How do you feel about death and dead bodies?

My wife and I have living wills. Anyone with children should

 

I’ve been up close and personal with a few bodies. The first time I ever saw a dead person was when I was 8. My newborn cousin died and the family had an open casket funeral. I don’t recall being freaked out, but I do remember him being very blue and it was weird.

When my brother committed suicide several years ago, he was living with us and killed himself at our apartment. I was home at the time. He took a bunch of pills and went to bed; I found the bottles, and subsequently his body, about 2 hours later. His blood had begun to pool and his skin had turned white. I doubt I’ll ever be able to forget what he looked like. We moved shortly after his death. I couldn’t stand being in the apartment anymore – it wasn’t the fact that a body had been there, it was just the emotional aftermath.

When MIL passed last summer, her service was open casket as well. She looked like someone else – very bloated and bruised and strange. I know everyone grieves differently and open casket is comforting to some, but I really can’t wrap my head around it. I don’t want anyone’s last mental picture of me to be my dead body.

I took anatomy last year and worked with two cadavers. The gentleman cadaver had his facial skin removed so we could study his facial muscles. The face is the essence of who we are and it was so very, very weird to see his like that. The female was worse though, she was turned on her front so we could study the muscles on the backside and we never saw her face. It was disconcerting to say the least.

When I die, I want my body donated to science, even if I’m old and my organs are worthless. Death itself doesn’t scare me, but the idea of intense pain or fear being involved in the process does.

 

See, we covered our cadaver's face for the entirety of our dissection until we had to dissect his jaw last Thursday. When we arrived in lab, our cadavers were prone, so we did not see his face in the first class. It made it a lot easier to concentrate on the task at hand rather than thinking in terms of him being a person with a history and a family and emotions and experiences. Being able to focus entirely on the bits and pieces of his anatomy and cutting him apart one bit at a time is certainly a lot easier when his face is covered up and the essence of the person farther removed from the activity and learning objectives at hand. Thinking about his experiences and wondering what his name was and why he decided to donate his body to science is fine outside of class, but doesn't really make skinning him any easier.

 

I don't understand how you can divorce yourself from the idea that that was a person, empty at this point of what made him so. I hope you, PonyPotato, for your own peace of mind, realize he's now nothing more than a thing.

 

It's actually easier than you'd think, OCM. Every essence of what made the person who they were leaves about an hour after they die. It's not them, they look plasticine. There isn't any movement when before there was never complete stillness. You can tell that the spirit is gone, or the center that filled them when they were alive. Unless you've seen it, it's difficult to explain. Before preservation, it's easier to see the change into a non-personal shell.

 

As a Paramedic, it happens way too often that I come in contact with a dead body. I don't generally find myself emotionally effected by it. I do what I can if anything to save them, but so long as I know I did everything in my power my next stop is usually lunch :/

 

I've had the honor of being w two people when they died (the first one, I was able to revive, temporarily). I feel that death is a significant and fascinating life milestone and I am filled with curioisity regarding its details. As far as bodies go, they do often look artificial and nobody seems to get any relief from viewing them. I still suffer from PTSD when thinking about one bod, in particular, whom, in life, meant the world to me. Horrifying to see in this state. The funeral home was instructed to close it, but for whatever reason, decided to leave it open for our chance to gain "closure" (which is an invented meaningless Oprahism).

As far as my own body - I am an organ donor according to my drivers liscence, but don't really give a rats what happens, beyond my heart ceasing.

 

I can still remember my first funeral as a child. I was okay until near the end ... just trying to process ... not really able to take it all in. My aunt didn't really look like herself (even though most everyone was saying how "good" she looked) she didn't look like the same sweet old lady that would sometimes let me sneak an extra cookie or laugh at my "cut ups". Then the coffin lid was closed and I thought, "the sunshine will never touch her face again". That one thought is what troubled me the most.
Now I know that some things are not what they seem. The mischievous light in her eyes that called us to conspire together was never effected in the first instance by a physical heart, or lungs, or brain. I didn't need any religion or book of holy scripture to get me to this point ... just an insatiable appetite for truth unrestrained by conformity or convention.

