Sarah
Sometimes I like to think about what forensic scientists would say about my body if I were dead. Conclusions about my diet and exercise would be a no brainer. “Clearly, she ate too much,” they’d conclude. “A sedentary job, certainly. Look at the lack of callouses on anything but her mousefinger.”
But what about this? I had an orthodontist once say to me, “You’re left handed.” No, I’m not. “Really?” he asked. “Because the teeth on the right side of your mouth are cleaner than those on the left. And that’s usually only true for left-handed people. Right-hand dominant people have cleaner left-side teeth.”
I tried to figure out why this would be true—then I remembered one of my profound and secret weirdnesses: I like to hold my toothbrush with my wrist arching backward. My default toothbrush position is on the right side of my mouth, and I brush back and forward in (what feels like) a graceful, violin-playing sort of motion. I’ve always loved the way that felt. I brush the left side to be thorough; I brush the right side because it feels lovely.
Ha! forensic scientists. My idiosyncratic preferences fooled you!
And what about this? The small patch of red marks under the left corner of my left eye. What about them, anatomical investigators? Birth mark? Confrontation with a ring-wearing fist? Wrong again. Repeated use of an eyelash curler and sloppy laziness. Bet you didn’t see that coming.
I don’t know why I get satisfaction out of fooling these future cadaver inspectors. They’re probably trying to help me. Find my killer. Understand my society. Return me to my rightful resting place. Something.
To that end, I sometimes imagine what it would be like to die in a way that would surprise my forensic death team. Even delight them, in a darkly humorous sort of way. “She must have been coming home from Costco,” they’d tell their dinner party guests. “We found her on the roadway, surrounded by four dozen rolls of toilet paper.”
I always think of this when I’m holding food in the passenger seat. Maybe we’re on the way to a church potluck. Maybe we’re bringing food to a friend’s house. “If we get into a car accident right now,” I say, “I’d be covered in windshield shards and lasagna.” If I’m feeling really gruesome, I wonder if they’ll be able to tell the blood from the marinara sauce.
“Does all this thinking of people looking at your body once you’re dead make you want to make good choices about eating and exercising?” Manfriend asked me last night, as we talked about my post. I laughed. “No,” I said. “Turns out, it makes me want to make more idiosyncratic choices, to mystify them all.” I didn’t know I had it out for the likes of Encyclopedia Brown and his CSI compatriots.
Of course, of course I want to die at the end of my life, as peacefully and sanguinely as possible. But there is this part of me that is still trying to be okay with the idea that I might die of ho hum natural causes and rest undeterred in a coffin until the Resurrection. “Bo-ring,” the morticians will say. “Died of causes incident to old age. She’ll almost certainly R.I.P. Boo.”
Clearly I watch too much TV.
(Undeterred. Get it?)
31 comments
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February 1, 2010 at 7:33 am
CSIowa
At least you’re unlikely to be killed by a twelve-year-old who was taught by his mother that God would protect him. How embarrassing is that to explain to your friends in the spirit world? (I learned this at Standards Night last night. Apparently, talking about how one died will be the preferred activity in the afterlife.)
February 1, 2010 at 8:18 am
sarahlolson
Thanks for commenting, CSIowa (appropriately named). I think one comment in eight hours is an AS record low. I think I’ve silenced everybody.
And wait–are you saying that at standards night they said, “Don’t think that you can be reckless just because you believe God will protect you because then you might die and you’ll have to explain that to your heaven buddies”? Is that what they said? Because, if yes, that’s awesome.
February 1, 2010 at 8:30 am
living in zion
The only things I worry about being discussed at my death is if I had clean underwear and if I died while doing “The Wild Thing”. Must be generational.
My husbands uncle died while mid-wilding and it was THE talk at the funeral. Forget a lifetime a service to mankind, being a good father and grandfather. It was all about dying at the peak of his game.
February 1, 2010 at 11:47 am
JoLyn
I think after I die, the Relief Society is going to come in to clean my house…and then all the talk will be about my junk drawer and how messy my storage room was. I’ll never be able to R.I.P.
