Saturday 16 April 2011

How to see a dead body

Nothing will prepare you for seeing anyone dead. You could have known them your whole life or had a brief encounter many years ago, but there will always be that strange gasp your entire body seems to have upon seeing this corpse. You might draw away from the body (that’s what it is now really isn’t it?) out of fear, maybe even disgust. You don’t want to remember someone you love looking like that. Death is scary. Sometimes you just stare and soak up every detail as best as you can to realise that yes, he is dead. This is the last time you will see her so you must remember her lips, even if they’re not smiling like normal, or the shape of her infamous eyebrows. You must stroke his hair because, even though you kept some, it will never be the same. It will never be attached to him. You will never again tell him his head looks like a chip pan and to go and wash it. Remember the details. Be sad and regretful the moment you realise you’ve instantly ruined your image of them. When you regurgitate a childhood memory for the thousandth time since they’ve died, your mind will immediately pull up a distorted picture of them sprawled on the floor where your mum found them. You hate this. All you can think about is his face when you saw him dead for the first time, in the funeral parlour and then at the funeral itself - but at the same time you don’t remember it at all, just descriptions that you gave immediately after all three experiences. You make it up in your head. A purple face, blood near the eyes, bloated. It didn’t look like him, you tell yourself. It didn’t look like him. It didn’t look like him.

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