Member-only story
Life, Death, Oneness
Dead People Don’t Care
Why do we?
In 1980, I was 24 and in grad school. I paid my way as a part-time computer operator for a hospital lab, compiling test results and creating printouts for the patients’ charts. I never saw a doctor read one. I never met a patient. But I knew the numbers mattered to someone.
I thought the job was to get me from point A to point B, pay my rent and keep me in beer money until I graduated and found a real job. Before that first day, I worried more about the future and getting a date than I did about the job.
To get to my workstation in the computer room, I had to pass through the pathology lab, which doubled as the hospital’s morgue. That meant I saw a lot of bodies. All shapes and sizes, all ages. None were covered. Each lay naked on a metal slab, waiting for an autopsy or the funeral home.
In life, none of these folks would have been caught dead in that position. Yet there they were, exposed to anyone walking by. In death they didn’t care.
That’s the thing. In life we worry about how we look, what we have, what other people think, what’s our next thing. In death we don’t give a hoot.
My first week, I tried to look away. I don’t know if it was because I was embarrassed for them or me. By the third week…