I guess it should be motivation to get it done now, what?
February 1, 2010 at 11:49 am
Annalisa
So you know how most universities have cadaver labs? Well, the University of Tennessee here in Knoxville has more of what you might call a cadaver garden. People donate their bodies to forensic science. They place these bodies around this lot and let people training to be forensic scientists study how they decay in various situations. I hear it doesn’t smell so great. Not usually at the top of people’s tourist itineraries, but maybe you could add it to your list for your visiting all 50 states goal, though I would recommend visiting the Smokey Mountains instead . . .
February 1, 2010 at 11:49 am
Elise
The best comment I ever heard in a group discussion regarding how we all would prefer to die was “saving someone else’s life.”
February 1, 2010 at 12:07 pm
angie f
The beginning of 2002 was rough for us. In January, my aunt died suddenly in her sleep and my husband’s best college friend died after a quick and wrenching battle with cancer that we thought he was going to win. In February, one great uncle died suddenly of a heart attack and another great uncle, who was suffering from unbelievable chronic pain, ended his life with a shotgun in his basement.
I never really think about the how people died question. But I often think about what people were thinking when they passed. How startling was it for my aunt to “wake” up to the spirit world? Was my husband’s friend filled with love for his family, but nervousness to begin the next thing–like when you board the plane to the MTC? Were my great uncles surprised–one to be gone at all, and the other to be relieved of the awful pain and be able to think clearly again?
The flip side of that is what JoLyn mentioned–what people will be thinking of us. I knew sisters in law on my mission that had a pact. One was a hair stylist, one a manicurist and one an aesthetician. They had promised each other stellar grooming, so that the last face shown to loved ones before interment would be a polished face. Two friends of my mother have a different pact–that neither will allow the RS to come in and clean the house. I knew a woman in a ward once who always did at least her dishes before going to sleep so that if she died in her sleep the paramedics would not come to a messy kitchen.
I don’t have a pact with anyone and sometimes my sink has dirty dishes when I go to bed. I also don’t have any burn upon my death journals. I wonder what people with think of me and see (that they hadn’t previously imagined) upon my death. But, I guess I’d rather it be the real me after all.
Talk about a thread jack. Sorry.
February 1, 2010 at 12:16 pm
br
I have a thought…this will take extraordinary commitment, and it may, by its very nature, escalate your macabre turn into a macabre lifestyle…but here goes. Why not plan on a somber, boring, peaceful death…with a twist?
Perhaps you could install a device which upon the stopping of your heart could release a deadly and highly rare toxin into your blood stream. I’m talking a WEIRD poison, Sarah. Like, made from the stamen of a flower only found above the treeline on the easterly side of a mountain somewhere in Indo…somewhere.
Or, maybe you could just spend your whole life forming inconsequential relationship with shady characters – ya know, former Stasi, Russian Mobsters, Wallstreet crooks, etc. – so when your list of contacts surfaces, people will be sure you were privy to outrageous secrets. Secrets which would shock the western world…secrets you died to protect.
Or, you could just live a good life and hope to die satisfied. BOOOOring.
February 1, 2010 at 12:28 pm
Louise Plummer
I know a woman who died during a tummy tuck. Mention her name and everyone will say, “She was having a tummy tuck!” So I don’t have an voluntary surgeries.
I’m even more afraid that Tom would die on the day I had a facelift and was all bruised and swollen.
Why did they put off his funeral for a month?
She had a face lift.
Oh my.
February 1, 2010 at 12:47 pm
Marilyn
Sarah–you’ve given me a new aspiration. I’ve always hoped that Rick and I could die on the same day, because I’m pretty sure I’ll hate living without him, whichever side of the veil I’m on. But now I’m imagining that we could die on the same day in a truly spectacular way. I’m thinking that an unexpected meteor crash that hits our car, bull’s eye, while we are taking a pleasant drive in the country– a doddering 85-year-old couple on a joy ride–would be a good way to go out with a bang.
