Childhood, Inevitable Death and the Happiness Inbetween

A Story by Owen

Time never seemed linear, the scope of human-perception seems to contort it, I see myself in this impoverished teen crossing the sidewalk before me. There’s a signature to his movements, in his moment, it’s parallel to a past I know, it’s as if these signatures tear through the fabric of reality, as if my teenage self was just ripped out of time and space and hurled into the present, into some strange death desensitized being garbed in black clothing in the dead of night. I feel a tinge of existential whiplash but continue to pause for the red light, flick out the end of a cigarette and drive on towards the Franklin Mylan Funeral Home. Accompanied only by 91.5 late night talk radio and the lifeless body of Grace Marie.

I am now pulling up to Franklin Mylan, the country is quiet and there are dark green fields sprawled out in all directions, along the horizon the city lights pop and flash in a language i’ve never understood, the whispers of these fields speak to me more intimately. The body pulls out of the van easily, I’m getting used to maneuvering these cots. As I enter the garage doors I immediately realize this is also a home and somebody’s personal garage. To live so near death, the notion of it peaks my interest but also frightens me because I can see myself in these walls, in the manner things are placed, how the hand towel lay draped upon the crudely hammered in nail, clearly enduring years of use. Yet the orderliness of it all persists, the man is apparent within this room. I unzip the body bag, look again at the deceased’s face, sunken features, eyes open looking up, I can imagine the moment life escaped this person but feel nothing further. I cover the face with the plastic bag and tape her up and place her in the freezer, turn of the inner light and stand for a moment. I get in the van and drive, the air out here breathes thick and heavy and stings with a painful nostalgia, I call my mother, no answer. I call my best friend, we speak about him visiting and shortly I end the phone call abruptly. I’m approaching those lights again, flickering away in the distance. I feel a chasm rip through my stomach and am suddenly overrun with rawest of emotion. My ego and physical self have been dividing for years. Occasionally I feel them shift further apart. How those light Juxtapose this somber field, how my ever ebbing sense of self melts away into it’s surroundings, into itself. I tear up, but try to recognize the beauty, the beauty of nature always persists.

* * *

Grass tinged gold by sunlight sways before me as I run childlike throughout an overgrown field bordered with ancient oaks, I do not see her but I can feel my mother smiling behind me with her wild blonde hair illuminated by the setting sun as she laughs. Her body is relaxed as she walks our puppy bear, the young wolf pup paws forward with it’s nose gleaming and alive with smells. and I, four years old now parade my way through the known world, giggling and stumbling in a expanse of earth I'll never forget. In those days my mother would collect fiddleheads and take them home to bake in the oven. When the house would darken the light of day would be replaced by scents of wild vegetables and seasoned meat. During these hours a haze washed over my senses - the silhouettes of my parents quietly preparing food in the blue-grey of night had a sense of theater to it, something in the calm deliberate movements of their bodies must have dulled all child-like thought, for I intuitively knew in this moment that the collaboration of these two forces with something as simple as cooking a meal seemed to be against the grain and temporary. Wordlessly observant I sat there not many more nights. I had a room with one window, fake wood paneling on all sides, a closet with white doors that folded in from the middle. At night time I would leave my light on in an attempt to fight off sleep on account of my nightmares. The worst part of these dreams was that I often became lucid in them but not enough to have any control. At times I would slumber off and have a dream, if it was a nightmare and I became aware my method was to scream so loud i’d bridge the gap between the dream and real world, soon after my mother would come rushing in to shake me into consciousness.

One night around 11pm my mother came in and told me we were going on a trip, I got into the car. During the walk from the trailer to the vehicle though I noticed this profound all encompassing low roar, I soon realized this was the first real night I had been outside and that this dark orchestra was as frequent as that of the songs that morning birds sang, I like to think this realization gave peace to my dreams from then on, for shorty after the nightmares seized. Nestled in the backseat with my sister I could see that most of our belongings were in there with us, I vaguely knew at the moment that whatever home was, or had been was about to be changed forever.

