they use to move him? A stretcher? A box? A temporary casket? Will they be like movers who carelessly hurl him into the back of a truck and break his bones? Would it be better for me to transport him in the backseat or even the trunk of my car? But transporting him in a trunk is so I-just-murdered-this-guy-and-now-I-need-to-dump-the-body. In the meantime, do I try to lift him onto our bed so he can rest in peace, or do I just leave him on the floor and cover his person, like they do in movies before the scene fades? What if, when I try to move him, creepy stuff happens, like twitching eyes, a stiffening penis, or a protruding tongue, which wasn’t at all creepy ten minutes ago? In the movies, you never see anything after the sheet covers the face. They don’t freeze-frame on the dead person and chronicle the rigor mortis, unless it’s a flick for horror freaks. Oh my god. I need to call someone, but whom? I don’t want anyone to take him away—ever. I want someone to prop him up and jump-start him back to life. Maybe I’ll tell no one and keep him here until I’m ready to say goodbye, which will be never. I could always do nothing and maybe I’ll wake up and it will be over, but, more likely, I’ll wake up to a stench that used to be my fiancée. Now that shock has given way to deep sobbing, and I’m becoming a crumpled mass of a wet, soggy human, how am I supposed to do proactive dead body management? I need a consultant who will hold my hand, whisper encouraging words, and walk me through the steps, or, even better, do the steps for me. But I’ve never heard of a death management consultant. Have you? It’s amazing to me that one minute, your beloved is your soul mate forever, and the next minute, you just want someone, anyone to dispose of him. “Please, just take him away.” I loved him until he stopped breathing, and now I just want a body bag—a human-sized Ziploc. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I still love him, but the guy who was here before the dead guy. How could I have become so heartless in an instant? I think it happens to everyone. Why? Because death is a nasty business. Once you’re dead, people are through with you. Harsh, I know, but it’s as simple as that. They might remember you from time to time or even miss you, and, if you’re lucky, ache for you. But mostly life goes on without you. And, sadly, the world keeps spinning, and, even if you hoped it would stop when you exited, it doesn’t. You just become a dead body problem for the people nearest and dearest to you. The ultimate act of love. Disposal. |