February 1, 2010 at 12:49 pm
annettelyon
Cool! I’m not the only person who thinks like this!
February 1, 2010 at 2:02 pm
angelique
I love macabre Sarah! This is also why I love the Apron Stage: you guys are way better at articulating my weird preoccupations than I am.
My imagined death-investigation scenarios tend to be more Law and Order- than CSI-based – its interesting how we associate an unusual death with an unusual life
February 1, 2010 at 2:35 pm
Sharon
I learned to wink when I was about 10, in the same year I experimented with my dad’s shaver. I don’t remember my reasons for my selection, but I do remember deliberating which eye to learn to wink with and then choosing my left eye. I taught it to wink by walking around for minutes at a time with my hand keeping my eye down and later (when I was more advanced) by squishing the whole left side of my face together for seconds at a time, sometimes in front of a mirror, sometimes not. It was my Decidedly Winking Mode. Finally I got the hang of it and could wink in quasi-normal fashion on demand (slow child).
Shortly thereafter I realized that my left eye was always slightly more closed than my right. Did I do this to myself?? I have always wondered (I’d never noticed it before learning to wink). I’m guessing even the forensic scientists may not be able to explain that one.
I can still wink only with my left eye.
February 1, 2010 at 2:54 pm
Nancy
Thank you for a great laugh today. Awhile back I read a book titled ‘Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers’ by Mary Roach. It was fascinating and funny. I read it because of the title – I do that – and because I like the macabre now and then. I have actually been considering donating my body to a medical school – if I die a boring death, that is.
February 1, 2010 at 3:35 pm
Nel
As a senior in high school, I trained as an EMT. One afternoon, the medical examiner guest lectured for our class. The highlight? Playing “Guess How This Person Died!” The ones I remember most vividly: Run over by an automobile (the tire-tread-buising across the torso was the giveaway), struck by lightning (funny looking marks near the entry and exit points), and cocaine overdose (massive brain hemorrhage).
The most macabre part? Enjoying the game
February 1, 2010 at 3:57 pm
Kathryn
I had a friend who decided she would carry a note around for the rest of her life saying, “I am ready” in hopes that when she died, everyone around her would assume she’d predicted her own death. I think it lasted a week.
February 1, 2010 at 4:21 pm
Shauna
Sarah, this was awesome. I’m sorry that the commenting got off to a slow start. I spent the entire morning watching a CSI marathon on Spike TV — while my toddler watched Dora on the computer (and then took a nap), and my preschooler watched Sleeping Beauty on another TV — while I folded laundry (and then just sat and kept watching when I was done because I feel lousy today). I honestly thought that I was the only person who thought that way — how CSIs would interpret the data at my death-scene. Mostly about how they could misinterpret the data to make my life seem more interesting than it really is.
Something true, that I think is interesting, is that I found a bullet on my driveway the other day. At least that’s what I think it is, and my husband, who used to go deer hunting with his dad, confirmed that it is. It looks, from it’s current shape and the texture of the tip, like it had been shot down onto cement. I have spent hours in the back of my mind pondering how it got there. (I’m a little freaked out by guns) My latest thought is that it stuck in the tread of my Suburban, and fell out at home. But that still means I was drving somewhere where someone was shooting a gun! And although I know it is unrealistic, couldn’t help imagining my favorite CSIs matching the striations on the bullet to one in their database. Crazy, right? But we’ll never know, because yesterday my husband, totally nonplused by the whole thing, threw the evidence away — and I let him.
February 1, 2010 at 4:54 pm
Sierra
When I die, I want every possible organ/tissue/liter of blood donated to someone else. I mean everything. Even my eyeballs. This does freak out my husband so I try not to mention it to him.
Some of you may be thinking, how annoyingly altruistic. Let me assure you, I am not. I am, however, a medical student and I would never, never, ever want to be donated to a medical school. Despite the volumes of knowledge I gained from my cadaver, and my genuine appreciation for her gift, the idea gives me the heebie-jeebies.