* * *

Out of the night comes a shriek of the work phone. I answer, "This is Owen" - "Hi Owen, I've got a bad one for you guys. He's about 300 pounds and in a chair. The scene is a bio-hazard-I don't know the specifics but be careful and wear protective gear. The police and family are on site. I've already sent you the address and a number for the ETA". I thank Diane. I can always tell by her pauses whether it'll be a difficult call or not. When it's hospice she'll sound upbeat and to the point but when it's a decomp or an abortion she'll hesitate and stutter. Mat is already on a call out in Salem, which is about an hour from the new call.. I message Mat the specifics and also give the family and police an ETA of 35-40 minutes, I'll be showing up alone on this one. I pull over and put the new coordinates into the GPS and head towards the call. It's 12:06 now, I'm on my second call, there's been three total so far, pretty average. The only other vehicles on these stretches of highways are semi's. I get so tired of seeing them that I now speed past them whenever possible. I'm feeling apprehensive about going in alone, despite the fact that I've done it over 700 times already. I have it down to a science-it should be like riding a bike by now., but it simply is not. Everything about death is relative. The unloved are often the easiest. I deduce since this man, James S. Holmes was an unloved, or at least there's certainly a high chance. Often obese hoarders have no close friends or family. I'd take the physical anguish of moving a 300+ person down stairs over maneuvering my way around around a conversation with a wailing young mother who is holding in her arms a homunculus, yet nonetheless her lifeless child. Fortunately for me, this isn’t a call that requires excess sympathy. Instead what it requires is confidence, one strong looking guy, business cards and a friendly face. Mat and I cover all of these bases.

I arrive on the site of the call, instantly I smell the faint odor of decomposing flesh. I wonder what bystanders or neighbors originally think of it as. A dead animal perhaps?The odor a man gives off is different though, an animal eats as nature intended but man with his bastardization of the subsidies of life results in this sour, enduring rot that permeates and infects all physical objects it’s near. I approach the police officer, ask for a case number and we exchange small talk on the situation at hand. Apparently James has been there for at least two weeks, the friends he had have apparently already left and all that’s left to do now is for my partner and I to get James to the funeral home. I thank the officer and proceed to the porch. Mute colors, bland decor, little attention or time was ever given to the exterior of this home. There is a signature to this degree of neglect that uproots your heart, I can surmise what the inside is going to look like already. A stinging yellow radiates in a low shade throughout the room, the bulb itself so ancient that it carries with it a high pitch similar to that of a mosquito in flight . In each direction lays an endless sea of trash, newspapers dated throughout decades, soda bottles, candy wrappers, gourds, silverware, military canteens, fecal stained underpants and baby shoes. an absurd collection of items all layered up to where my stomach meets my chest completely caked with soot. It burns to breath in a place like this, yet one man lived here, he forced his biological structure to operate here for longer than I have even lived. I kick some space free on the floor so we’ll have enough room to wheel the cot in. I think about what other’s would feel in this situation, maybe a sense of guilt for treating this man’s belongings with such little respect. This thought makes me laugh a bit and i proceed to climb the stairs to where this man smells to be. I notice the handrails condition, seemingly coated in an oil or grease. I assume it’s from years of use from this man clenching onto it intensely with unwashed hands, I take note to not touch this handrail on the way down. I nudge open the door with my foot, this is where the man concentrated his life, the space below a vacant living room in contrast to this. A walkway wide enough for just this man to get through led from the door, to the bed and to the chair where he died. Everywhere else in this room though was littered to the ceiling. The air in this room looked as if propane was spilling from the walls but rather it was the fumes emitting from the body and the filth surrounding it. With nose and mouth covered I approached the man, knocking over hordes of papers and bottles in the process, and there he sat in a what once was a white wicker chair. His flesh infused with the chair at this point, his face typical of a decomp this serious, featureless and sunken - there is a hole reaching towards his brain which has swallowed his nose eyes chin and mouth, all his skin is charred black which is also what naturally happens to a body in this state. Sporadically around his body are translucent pods of skin, within them are families of maggots pulsing like a heartbeat. The maggots are slowly eating away whatever nutrients they can find. Carrion beetles going to and fro the body, burrowing holes into his blackened skin. All of this a natural part of death. Our culture has conditioned the reality of human mortality out of us, it is considered real but is recognized as such a distant and foreign thing most of don't actually consider it inevitable. But here I can see the end, I can see that life does in fact fade and that my body is just as prone to nature's course as any dead animal on the side of the road. I decide to go outside ready the cot and wait for Matt to arrive on scene.

