“Some Folks Die Too Young And Some Die Too Old”
-Adam Turla
Last Thanksgiving my mother recalled an incident at the Atlanta International Airport that she had forgotten over the years. After dinner, while my family sipped on their coffee, my mother started in with the facts: she was twenty, waiting with my eldest brother for a plane in the terminal when she saw a suspicious man. My mother took her seat across from me in their carpeted living room as she sipped her coffee and munched on a homemade cookie, “I didn’t know what he was doing. He took out something shiny. I looked away for only a moment, looked back, and then saw blood pouring from his wrists onto the floor.” She then began to elaborate on the empathy she had for the man she did not know, ending the conversation with a Psalm and how God was watching over her. I excused myself from the room for a cigarette and thought, “I am nothing like them.”
****
I don’t take death well, that is I don’t mourn like most people. I think it’s my perpetual need to look at most situations in a logical light. I tend to view life as the sum of its parts, and when it ends it ends. When I do find myself at funerals all I see is selfishness and self-pity in the eyes of the average funeral goer. The average funeral attendee just has thoughts and thoughts of how the dead can no longer be there for them. I sit towards the back of the room in the dark wooden pews while the organs play and remember the time Thomas was black out drunk singing the Beatles. The Thomas I knew didn’t like pews or organs. But he probably didn’t like getting gunned down while in the Peace Corps either. Very few funerals are actually about the dead and their wishes.
****
When I was nineteen I lost my steady construction job and needed work, so, being the resourceful and responsible teenager I was, I took the first job that called me back: Forest Hills Funeral Home. It might be common practice, but this company did everything at their location. I mean everything: embalming, cremating, burying, and even dining. The job was a two part deal: during the day I was to be the Funeral Director’s Assistant, while at night I was their “driver” which entailed body pick up and delivery. Joe, the daytime driver, accompanied my first test-run pick up to “show me the ropes” as he put it. Joe was a retired military man who reeked of aftershave and mothballs; I knew if I stayed on long enough he’d be on my pick-up-list.
My first day of training was disgustingly hot and humid. Joe, myself, and our windowless, unmarked van were in search of 106 in a popular retirement community. The house was the only one on the street with a dark red door. I was always told that a red door is warm and welcoming. I rang the doorbell and waited for the widow to invite us in to take her husband’s corpse.
Joe did all the talking. “I’m so very sorry for your loss, Mrs…”
He was cut off by the widow’s monotone, “He’s in the back room. Thanks for coming so soon; I didn’t want the house to smell.”
The three of use walked through a maze of tile floors and amateur paintings on the walls to the back room holding the corpse.
“Here he is. I hope you don’t need any help.”
“Oh, I’ve got the young buck for the heavy lifting,” Joe joked; out of embarrassment I was the only one to crack a smile.
The body, weighing 100 pounds more than my own frame, was face down on a home-bought hospital bed. Joe then began to explain certain tricks for moving large bodies by rolling them onto bed sheets and hoisting them onto our stretcher. By his listless voice, I couldn’t tell if he was discussing a human body or ordering take-out.
****
While at Forrest Hills, the bodies never bothered me; I spent most of my downtime in the cooler or watching the staff mortician embalm. My issue wasn’t being a driver; it was attending all of the funerals and looking empathetic. All I ever saw was a plethora of sad, self-pitying faces and it bothered me greatly. Beyond the obvious overlooking of character flaws during the eulogy, people feel sad because John Doe can’t rub their back, or provide for them, or please them any longer. Even our language displays our inherit selfishness: “I’m sorry for your loss.” It’s not, “I’m sorry John is dead and can no longer experience the joys of life,” which is what it could be. I'm tempted to say "what it should be," but I know death is deeper than the two emotions I see: selfishness and apathy. Is there a third option? Is there an option for honesty? For simply dealing with death? Some people never recover after their loss, but is that merely their own self-obsession? Merely playing the 'victim' card in depression? Or does something inside of the survivors, as the obituary names them, truly break?
If there is any sadness, I feel it should be for the dead, not ourselves. We might as well say, “I’m sorry John Doe can’t bring you happiness anymore, but life goes on and you’ll find a new John to fill your needs in due time.” I know I sound extremely insensitive to the dead, but I’m not. I’m insensitive to the living. Or at least insensitive to the living who mourn for themselves. Despite the obvious “loss” of losing someone close to us, I feel that most of our mourning is a self wallowing for our own morality. We know that death is inevitable, but I feel that we don’t really know it. This theory of how one should act in response to death is quite linear; in real life it is not as black and white as I see it. Death and loss are multi-multifaceted to a degree that I can’t even begin to grasp through my limited experiences with death.