See, not really altruistic. Just specifically altruistic with a twist of hypocrisy.
February 1, 2010 at 7:01 pm
Kim
What do you think they’ll make of your (surely) stained green intestines?
February 1, 2010 at 7:36 pm
lisapiorczynski
Um… my brain doesn’t work like this. But I’m glad yours does. This was very entertaining.
February 1, 2010 at 7:55 pm
rvs
This is such a great topic – what can people tell from us (or think they can tell) just by observation? When I go to my internship and wear grown-up clothes, I often feel like an impostor – that if I died, and people saw me, I wouldn’t look like a student (which I am). That my dry hands weren’t from the cold winter but from paperwork all day.
This same thought gets me to clean and organize my room (well, also so I can find things). Thanks Sarah, great post!
February 1, 2010 at 8:06 pm
Liz
I frequently wear thrift store t-shirts, many from community sports teams, and sometimes I think that if my body was found wearing a shirt from a team that I was never on they would make completely untrue assumptions about me based on the shirt. They might try to ID me by contacting the sports team or they might assume I was on the way home from a game etc.
I know its completely ridiculous but, they might never catch my killer and it would be all my fault!
As a kid I always wanted to leave a note that my family would find if I died so they would know which of my belonging I wanted to go to each of my siblings and friends. The fear that someone might find it before my death kept me from ever writing it. There is no “first place they’ll look” after my death that is also the “last place they’ll ever look” before death.
February 1, 2010 at 9:37 pm
nakiru
Is it fair to tell you that while I avoid planning my own death, there is a grated culvert cover-thing in the garage of my apartment building that I avoid stepping on or looking into every day during my daily commute because I’m convinced I’ll see a human hand or something floating in it and have to call in the troops Dr. Temperance Brennan style.
(Go go run on sentence gadget!)
February 1, 2010 at 10:03 pm
sarahlolson
living in zion–no joke, I think your comment is one of our most…something…ever. Also, I loved it.
JoLyn, let the RS talk. And leave them some treats (unopened bags of M&Ms in corners, cryptic riddles in bottom drawers, etc.). That’ll be so cute of you. Cute even from the grave. Your name will go down in RS history.
Annalisa, we can visit it??? Done. I’ve got to visit Tennessee before I turn 30 (as part of my 50 states by 30 goal), and I’d love to see that. I didn’t really know that I had this sort of dark side to me until I wrote this post. Codifying things can certainly crystallize them. Decaying bodies (in a controlled environment)–bring ’em on.
Elise, I definitely prefer that sort of sentiment to the “if I’m going, I’m taking someone with me” sort of mentality. Seems like a better way to enter the next world.
angie f, I’ve not really thought much about what people are thinking right as they die. I’ve not actually had many people I love pass away. Also, I’ve never heard of these death pacts. I love it. I’m going to have to think about what I’d want.
br, I love this idea. LOVE IT. You know any comically shady characters I could befriend?
Louise, those are as good as any reasons I’ve heard for not doing seriously expensive and superficial things. See how Tom keeps you on the straight and narrow?
Marilyn, (1) That was a romantic post. I loved it. And (2) “out with a bang”? Genius.
annettelyon, oh no you’re not. 🙂 I’m glad I’m not either.
angelique, I quoted you to my roommate today: “how we associate an unusual death with an unusual life.” So, so true. So, so weird (in some ways). Both macabre Sarah and regular Sarah thinks that’s super astute.
Sharon, you’ve tipped us off. Should there be an inquiry into your passing, I will tip them off. Unless, of course, you don’t want us to. You could go down in history as The Woman of the Left Eye. That could be cool.
Nancy, Stiff! I read that! And I thought of it when I read angie’s comment about the cadaver garden. That is a great book. Fascinating, in a totally macabre way. As for medical school? It’s a great idea. My med school friends love the cadavers they work on. They feel very tenderly about them. It’s totally lovely, in thought if not in actuality).
