Anticipation killed the cat!

Yeah, I haven't been around lately to update on here.  Depending on what I have going on in my life I get too busy for my "extras".  Sorry to those who got into reading my morbid tales.  Let's see... What new thing can I tell you?  Maybe I can open this up to a discussion.... Anyone out there have any questions for me?  If there is something that has always pondered you about death, comment on this post and I will write a answer back to you.  Everything is open book with the knowledge I have learned while working at the mortuary...

There are no holidays for death...

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!  You must know already a person morbid enough to work in a mortuary must LOVE Halloween!  Haha.  I always had the urge on Halloween to wear a grim reapers costume to work.... but thought that to be tacky while working at the mortuary...  Anyways, after we had the amazing conversation about man's best friends.... Lets kick this up a notch.  Since it is a tradition to celebrate holidays with drinking we will discuss the aftermath of drinking and driving.  One amazing day at work I had the opportunity to go on a coroner call that was a car accident on a freeway on ramp. It was a hot summer day and my partner and I were on our way to what we thought was going to be just another accident that resulted in a death... Oh were we in for a surprise that day.  When we came up on the scene there was a small toyota pickup truck rammed up against the side concrete barrier of the on ramp of the freeway.  Glass, metal, concrete and other debris were strewn about the scene.  We got out of our plain white van and went for a good look of what we were dealing with...  A young man's body was sitting in the driver seat of the pickup.  The cops told us he was at the bar and got in an argument with his girlfriend.  He got into his vehicle and sped off... He ended up here.  While drunk and driving he ran into the side rail.  The merging sign flew off its attachments and came through the windshield of the pickup.  His torso sat behind the wheel, there was blood splattered in the whole interior of the truck cab, his head lay on the seat beside him.  This young man had been decapitated by the sign that flew through the windshield.  It took three sheets and a ruined shirt to get him out of the truck.  I have never seen that amount of blood in one place.  His heart kept pumping the blood out of his neck until there was nothing left to pump.  After a celebration at the bar, he took his last ride.  Do not drink and drive.  What is left after may not be pretty to see.  It's not worth it.  Stay safe this evening and watch out for the ghouls and goblins out.

Since we are talking about pets....

While on the topic of pets we can talk about cats. I love all animals so don't get me wrong, but cats are the devil! I didn't get a chance to go on the call but I had to prepare a body to go to the crematory for cremation. This one just went in our cardboard box and no one was going to view her so we check their ID and then take a picture to save on our hard drive just in case someone thinks we didn't cremate the right person. When I pulled back the sheet to snap the photo I about puked. Have you ever seen the Batman movie, the old one with Tommy Lee Jones as the joker? Well, this woman looked a billion times worse than that. She had died, her cat got hungry and had eaten off her lips! It was like she was permanently smiling to some inside joke. It's one thing to see the horror movie where the zombie has half the flesh on their faces eaten off but this was disgusting. There she laid in front of me showing these large teeth and nothing there to cover then. For as long as I live I will see that image of the young woman lying in her cremation box smiling with no choice.

Dogs are man's best friend....

I have been on many calls where the person died along and had animals.  One of the worst cases I can remember was a call in a trailer house.  The man had been dead for about a week and had two pitbulls. The house smelt horrid.  Not only from the smell of animal feces and dirt but from the decomposing flesh of the man's body.  When I stepped inside there was a sheet covering the body lying in the middle of his living room.  The couch had been torn apart my the dogs, there were things knocked over and what was left of reachable food for the dogs shredded and thrown about.  Animals are animals first and foremost.  No matter how much we love and care for them when the time comes they feel they need to fend for themselves they do whatever is necessary to survive.  As we prepared to move the body I pulled back the white sheet... The dogs had gotten hungry.  The pitbulls had started by just nibbling on his fingers and toes.  Probably in an attempt to wake him so they could be fed.  When that didn't work they did what animals do best.  Scavenged.  The soft tissue of his abdomen had been eaten away.  There were bite marks all down his legs where they had tried to chew of the flesh.  Luckily, he was found soon after that because they hadn't tried anything to his viewing areas yet (the face and neck allowing family to see the deceased).  It's sad that in the end, your man's best friend could become your worst nightmare.

Sometimes the living seem worse than the dead...

