Identifying a Dead Body

I was watching Twin Peaks a few minutes ago and felt a twinge of discomfort when I saw the dead body of Laura Palmer. Not because I'm squeamish, but because my eyebrows stayed perfectly still, and I've never had Botox. It may be the fault of the makeup artist (that's what I keep telling myself) because she looked fairly vivacious still, her lips full and eyes merely closed for the time being. She might have been Poe's Ligeia about to awaken.

Then I noticed the reaction of the father as he goes to verify the identity of the body. (By the way, this has to be mostly a Hollywood thing, because who would ever be asked to do such a thing? Especially when the body has become bloated from drowning? And what if the person was the victim of a grisly murder, like that one woman in The Silence of the Lambs who the authorities had recently dragged out of a river? Was that Frederica Bimmel, by the way? It's unclear. Anyway...) When someone pulls back the sheet to reveal Laura's head, he breaks down, predictably. She didn't look bad, though, even if she were dead. Just saying...

How typical is this reaction? I've heard multiple stories about identifying a dead body, and I'm always surprised by the nonchalance of the recollection. I mean, not only has this person just seen a dead body, but the body was a close family member, probably. I could easily imagine the emotional entanglements involved. Of course I could. But what truly shocks me is the ease with which the non-dead person does this abominable task. I mean, people always say that losing a child is a constant pain that never gets any better, so what if you're forced to look at this child's dead body?

I can't believe people readily do this. They may not have to, and insist upon seeing the body, but they nevertheless are quite adamant about seeing that body.

In the interest of full disclosure, I'll say that I myself have never seen a dead body, at least not at its most "unprepared." However, I was fascinated by the wall of fetuses in Chicago's Museum of Science & Industry--before it became a large Discovery Zone--as well as the "Body Slices" exhibit. Mind you--I was like ten, probably younger, when I first saw this exhibit. And I have walked through the Holocaust Museum in DC, which reminds you of how easy the Germans got off for WWII, and deserve to be leveled again. Man, that is some horrifying stuff. I recently spoke with a friend of mine who seemed shocked, genuinely, at my reaction to her mention of Berlin, where she was, and Germany as a whole. I was shocked that she was shocked. The world has forgotten the atrocities of the, uh, German Nazis.

Okay, so back to my original point. I was fine seeing these grim things, but I've still never been in the presence of a newly-dead, unembalmed body. Many people have been to wakes, myself included, and I feel like this is a less severe version of what I mean. People always go to wakes and see the body and decorated skin of someone they knew well, but they rarely have a reaction of revulsion. They're sad, sure, like the father in Twin Peaks, but their reaction rarely connotes nausea.

With grief we, for the most part, have no problem physically expressing ourselves. That's what I've come to think, and this, though understandable, bothers me. The raw reality of a carcass hardly enters our heads. It's like we can't process it. By "we" I mean "not me." (Not in a poetic, Whitman-esque way.)

I think I'd have no problem with identifying a body. This may make me crass and a cold-hearted bastard, but I'm only saying "I think." I very well may be full of shit, ignorant of my own capacity for emotion--like when I say, and believe, that I could easily pass a polygraph, even when I'm holding the heart of whoever I just autopsied for fun, about whom I'm being questioned--but I'm not so sure. I lie constantly anyway, so perhaps my immunity to lie-detectors has become complete. Maybe not, though...

(I don't think this complete stolidity has anything to do with atheism, if that's what you're thinking. Just because I don't believe in God does not mean I don't have human emotions. Some may disagree, but fuck them.)

So I'm not bothered by people's emotional reactions to seeing the dead body of someone they knew, maybe closely, when they were alive. What freaks me out is the ease with which someone who's not a doctor or morgue-worker can see a dead human, a carcass, a lifeless shell of a person and think mostly of the past, and not the tangible, tactile present.

R