Bodies at Rest

After 18 Years Working in Death and Dying, Some Observations of Bodies and Remembrance

“The bodies of the newly dead are not debris nor remnant, nor are they entirely icon or essence. They are, rather, changelings, incubates, hatchlings of a new reality that bear our names and dates, our image and likenesses, as surely in the eyes and ears of our children and grandchildren as did word of our birth in the ears of our parents and their parents. It is wise to treat such new things tenderly, carefully, with honor.”
― Thomas Lynch, The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade

The first dead body I ever saw was my grandfather’s. At four years old, my father held me, legs wrapped around his waist, as we proceeded passed the casket where his father lay. We walked deliberately in a line of family and close friends, starting at my grandfathers feet. We paused at his head, looking down at him.

Closed eyes, blushed cheeks. He looked peaceful, but I knew he was dead. I knew what dead meant. Next to us, I watched one of the figures of my young childhood, my grandparent’s housekeeper, Willy Lee, bending to kiss my grandfather on the forehead.

I admired Willy Lee and I was surprised that she kissed my grandfather’s dead body. “Why did she do that?” I asked my dad later. “He’s dead.”