I sneak in a cigarette next to the van. I began to contemplate my ability to rationalize death and walkabout unaffected. But before I can really reflect Mat pulls up in the windstar and walks toward me in an almost affectionate way yet with his shoulders squared. I could tell he wanted a cigarette but I was just finishing mine and we couldn’t hang out in front of this man’s home and smoke. So instead we put on our full hazmat gear, respirators and entered the home. Both of us silent, each of us had seen scenes like this before. This body though was unique, it was in a state neither of us had seen before. A lot of factors went into this man’s current condition, a few being the state in which he had lived, where he had lived (somewhat rural), the season and the most significant factor being that he was a recluse.

Mat went to check the state of his flesh, he gently pulled on his shoulder and in that instant a dark brown handful of flesh spilled off the man and down onto the man’s thigh. Matt then retreated and nodded his head calmly while looking at me. Then jokingly I suggested we tip him over onto a large tarp. We laughed a bit but then soon realized that this was actually the safest and cleanest way of dealing with this man. Each cot is equipped with four industrial body-sized plastics, by law we are to place each body into one of these. For larger bodies though we have blue ones which are located in the van, they are twice as large and stronger. We would be using both of these,the white as a cover shield and the blue to lay him onto.. Once we had the plastics in place we slowly tipped him as close to the ground as we could, his flesh was like glue and had mended itself into the wicker chair which in turn made this process more difficult. Also this was a large man and we were doing all we could we what strength we had. When he was just about 2 feet from the plastic his flesh tore and he dropped. In this quick movement all of his mass dismembered there on the floor. He was a puddle of carrion beetles, organs, maggots and stagnant blood. Acting quickly and while trying not to lose any of him we managed to wrap him in the plastic, then another, then another and finally another. Each layer of plastic was taped thoroughly to insure no spilling of bodily fluids. We strapped him to a backboard, and proceeded to carry him out. With each step I took I could feel his water weight shifting. I thought of the possibility of the plastics bursting and his blood getting all over me, this truly frightened me. While maneuvering Mr. Holmes through his home we accidentally knocked over various piles of his belongings, they dropped on top of the him as if he was their target. There was something morbid about watching all of these cherished items crash about on the corpse of this man. If the family had been present leaving would have been taxing. Professionalism is hard to attain when carrying a body such as this through a home such as this. Finally though without onlookers or too much struggle Mr. Holmes was loaded into Mat’s van and on his way towards towards Steins Funeral home.The time now was 1:45am, by the time i’m done unloading at the funeral home it’ll be almost 3am. I think to myself the chances of getting at least 3 more calls is very high.

* * *

September rains brought with it an early frost, the colors of Autumn had begun to lighten and wither. Abandoning the foothills of the Adirondacks, my 5th Grade class and I made way towards the nearest peak, Owls Head. This would be for most of us, the first notable excursion into nature. To a gaggle of children words like elevation & milage are irrelevant. On account of this, the lot of us were making peace with our gods on that somber morn, despite persistent assurance of distance and milage from the teachers.

As we turned off the pavement and onto a dirt road Owl’s head was ominously posed on the horizon. This then colossus of land stood clenched as thunder clouds tumbled across the peak. The scene darkened as we drew near and in this instant it was as if you could see the face of God reveal itself to this bus of filled with children, within this face the only translation available to us was fear. With heads on a swivel our eyes adorned the peak quietly as the bus embraced the rough contours of the road.

Unloaded now and placed in respective hiking groups, all of us garbed in multi-colored neon rain jackets. Dotted along the scene these small blobs of unnatural colors juxtaposed the somber and nuanced tones of a Northeastern Fall. Our presence alone in this expanse of grey and soft reds seemed intrusive and one could feel then, that each little body perceived the same thing. In that prenaturnal gloom dozens of kids began their ascent of Owl’s head, no lofty feats accomplished, no heavy packs were had, rather simply the initial immersion of young minds into the throws of Wilderness. Predominant of man - this bludgeon of reality crashed down heavily onto my perception and began sculpting the view that my insignificance on this, the grand stage of creation is a privilege which allows one to simply observe life manifest itself in a darkened wood all from the seat of a minor role.

* * *