I’m at work alone when a wrought despair creeps up on me. It’s an unfamiliar feeling –grave- and soon I become fixated on death.
Dead bodies.
I’ve sort of seen one before - my friend Nick from Applebee’s. They didn’t find him until a week later, and at the wake his body was so heavy, and sunken, I was too terrified to really look.
I think about the potential benefits of seeing one:
1. Firstly, I’d like to get a head start on the subject before it gets personal which, obviously, it will because it’s the only guarantee in life.
2. Secondly, I imagine the viewing will shake things up, and give me a swift kick. I expect an increase in gratitude.
I’m now convinced that I need to see one.
The Coroner’s Report
I call the L.A. County Coroner’s office and navigate their phone system until I reach someone with authority. Lieutenant Frank Grover calls me back, and his deep and soothing voice disappoints me by letting me know it's against policy to show a civilian a dead body.
Well, shit.
Lieutenant Grover is sympathetic to my situation and reassures me we’re all curious about death. “It’s the one thing that nobody knows what happens. So what do you want to know?” I inquire how looking at death every day affects him.
"It's shocking,” he tells me. "Even after twenty-seven years. One of the most disturbing parts is that the face retains its emotion at the time of death. Whatever violence or trauma has occurred, you see it on them. They wear it.” He tells me he gets very emotional sometimes and can't sleep. "Especially when it's babies."
He describes the autopsy and exhumation processes to me, and wishes me luck. If I have any more questions I can call him back.
I still want to see a body, but have run out of gas. I don’t have the audacity to crash a wake, and my stomach is hostile towards hospitals. Six thousand, eight hundred and fifteen people die per day according to the CIA fact book. You think every now and then you’d trip over one at the mall?
I Google image-search “dead bodies” out of stubbornness, but the best available was an Iraqi soldier’s shredded foot, and it wasn’t doing much. Death’s offerings are harder to come by than I thought.
In The Family
The next day I call Scott, my second cousin and the most enlightened man I know. We’ve been discoursing about life ever since I received his book Journey to the Impossible in the mail in college.
"Maybe your problem is you think you have a problem." Scott suggests. “Jung would say you’re ‘just in the soup.’ We're all in the soup. Life's a mess."
According to developmental psychologist research, compiled by philosopher and psycho-spiritual theorist Ken Wilber, most of us hit a plateau in our development between the ages of 25 to 55. We are who we are by then, and until we decide to tune into the inner world, there is little that can change that.
I ask Scott what he thinks about this, and he turns the question on me. "What do you think, Tova? Why do you think most people never change?"
I think about how I want to lose ten pounds, and all the excuses I make and how when I wanted to lose ten pounds in eighth grade I danced rigorously to MTV's “The Grind” and ate carrots and turkey.
I respond: "I think most people never change because they're comfortable being who they are. And they don't question their thoughts and attitudes and beliefs because change is hard. Also, maybe there's nothing to change? Perhaps no better version is available? Not that I think people can't improve themselves, but I can appreciate a sloppy canvas sometimes too.”
Scott: "Only a small percentage of people ever really look at themselves - to try to understand who they are. Generally, those that do begin their inward journey in the second half of life (hence the "mid life crisis"). From my observation, those that ask these questions earlier in life do so because they had unusual childhoods and perhaps more then their fair share of suffering. Suffering can propel us forward on our quest of becoming.”
Childhood Trauma
I consider my abnormal childhood, and find it funny my most intense memory was a brush with death.
I was eight and had just got new penny loafers. As usual, my mother was in a rush – this time trying to get to the post office before it closed. I followed poorly behind, and trying to catch up, ran across a parking lot, slipping banana-peel style under the hood of a moving Ford Taurus.
The tires screeched to a halt and all time stopped. I remember being hypnotized by the under-the-car’s metal piping and turning my head to the left, staring at the tire treads five inches from my face. Everything was quiet and peaceful and so, so, so still.
Then - a rude awakening. After being peeled off the ground, I’m greeted back to life with a slap. What the fuck? My mom was clearly upset. She also probably wanted to confirm I was alive since I hadn’t made a sound yet. At least that’s why they do it when you’re born.
Final Questions
Reflecting on this brings me to an emotional place (a sought out effect, won), and I realize death has offered me something: a distraction. This existential hunt has been fun, but I need to get back to work because life is in the doing.
The mysteries of life will probably always remain mysteries. What’s important is that I continue to pay attention, and continue to ask questions, so one day as Poet Rainer Maria Rilke once wrote, I can “gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
**The full quote from Rainer Maria Rilke is: "Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer."