 

. . . it sucks so dearly when you loved that damn cadaver.

 

I was told once that the last person in this world who will treat one with kindness and respect is the coronor. Maybe they were wrong Pony Potatoe, because you sound like you looked upon your kindly gentleman in the same sort of manner.

 

When you are finished with him Pony, when his job in teaching you is done - I hope you go down the pub and raise a glass to him. It would seem the proper thing to do.

 

For me .. Like us watching NCIS with the way Ducky talks to the victims. When Kate died. How it affected everyone. We watched 5 seasons in about a weeks time. Got me thinking, seeing how they wrote, the way the actors portrayed how they felt losing a teammate. Then having my friend Amy killed. It honestly had the same affect. Back in Louisiana, my dad and I came up on the scene of a horrible wreck. The driver was ejected and was laying flat on the road. Dad and a nurse started CPR while I ran to a truck on its side. Turned it off, escorted the two 20yr old off to the side of the road. They saw him and was blaming themselves. (even though it wasn't their fault) I told them don't. You can't blame yourself for the actions of others. Or start down a path of "what ifs". We talked and I got through to them. The ejected driver died. I've lost about 6 family members to cancer. Saw a giant of a man reduced to a paper weight from it.

It's not the death that gets me. Its the simply pointlessness of it all that burns in me, I guess. Mostly due to media. You get to thinking that everyone should die a heroic death. Heck, I've even had an uncle pass away on the toilet. Seeing the dead to me, its an empty shell. What was the core of them, is gone.

My grandfathers funeral, I didn't shed a tear. I guess I was still in shock. Looked around at everyone, and thought.. He went home, I miss him. Yet he's in a far better place than me. When my uncle by marriage died, my first reaction.. I laughed.. the type that you roll around on the ground. He wasn't big on my "i like him" list. Kinda pissed off alot of people, yet it's how I felt. meh..

 

feed me to my garden, launch me at a star, or use me as chum. that's about the only way i want to be useful post mortem

 

I have a healthy respect for death, and an understanding that it is a shift from one state to another, from one life to the next. Though I understand they're not actually there anymore, I tend to be vaguely uncomfortable around bodies, as I've only been to viewings/funerals for loved ones who have gone on ahead of me.

I am an organ donor, and intend the 'leftovers'--no disrespect intended--to be cremated. But by way of satisfying a curiosity, can a body be donated to science after organs have been harvested?

 

I've only seen one dead body and it was my father's (age 49 - cancer) about 2-3 hours after his death, before the people came to take him to the morgue. On any other day I might not have had the chance to see him before he was removed but I think everything took a bit longer as it was Christmas Day. I feel rather bad for my mum finding him and then having to kick around in the house for a few hours knowing he was lying there lifeless in that room. When I arrived, my brother seemed to insist that I take a look at him. It hasn't changed my memory of him since I was already pretty used to seeing him looking yellow and skeletal by that point. I don't think seeing his dead body really added to or subtracted from my life, it just is what it is. I definitely didn't need it in any way. My only impression at the time was that it almost seemed like he could roll over any second and say hello. It just looked like he was in a very still sleep, I guess because he was still relatively fresh.

I've never been to an open casket funeral but I can't say I relish the idea of it.

 

I just went to an open casket funeral. I think the practice is barbaric. Think about what is in front of you. It's dead, it's been drained of blood and filled with chemicals and it's mouth is sewn shut. Now go kiss it.
The widow (my MIL) tried to steer me over to 'say goodbye'. I'd already said goodbye at the hospital several days before--when he was still very much alive. I pivoted slightly to my MIL's sister, who sat directly in front of the corpse. She said to me 'At least with his mouth sewn shut there's no chance of him talking again, thank God.' I burst out laughing in a room full of pretend mourners (the man was despised, deservedly so).
I don't like dead anything, unless it's fresh. So corpses are a big 'no' but I'm not afraid of them.
My own death? I'm not sure that I ever feared it but I know exactly when I stopped having any trepidation about it: at the time of my own near death of heart failure. Near-death (not just a brush but a full on--you may not make it) is refreshing. It uncovers the unknown."This is what it feels like to be dying." I know it so there's no fear. Other people dying? I'd have to say only healthy young people dying bother me. If you're an adult you've had a shot at life. When someone dies young so does their potential and that makes me sad.