I can vividly remember several of the pick-ups I made in my time at the mortuary.  There are lots of gruesome things I have seen and not so pleasant things to smell or touch but some of the worst things I've seen are the families.  There are stereotypes placed on different cultures of people all the time in life, but those stereotype sometimes play out in death as well.  The only time I ever saw someone pass out at all in my life was during a first call to an African American home.  Now quite often people cry and/or throw fits when we leave with their loved one.... I have never seen theatrics top this call.  A man in his early 20s was dead, his mother and large family in the home as well.  Everything was going ok until we came into the home with the gurney.  The mother started yelling, "Oh, god!"  The other family members were making loud unidentifiable moans and wails.  We got back to where the boy was and did our thing and got him back on the gurney to take him out.  The police went out and prepared the family for us coming out.  As we started to round the corner into the living room where everyone was the mother ran up to our gurney and threw her body overtop of her son.  As we held on to the gurney with our death grip (no pun intended) we stopped it from collapsing on its side to the floor.  The father came up and tried to pull the mother back from the cot and as we started moving again she lunged and fell short as her gasping had made her pass out.  We were told by the coroner to continue out the door so we high tailed it and left.  I felt so bad for that mother who lost her son.  It's amazing how some people deal with their grief so very differently.  To this day I still wonder what ever happened after we left.

Dead baby jokes anyone....

I am a sucker for dead baby jokes.  They are off color and make me laugh to no end.  What do you call a dead baby with no arms or legs in a swimming pool?  BOB!  Ok, not to make you think I am heartless or anything.  After so many years working at a mortuary that gives baby funerals for free I have seen a lot.  There is nothing more tragic than the loss of a child who hasn't even had the chance to find out who they were.  One child case I vividly remember was a 20 month old little boy.  Another coroners case I didn't have to pick this one up from his home but instead picked him up at the coroners office.  When we would go to the coroners office to pick up cases they were finished with we backed our vans into a large garage in the back of the building so no one could see.  A office adjoined the garage and two doors on opposite sides of the room.  One door lead into the offices, the second lead to two large refrigerators where they stored their bodies.  The helper in the back room would bring out the cases that were signed off for the mortuary to pick up and we would load them up into our vans and take them back to the prep room.  When the table arrived with little John Doe on it I saw a small white child body bag.  No more than three feet long, these bags were not a good sight.  When we opened the bag to check the toe tag id on the child I saw his pale, lifeless body.   John Doe's skin was charred and blistered.  There was no hair left on his little head.  The smell of BBQ lingered in the air.  Little John Doe had been burned.  Badly.  There is no more shocking sight than a child that was harmed.  What happened to this little boy?  I had to know.  Jessica, the back room tech began telling me the story...  Little John Doe's parents had been having a party.  When distractions mount, an infant falls into a fire pit in the backyard.  The only safe place on his body was under his soaked diaper.  If he had been wearing a full body diaper maybe he would have lived.  His wet diaper saved that small area of his body.  I amount of make-up would cover the damage done to his body.  I took him back to the mortuary and put his little body into the cooler.  After the door of the mortuary closed behind me at the end of that day I let out a big sigh.  There is nothing gain from death.  There is a lesson to be learned though.  Don't turn your back on your child for even a minute.  The smallest action could have the greatest consequence.

I hate cockroaches!!!

So, this one call I went on was a coroners call to a second floor apartment.  We never get any information concerning a coroners call before we arrive at the scene so that means it could be anything from an old cancer patient who's family just called 911 instead of their hospice facility, a suicide, car accident, murder... just about anything.  We arrived at this normal looking apartment complex.  No different than any other middle class apartments in any given city to find cops standing outside the apartment.  Remember the decomp before... cops standing outside isn't a good sign.  Well, as we were imagining the worst decomp possible in the apartment we turn the corner and look into the open door only to see the deceased man laying straight on the floor in front of us in his living room.  Yeah, the apartment was littered with trash, books and papers scattered about but he appeared as if he hadn't been there too long.  The coroner gave us a menacing smile and we knew something was up.  He was going back to the coroners office we were told so we went downstairs and grabbed our equipment to move the body.  Just as we stepped in my foot hit a stack of papers and a swarm of cockroaches scattered from beneath!  The coroner failed to mention that the apartment was infested.  As we moved stacks of books and papers to get to the body the roaches scattered across the floor, up the walls and trying to go up our legs.  There is nothing worse than bugs that move fast and want to crawl up your legs.  We danced to keep our feet moving as we maneuvered the body into the body bag and zipped him up to carry downstairs.  No matter how far away you get from the room, the rest of the day, you feel as if you have bugs crawling across your legs or up your back.  Use bug guard people!