I have been immersing myself more recently into my work and trying to meditate on what it really means to rub elbows with death on the daily. My work is my sacred space- a place of quiet for introspection and the ultimate setting for one of my favorite pastimes.. Contemplating mortality and what is life all for anyway?
I can’t think of a better place to be with this mindset than in the morgue. There is a quiet hum of the refrigerators. There is a sense of calm that exists separately from the rest of the behemoth that is the hospital. With all of the chatter, worry, urgency and noise, I am tucked away in stillness. I work in a windowless room with florescent lights. It doesn’t matter what time of the day, what time of year, the weather, if it is a holiday. This space exists. Death awaits. It is comforting and consistent. Quiet and calm. The motion of life takes a pause for the living when you come visit here. I feel at ease. I feel at home. I would like to share something I have meditated on today.
One thing most of us have in common is carrying out our daily duties using our senses. I am attracted to hands. They can tell a story. Once our story is over our hands come to rest, finally. We take our hands for granted. They are a tool with many purposes. We live, we love, we fight. With hands. Sense of touch and using our hands as a tool is so basic of a human function. We have done it since infancy. We use our brain and send messages to our hands and the sensations are sent back.. Messages back and forth all day. Write, eat.. Whatever it may be. Our hands do so much.
My hands are much like everyone else’s. Except my hands have more of a story to tell, of a place that few will explore and experience. I love the hands of those who have touched and cared for in the way my hands have known as well. There is an unspoken understanding with many who participate in this calling.
The way I carry out my day- pour water out of a kettle, squeeze toothpaste on a toothbrush, dress a child, wipe a tear, braid hair, peel a banana.. It’s all part of simple human experience. Necessity. My hands are also used as a tool for a different purpose. To care for the dead and appreciate the beauty of human anatomy.
Today as I was working, I found myself thinking how far I have come along since the beginning of my journey as an autopsy assistant, four years ago. I thought, “how does it seem so easy”.. Watching my mentor seamlessly go through each task with grace and ease. I watched his hands, and the memory contained within. He said to me, “The majority of this job is about feel. I can do this with my eyes closed”. I can understand the meaning behind his words now. All the while that I was worrying about cataloging visual images in my mind, it is so simple- the task at hand, literally, is about feel. Close your eyes. Anatomical structures and locations are pretty standard among all human beings. I can feel an Adam’s apple, an epiglottis, arteries, tendons. I close my eyes and I can think of how they feel when I run my hands along them. It is an art, a trade. I feel the delicate sulci of a brain under my fingertips. Every thought that individual had, now in stillness. At rest and cradled in my hands.
I appreciate the life lived and loved and now in death, laid before me, and all of the experience and memory that their hands have known. I am thankful for being entrusted to use my hands to carry out my tasks to find answers, to conduct a trade. To do it artfully and with skill. One day my hands will be still as well. For now, I am in the right place.
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