 

I don't have a problem with death-- I have things I believe that help me, and I have both read and experienced some very persuasive (IMO) anecdotal evidence for reincarnation. I am not afraid of death, although I confess to being a little afraid of dying-- the actual process of it. You know, whether it will hurt, whether I will lose my dignity, etc. But not death itself. And I am an organ donor, with pride, since my tradition has taught me that there is no greater deed than to aid in saving the life of another, or in helping heal them from great harm.

I have been to a number of funerals, and conducted several funeral services as the rabbi-- never an issue for me. Although we Jews do not do open caskets, so I find that makes everything a bit less awkward.

I also once spent an evening as a shomer. This is a traditional Jewish practice: we bury our dead as quickly as possible (next day if we can, almost never more than the day after that), and it is the custom that the entire time a body awaits burial, someone remain with it, reciting psalms or sometimes other words of Torah. It is a way to honor the dead, since though we believe the soul departs the body at death, the body was its vessel, and is the craftwork of God, so deserves respect and honor as such; and so it is deemed fitting that it be watched over, and that only pure words be spoken in its presence as it awaits burial (we only bury, we do not cremate). When one is a shomer, one is generally doing so for several bodies at once; some do an entire night, but often it is taken in shifts. I had a shift of about four hours, in the back room of a funeral parlor, watching over the body of the relative of a friend of mine who had died (complications of old age), along with the other bodies waiting for burial there. They were on one side of the room, behind a curtain, and I was on the other, in a chair facing them. I had no qualms: I just sat, recited psalms, and paid respect.

 

I am a zombie, so I'm kind of used to the whole "dead body" thing.

Actually, the best part is that flatulence isn't my fault. I'm not supposed to hold it in or make it quieter since the natural release of chemicals is beyond my contBRAAAAAINSSSS

 

I saw a motorcyclist killed when he struck a car 21 years ago. An off duty police officer and a nurse stood by us and wouldn't let us touch him other than to monitor his pulse and breathing while they chatted. His limbs were broken in so many places they looked like strings of yarn. I talked to him and looked into his open eyes the entire time, encouraging him to take another breath, relieved when he did. He took his last breath, then bled out suddenly out his mouth and nose. The ambulance was arriving just as he passed on.

I blogged this about 3 years ago. Thanks for reminding me (not). My daughter were on a day long tour of George Fox College. I had no idea what kind of field trip I had agreed to chaperone, or why so many parents had backed out at the last minute. I had forgotten about the permission slip I signed two months prior giving her permission to see a cadaver. At the time of signing, I had been thinking of someone just opening a drawer at a morgue for a minute or two. We were reading questions on her assignment paper. "What does this part of the brain do? What does it look like? What does it feel like?" I said out loud, "What does it FEEL like ?!" And we walked through a door into a lab type room of tables of various body parts. I wasn't fond of the smell, but the human brain with the eyeball still thinly attached made me queasy. After examining and answering questions about the parts, my stomach finally started to settle and I thought "I can do this" My heart hammered when the instructor wheeled in two "beds" and unzipped two skinned cadavers. It took a while to get used to examining them to help answer the assignment questions. The very elderly man had been a professor, but that's all we knew about him. I don't think we had any information about the woman. It was interesting seeing the muscles and such still intact on the cadavers. I would like to say no problem, that I could handle it again. But I just don't know. I think I'd rather see organs via ultrasound.

I am also a registered organ donor. My family, I think would prefer I be buried. I understand that, but I don't care either way. My parents want to be cremated, and I do have issues with their body no longer existing anywhere if that happens. Not logical issues, but issues.