Nel, man–I wish I wish I wish I could play that game. But I would do my hardest not to enjoy it. Promise.
Kathryn, that just sounds spooky to me. In a cool sort of way.
Shauna, see? You were watching CSI while I was (sort of) blogging about it. That counts too. And makes me feel justified in bringing a little death to the AS, a place where (usually) we want life to abound. As for the bullet–boo. I guess it had to go, and I am not a fan of guns, but I’m with you–the mystery of that is totally cool.
Sierra, you do sound altruistic. If idiosyncratically so. As the niece/cousin of the eye collectors (two uncles and a cousin were eyeball donation harvesters while they were in med school), I am not creeped out by the giving of your eyeballs. But I have to tell you this–if they are only going to use your corneas, there’s a chance your eyes will end up in someone’s kitchen fridge while they’re waiting to be delivered to the hospital. My aunt says she never looked too closely at the containers her husband brought home from work. Smart woman.
Kim, too many sour apple candies, of course. Or a special fungus. Of course, House would figure it out. He’s clever like that. It would make a great episode.
Lisa, wow. Somehow that surprised. Thank you for sticking around to be entertained, though. The bones were their own kind of “beware.”
rvs and Liz, the clothing factor! Excellent point. I haven’t thought recently about that. Would be kind of awesome to die while coming home from an 80s parties. They’d be totally mystified. “Who is this girl? CLEARLY she’s a partier. And a poorly/weirdly dressed one. Check out the jelly bracelets on her.”
nakiru, I am glad to hear that you refrain from pre-posthumous planning. I am also glad to hear you take precautions. I for one try to always turn on the light in the bathroom before I step inside it for fear I might find something (someone?) gruesome sitting on the toilet, just waiting to look me in the eyes. (Note: I usually imagine person sitting on the toilet lid.) Wow, even writing that creeped me out. Fortunately, I think the world is a fundamentally good place and creepiness is the serious exception and not the rule. Sunshine! Light! Heaven! Hope! Love! Aprons from Anthropologie! Phew. That was a close one.
February 2, 2010 at 1:25 am
Traci
Sarah, I now have something new to fear as I waddle into the bathroom at night. That might be the creepiest image ever. Nothing good happens with someone who awaits you on the toilet.
February 2, 2010 at 1:55 am
Nel
Oh, Sarah, I totally loved the game. It is a rather fond memory for me.
There was a movie, Ghoulies, that came out when I was a kid. The basic premise was little monsters that would come up from the toilet and bite people’s butts. I only ever saw the previews, but am to this day freaked out by the thought. I still check before I sit.
February 2, 2010 at 9:22 am
smylies
Sarah, I read this from a hotel in Guatemala City, hours before we drive to a city called Rabinal where there is a massacre museum and an excavation site. Now, my principal thought will be “The forenses–what do they know?”
Great.
February 2, 2010 at 1:25 pm
Nancy
I am still getting a good laugh from this post and the comments! Thank you!
February 2, 2010 at 7:28 pm
Sara
My 7 year old daughter told my 4 year old daughter that there was a monster who lived in the toilet. Not a very funny joke. Ok, well, it’s really funny now that is over it and she can pee in the dark again . . . after several months of living in mortal fear of the loo.
February 3, 2010 at 1:00 am
Patrick
So I haven’t read all the comments, so maybe someone made this connection already, but I’m going to count on the fact that no one has my strange combination of strong understanding of Latin roots and a weak understanding of English words.
So when I read that you wanted to die “as peacefully and sanguinely as possible,” my first thought was that “sanguine” must mean bloody since that what the meaning of the root is. I was trying to figure out how a peaceful, bloody death would be. Perhaps being crushed by a piano.
Then I remembered that “sanguine” more frequently has to be with being cheerful.
February 3, 2010 at 11:38 pm
sarahlolson
Patrick: Like the sanguine/blood thing wasn’t 100% intentional!?!
It wasn’t intentional.
But I like it anyway. Thanks for being the kind of guy who knows his Latin. A Latiknower.