Memento Mori

For those of you who are interested in knowing a little more about me, here is an old personal journal entry I wrote some time ago. Keep in mind it was a stream of conciousness piece of writing and, as such, may not be perfect. I hope this helps you understand a little about where I am coming from.

Though I’ve always been a writer and an artist, I’ve also been equally connected with the scientific side of my brain – and morbidity preoccupied both. I find science fascinating, along with death and dying. My university education in physical anthropology (most interesting, forensic anthropology) was a unique way to experience the art of science and death in tandem.
Back in high school I had done a Co-Op placement with the Ontario Provincial Police, at the time it was a long term interest of mine to step into forensic work. Then, in University, one of our instructors happened to be their resident forensic anthropologist, so we had the opportunity to study all kinds of blendered bodies. Because there aren’t too many completely skeletonized remains being unearthed in Ontario, the OPP was where most of the work was - the highways - drunk drivers, a lot of burning victims, that sort of thing.
Speaking of fire, I once watched a man in an overturned Lada engulfed in flames, he was trying to crawl out of the window, his lower half completely charred, exposing bone, the part outside of the car still alive and desperately clawing at the pavement trying to drag himself out of the car. His wife was in the passenger side, a blackened husk still buckled into her seat. If she hadn’t worn it, she might have survived but the seatbelt assembly melted and she couldn’t unfasten it and was trapped inside and burned to death.
Shit part was, there was nothing I could do to help this man, the gas tank was about to go. Officers were pulling me away from the wreckage as they made their requisite roadkill jokes – a common way of deflecting the emotional devastation they’re subject to if they don’t.
I looked into the burning man’s eyes as he reached out for me for what seemed like an eternity but I think it was perhaps only 60 seconds or so, fire is relentless and does its job expediently. I watched him die there. I watched his hands (as they always do in fires) curl up into claws. I watched his hair melt away and his lips curl back into a lifeless snarl.
Though I’ve long since forgotten his name, he still haunts my dreams to this day. Not because I am morally haunted by not being able to help him, but because we shared a moment, a profound moment, that very few people will ever experience in their lives. In it’s morbid way, that quiet exchange was one of the most special ones of my life. I looked at him and his horrified, leaking eyes looked right into me. My knees became weak, I could feel the heat of the fire and could smell his body burning as he looked at me in shock and disbelief that his life was about to come to and end, he didn’t even know his lower half was gone. The most touching part of it all was that his last vision before the world faded out was of me. ME.
I can rest knowing that I offered him no mournful, sad or frightened eyes, but calm and soothing pools of comfort. It was all I could give him, and he took it freely.
Most people think that there is dignity and casual beauty in dying, but for the most part, death is utterly undignified, especially when you consider that the people handing your remains are nothing like me. When at work, they have no choice but to be somewhat cold and dejected individuals, that’s a place I could never get to (I never made the roadkill jokes). I had my own way of dealing with death and I’d like to think I handled it with more grace than many of my peers.
My time doing this kind of work has blessed me with a collection of unique memories, though bizarre and disturbing to most, I will cherish forever. But I knew from the first corpse I ever examined, that I could not do it forever. The first case we studied involved a body that was dredged out of the Hamilton sewer system by a fucking Roto Rooter. I wasn’t frightened or revolted by it, but still I knew my time was limited. Not because I was weak, but because I could not stand the fact that we were rarely able to actually help any one. The system is disgustingly reactive. Proactive policing is about as oxymoronic as “honest lawyer”.
Plus, there wasn’t a lot of steady work in Canada. When I say steady work, I mean murder. We have much less violent crime here in Ontario than in the United States, so there isn’t a huge requirement for forensic anthropologists. We basically got the cases that are skeletonized, burned beyond recognition and bodies that are putrefied beyond the purposes of regular pathological identification (even after the entemologists - the bug guys). What that means ostensibly is that forensic anthropologists see and handle the messiest, most brutal, mutilated remains of human beings you could ever imagine. In fact, I’m sure most people couldn’t imagine, it’s nothing like the horror movies.
