Belle Morte

On my first shift, I was called out to collect a body. Then I assisted in the embalming of this very small, very old lady.

I said something about being thrown in the deep end in last post.
Nothing is quite as deep as the embalming of a human body.
I don't think I was expecting it so soon. I don't think I had really thought about it at all.

It has been a few weeks since it happened. Whilst I feel like I should've come home and written it down as it was fresh in my mind, it was such a full-on experience I needed time to decompress.

Embalming is grim, to say the very least.

Whilst the mortician (not a word used here at all, but I'm sure we can all agree it's super gangster and way cooler than just "embalmer", so...my blog, my word choices) treats the body with respect, it is not a gentle, delicate process.

This woman was essentially skin and bones, but she was still heavy and difficult to handle.

From here I'm going to explain the embalming process in as much detail as I can remember, I want to reiterate, this. is. grim. You can't unlearn what I am about to tell you. I obviously don't know everything, so don't take all my word as gospel, this is just what I did and observed.

The embalming starts with washing the body, soap and warm water.
Rigor mortis is relieved by moving and loosening the joints and massaging the limbs.
This is something that I had previously felt confusion and concern about after my second call out where the woman displayed rigor mortis. I wondered how you made it go away and how you could do it without (this is an actual thought I had that I didn't click on to until I was witnessing it being done) 'hurting" the body.

Spoiler alert: you can't hurt a dead body.

Next, the eyes are closed. This is done using eye caps. Eye caps are like large plastic contact lenses... With little spikes on them. Fairly self-explanatory how those work.
Then the jaw is sewn shut. A suture string is threaded through the lower jaw below the gums, up and through the gums of the top front teeth, into the right or left nostril, through the septum, into the other nostril, and back down into the mouth. Then the two ends of the suture string are tied together.

Then the arterial embalming is done. An incision is made in the neck, then an incision is made in the carotid artery and vein. The embalming fluid is pumped in via the artery, the blood is flushed out via the vein. After the embalming fluid has started making its way through the body the skin starts to look...not "natural".. .but very bright and much less dead.

Next is the cavity embalming. This is the super grim part. An incision is made in the belly and a tool called a trocar is used to puncture the organs to allow for gases and fluids to be released. Essentially it's stabbing a big metal stick all through the organs. It makes a very strange crunching noise that I can still hear...

Through some of this process, the bowels were purging. That's probably the most unpleasant part of it all.

Once the organs have been punctured the abdomen is filled with a more potent embalming fluid.

Once all of the body fluids have been purged and the embalming fluids have been pumped, the incisions are closed. A final wash is done. The body is dried, dressed, and placed in the casket.

Unfortunately, I did not get to flex my makeup artistry skills as this lovely lady was not one for cosmetics.

After all was done, I was exhausted.

I'll be honest, I didn't sleep that well that night.
It was a VERY full on experience.
It's definitely something I need to be exposed to more to get used to.

Just writing that out took the wind out of my sails.

I have to say though, I saw the lady again later that day, in her outfit and her cosy casket. She looked lovely. Peaceful. It was nice seeing her that way.

Better work stories

For the last 2 nights, I have spent time with dead bodies.

A few weeks ago I decided I wanted better work stories.
I currently work in an office. I do invoices. I write emails. I reconcile credit cards.
My recent highlight at work was that I did a stocktake and all the stock was correct and I didn't need to make adjustments.

I wanted better work stories.

So to fast forward through a strange few weeks. But I now have a part-time position as a funeral directors assistant.

I don't know how I managed to talk my way into this, or how it happened so quickly. Or even why I chose this industry.
But here we are.

In the last 48ish hours I have been on call after hours.
I have met my first 2 ...corpses? Bodies? I guess I will work out the terminology as I go...

I have to be honest, corpses are very confronting.
I am "lucky" enough that my first encounters have been minimally "offensive" in that there hasn't been trauma or emergency situations.

My first was a middle-aged gentleman who passed away in the bathroom of a local pub.
The second was an elderly lady who passed away at home in her bathroom.
(bathroom theme? Cool)

The gentleman had partially open eyes and I found it confronting to look him in the face, I ensured his face was covered with any moving of him I had to do.

Rigor Mortis had set in on the elderly woman so her hand was sticking up at an awkward angle.  Fortunately for my unseasoned self, her eyes were closed. I still found her face confronting, but slightly less so.

Doing the on-call work is likely to be the least strenuous part in this industry. We have a police contract and are working on behalf of the coroner during those hours, so technically we are not representing or doing the work of the funeral home at those times.

Essentially the entire job is, pick up the deceased, take them to the mortuary, book them, put them into the fridge. There's no preparation or preservation. The body is in the hands of the coroner.

Despite only being on my second run with the elderly lady, my mentor stood back and let me do the majority (if not all) of the job by myself.
What better way to learn to swim than to be thrown into the deep end, I guess.

It wasn't difficult per se, but my penchant for self-doubt is always strong.
Despite my anxieties, I managed to complete the whole process myself under my mentor's supervision.

I had an interesting weekend on call, but I'm going to write about that in its own post.

The final job I had of the week was an elderly Samoan gentleman.
There were many family members present at this mans home. The family were kind and helpful. There were strong grandsons that lifted and moved his body with ease. 
One aspect that I truly had great respect for, was that the family let me know they had washed him and changed him into clean clothes.

I think a lot of people are scared of not just death itself, but the dead. For completely unexplainable reasons. What threat could a dead person have to you? Have you been watching too many horror movies maybe? Logically we all know nothing is going to "happen". They are dead, there is nothing more they can do. Unless they died of infectious disease, there is no medical risk of being near or touching a dead person.

So it was truly beautiful that this family had been involved once their loved one had passed. They cared for him as they had in life. It was a comforting and pleasant experience for my last job of the shift.

One thing I am quickly learning is that my stiletto nails are deeply impractical for this job.
More specifically it is any time I have to grab the sheet the body is in as a makeshift handle.
Come next week we will be saying goodbye to my much-adored claws.

Maybe slightly irrelevant to anyone reading, but I suppose now is a good time to explain the purpose of this blog.

I want to remember my experiences.
I have a deeply shocking memory and I feel that I will be grateful for a record of this journey in later years.
I want to be able to reflect and hopefully, I will be able to come back and see a progression of skills.

This post has been sitting here unposted for about 4 weeks now. So clearly this venture is going great.