****
A few months after the funeral home, I started EMT school for the adventure. My first night of rotations a large woman was rushed into the ER with heart failure due to a lifetime of 40s and fried chicken. Being the newest, I was told to perform CPR even though everyone new it was trivial. She died, literally in my hands, despite my and the doc’s attempts at resuscitation. Typically the body will stay in the ER for a few minutes for the family to say good-bye until it’s taken to the morgue, but this specific body’s family was mourning for over an hour in the makeshift curtain room.
“Their wailing and crying is going to suck the hope out of every patient around them,” I mentioned to the nurse I was shadowing.
“Give them a few minutes of drama before Steve kicks them out,” the nurse reassured me, “keep an eye out on the drunk in room #2. He keeps pulling his IV out.”
I walked into the drunk’s room, separated by a curtain from the departed. Before looking up I start off my memorized bedside manners. “How are you feeling, Mr…” I trail off, not saying the wrong name realizing I had the wrong chart. Feeling quite green and sheepish, I finally looked up to see the drunk with a tube in his mouth pumping out his stomach. The bile, a mix of browns and blacks with red highlights, was pouring into a liter plastic bag. He opened his blood shot eyes, lifted his freshly bloody fists, gave me the bird, and proceeded to pull out his IV. As I wrestled with the drunk to keep his IV in place, I over heard Steve, who I assumed was the head nurse, trying to be overly polite to the deceased’s family.
“I’m sorry for your loss, Sir, but we need the room. There is a burn victim on the way and we don’t have any other open rooms.”
The family didn’t respond with words, just a mix of grovels and tearful mumbles. Steve walked out and told the orderly to move the body to the morgue, “they can mourn at the funeral.” I wasn’t at all focused on the drunk. His IV dangled half in his arm, slowly letting blood leak all over the floor, just as Steve entered my curtain room.
“Fucking shit, shadow. Get some towels and wipe this up while I give our charming patient another IV.” I rushed to the supply room but could hear Steve mumble under his breath, “It’s a fucking body; we can’t have them crying over their loss while the guy next to them is bleeding out.”
****
When Anthony, my high school poker mate, was hit by a stolen car, I kept playing poker all year long even though I hated it. When Blu was hit by a drunk driver, I have always made sure my driver was never intoxicated. When Shakey overdosed, I kept my life long vow to stay away from hard drugs. And when Thomas was gunned down in Lesotho, I cracked open a bottle of red wine since it was his favorite. When I die I hope my friends finish a handle of whiskey in my honor and move on.
But even in this, I can see my own hypocrisy.
****
Junior year of high school, Jessica Clinton, the school president and cheer captain, died suddenly from falling on her head combined with an unknown aneurism. Everyone in school knew of her; I knew her casually, not nearly enough to be affected by her death. The next day, the school practically such down. Guidance counselors and therapists were trucked in from other schools to help with the surplus of students who had “emotional difficulty dealing with death” the principal announced over the intercom. I was in McCraw’s physics class when the intercom announced the moment of silence the school would participate. Students al around me started to cry. I knew that none of them personally knew Jessica Clinton. Yet, they still cried. The entire school did. I remember that Amber, or maybe her name was Kelly, came over to me to console me. Amber was the type of girl that over developed in high school and had breasts large enough to smoother a man. She sat next to me and wrapped one arm around my shoulders. She leaned in close, I remember I could feel her large breasts weighing heavy on my arm, and whispered, “It’s OK if you cry.” I felt confused by her offer. Why would I cry? If anything I should be happy that I’m alive; I should enjoy the day since I have it.
****
When offered to mourn my mind tends to revert to my Protestant, childhood stories of King David. God punished David, for his infidelity with Basheba and the murder of her husband, by infecting his first-born child with a deadly illness. While his son was sick, David fasted, mourned, and prayed that God would change His mind. This begging lasted for about a week until his son inevitably died. David’s next decision is something that has always fascinated me. When his son died, David changed clothes, had dinner, and then got drunk. His servants asked him why he was no longer in mourning for his son and David replied, “Why would I? God can’t raise the dead.” It may seem quite harsh, but there is something simplistic and beautiful about his actions. I think it’s the gorgeous logic behind it, his control over his emotions. It’s something not found in most.
Death is complex. It is so much more intricate that I make it out to be, merely because I know I can’t grasp the concept of death. Of being dead. As it has been said before, “I write what I don’t know.” Perhaps logic isn't the end all solution to death, to mourning. The emotional whirlwind people experience after the death of a loved one are too complex to just be wished away by logic. There seems to be no simply solution. Yes, there are groups, steps and plans to overcome grief, but are these really solutions? Being young, I know I’m invincible. I know I’m the exception to the rule of endings. When my friends die, I do remember my mortality, but it is promptly forgotten. The lesson seems to pass ever too quickly. Life is fickle and quick, but I doubt I’ll ever learn that. While we are young and our family and friends pass on, we are immediately reminded of our mortality. Maybe that’s why we cry, why we mourn, why we wallow in depression over people we knew. Or even barely knew.