My job would be to boil the putrefied flesh off of the bones and examine the skeletal remains macroscopically, then microscopically and, return in a report, a variety of determinations. Suffice to say, it’s not easy or pleasant work. Each region has its resident forensic anthropologist, and when she dies (and many of the best ones are, curiously, women) her assistant takes over for her. So, if we wanted a lot of work, we’d have to tailgate death. Meaning that we’d have to relocate to a place that had a significantly higher prevalence of murder.
The city everyone was suggested to move to for “work” was Washington, D.C. It had a higher murder per capita than anywhere else in North America (at least at the time). I mulled it over for a short while (it would also involve me having to get another degree, a PhD over there, then work cases for free, which would be the easiest way for me to transfer to a University in the US. But I decided I would not go. I decided, as fascinated as I was with morbidity and cadavers, that I could no longer in good conscience keep doing that job. All I’d be doing there is continuing to clean up after rapists, murders, arsonists, drunk drivers, serial killers and other violent criminals. That was just something I could not, and would not swallow.
I opted instead to take up a carrer in visual effects. I longed for creativity, and gave it a whirl for five years. I even won a Gemini award for Best Visual Effects for an awful Christamas movie, which I now use as a doorstop. I later gave that up and came to work for Rue Morgue after Rod dropped the whopper on me – he felt I was the person to take over the magazine, despite the fact that I had no formal training in journalism. I think the fact that I don’t have that kind of background is a benefit for Rue Morgue. It’s always been a little unorthodox, and remains that way in many respects. I have the utmost respect for its mandates (honesty, passion, high quality writing and layout, etc). I reinvented myself for the third time and have never regretted it. My time here over the last four years (nearly three as managing editor under Rod’s wing) has been inspiring, as it’s shown me there really are no limits to a person’s potential. That’s been extremely gratifying.
I guess the real reason I’m writing about this now is because I’ve been taking stock of my life this year and I find my thoughts drawn to the dead. I’ve been thinking about THEM a great deal lately. I’ve never forgotten a single corpse. I still think about them more often than I ever admit to. No cadaver, or pile of stinking, rotten, blackened flesh and bone fragments ever came through me without an intense moment of communion. In this line of work, you have the opportunity to touch them all, become intimately aware of their anatomy; every muscle insertion, every oscteoblastic process, every fissure and groove was mine to know. It was my job to know, but it made it very personal - something you are told NEVER to do. But the most interesting things always happen when you break the rules. It’s almost sensual, to be able to possess someone’s internal structure and have protracted private moments with them.
In a way, I loved them all. I spent time with them and was careful and respectful of what they were. I felt for them, I thought about who they were and what their lives were like. I thought about the moments before their murder. What did it feel like when your right handed-assailant stabbed you 14 times in the ribs? I thought about what the pressure in their skulls felt like when they were being strangled; a fractured hyoid bone is a dead give-a-way for strangulation. It’s amazing what you can infer about a person by their bones. Nutrition, disease, age, sex, time and manner of death, race, ancestry. I could even tell you, given the right fragment of pelvic bone, if a woman had children. Not that it comes up often today. In fact, I talk about what I used to do very little since it seems to deeply disturb people in general.
My life was forever changed by the relationships I had with the dead. I think the respect I had for the dead was the reason I oddly excelled at what I was studying. Ever been to or been part of an autopsy? It’s something truly strange. I remember clearly what human lungs feel like when you lift them out of a chest cavity. I remember the weight of the human brain in my palms. I remember the way that, after a certain period of time, the smell of purification actually begins to smell … sweet. I know it sounds odd but it’s the plain and simple truth. Rot is unbearable, up to a point. Then it changes. It’s still revolting, but if you’re acutely perceptive (or painfully aware), you’ll notice it almost smells sweet.

Strange that death should smell sweet at all, but it does, and so do my memories of it.