Death Chic

***This is going to be a graphic post.***

***You have been warned.***

***So don’t bitch.***

Last Friday was our class field trip to Tupper Hall, home of the UC Davis donated bodies program. When we arrived we were greeted by the lovely and scary-smart Charlotte (who happens to be acquainted with Travis) who then facilitated a meet and greet of the program’s current “residents”.

Ok, so first off? I will never, ever, be able to eat meat again. Once you see that we are only so much animated steak the thought of sitting down and eating one loses its appeal. It’s not that I found the bodies disgusting or disturbing. It’s just that several of them had been parted-out for distribution to various programs and seeing people reduced to what you find behind the counter in a butcher shop makes eating meat… well, I’m just never eating meat again.

At any rate, Charlotte brought out a whole cadaver that had been dissected by medical students. I have to admit a slight squeamishness while she unzipped the body bag, but happily it went away as soon as we came face to face with the person. After a brief introduction, we were allowed to to examine the heart, lungs, and brain, and by “examine” I mean we were given gloves as these organs were passed around for intimate exploration.

The mess of tendons, muscle and bones is so complex, yet it is wholly contained in a compact network beneath the skin that can walk, talk, think and breathe. It was incredible.

In addition to the whole cadaver, we were also given permission to examine the pro sections of various people that lay on steel tables about the lab. There were torsos, heads, arms, and various other body parts that had been neatly sawed to pieces and packaged for delivery to other departments. It was strange to see a torso, headless and divided into two pieces, with tattoos all over the arms. It was easy to see the body parts as simple teaching tools headed off to dissection labs. The tattoos made it more personal. They were a reminder that this was once somebody’s son, brother, or maybe a husband.

In two other bags were the divided parts of a single head that had been sawed lengthwise. Another bag held an entire head, which sat on the table in a position that caused the skin on the back of it to wrinkle up toward the scalp.

On one table sat an intact head with a portion of the shoulders. It had been sawed off just above the breastbone and lay face up. Or what I assume was face up, since someone had covered the face with a cloth prior to wrapping it in plastic.

This is the part where my readers who have made it this far will throw up a red flag and say: Alright, I give up, you’re a freak!

Have I mentioned that I am scared of death? I’m terrified of it. The whole “not breathing” part just freaks me out. I keep picturing myself being declared dead, and I’m not breathing, and I’m in agony because I’m dead and not breathing and all I really want to do is breathe. But I’m dead, so now I’m sentenced to an eternity of agony because I can’t breathe! And, I am also prone to debilitating anxiety attacks! So you can imagine how this fear of dying and not being able to breathe provides fodder for my mind to turn over and over! My poor husband!

Anyway, so all of us are in this room and there are all these parts of bodies, and an entire body in the middle, skeletons, and on and on, and everything is dead. As in not breathing.

So I’m wandering about and I find myself talking to the bodies. But not out loud, because you know, that would be silly. So I’m talking to them inside my head and I asking them things like Where are you now? Where is what made you “you” now? Does being dead hurt? Are you feeling as peaceful as you look? Did you just wink out or is there a soul that persists after physical death?

Needless to say, none of the bodies answered me. I mean, I may be weird but I’m not crazy.