In addition to this, Judaism prohibits any autopsy as the preference is that nothing belonging to the dead should leave the body. But if one is required for legal reasons we have to go ahead and try to facilitate Jewish preferences as much as we can. This is usually fine in the case of organs – as I’ve explained, they often don’t need to be retained. But fluids? This is much more difficult. I have carried out such autopsies with great care, under the watchful eye of rabbis and even family members, trying my absolute best not to spill a drop of blood during the evisceration. If a droplet did land on the deceased or tray I’d use a moist piece of tissue or cotton wool to absorb it and place it immediately into the body cavity. There was no sponging it off and hosing it down the drain. The pathologist also made as little mess as possible, which was such a revelation! They could actually carry out dissections without leaving a bloodbath – who knew?
For those of the Muslim faith, we’d have a compass painted on the floor of the viewing room or a mark on the wall so that we could point the deceased to Mecca, and with some African faiths we allowed huge groups of mourners in at a time. They’d bring rum and pour some on the floor, sometimes all swigging from the bottle and offering it to us. And we had to drink – it was seen as incredibly rude to say no. Those were very good viewings …
We had a drawer full of different religious texts for any next of kin from any faith: Judaism, Bahá’í, Hinduism … and this is why it’s incredibly frustrating when TV shows and films decide to display a ‘viewing’ in that incredibly clichéd and clinical way I’m sure many are familiar with. Picture the following scene. The family or friend of the decedent has been brought in to view them at him ‘morgue’. They are taken into a sterile white or stainless-steel area full of fridge doors and led to one in particular. There, the attendant (whoever they may be representing, sometimes mortuary staff but other times, incorrectly, a pathologist) opens a door and pulls out a tray with a swish. Then they gesture, and say, ‘Is this him? I’ll give you a minute,’ or something along those lines.
This just isn’t how we do viewings in the UK. As I mentioned, the fridge room or body store is off limits to the general public and instead we go to a lot of trouble so that family members may see their dead in more comfortable and familiar surroundings.
Once I was fully trained in Liverpool, I began to take part in an evening on-call system – a fairly nightmarish one-week-in-three during which I had to take a pager everywhere with me, even to the gym, to the bath and the toilet. But it was for a good reason: it was for emergencies such as facilitating parents desperate to see recently deceased sons or daughters, and assisting those of a religious persuasion who may require a burial within twenty-four hours. Despite us offering this service, we learned one morning that the previous night a young man had been brought into the mortuary. Because it was so sudden his mother and father, understandably, wanted to view him. However, instead of making use of the on-call service and pager system, the undertakers who brought him in took it upon themselves to do the viewing.
‘How hard can it be?’ you could almost hear them thinking. ‘We’ve seen how they do it on TV.’
So they took the parents into the fridge room and pulled open a large white door. But because each unit contains several deceased individuals on different shelves the parents were subjected to a view of four pairs of strangers’ feet as well as their son’s. Then he was pulled out with a theatrical flourish (swishhhh), the body bag unzipped (zzzzzzzzip), and they saw their son.
Who had just died suddenly of meningitis.
Who was only nineteen years old.
Those parents should never have had to go through that when we trained individuals could have at least made the experience slightly less traumatic with our relatively comfortable room. Such a thoughtless thing to do, and all because of TV stereotypes.
* * *
Knowing that I hadn’t ‘seen a soul’ that day didn’t stop me thinking of them. I found myself reflecting upon life and death and what it all really meant more and more during my last year as an APT. It wasn’t that I was actually considering being a nun or beginning to believe in the afterlife, it was more a case of finding my own happiness; my true path. I’d worked so hard from childhood to enter the death profession and I’d had a great eight-year career so far, so it was scary to entertain the idea of doing something else – but I considered the Buddhists and their conviction that things must change. Just like everyone’s journey, mine had had highs and lows. There had been obstacles: I’d encountered people who perhaps caused me to lose some enthusiasm for what I was doing; I’d had no time for any creative pursuits, which I realised was important for me; and I was feeling fragile again, just like I had when I first moved to London. I questioned myself a lot. What am I doing? What do I actually want? Do I even want to live in London or should I move home? In all the years I’d been working in mortuaries nothing much had improved, nothing had changed. Denise had moved out of our flat and I was back to living with strangers. I was single again, and still didn’t feel like I had close friends. Every day, even with the variety in cases or pathologists or undertakers, was inevitably the same.
Albert Einstein is widely credited with saying ‘the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results’. Whether he actually said that is debatable, but the sentiment is true. What would change if I didn’t make a change? Perhaps I could sell my soul to the Devil for talents and riches beyond my wildest dreams. Perhaps I could somehow earn enough money to go travelling around South America and South East Asia? Problem was, I didn’t believe in the Devil and I didn’t have the patience to save up thousands of pounds.
So I did something as dramatic as I could think of. Despite always wanting to work in a mortuary, despite my years of voluntary work and the hours I’d put into this career, despite the fact my job seemed to be the thing that defined me, I just knew something had to change.
I quit.
* * *
And I went to live in a convent, because I wanted some peace and quiet. I wanted time away from my pain and the man who had caused it, as well as the people I saw daily who reminded me of that. I wanted time away from other people in general; the solitude actually to think about my next move without the distraction of a million other things: the loudspeaker at the tube station; the Halal butcher over the road who was always determined to chat even when I felt like shit and tried to rush past him; the exes who seemed to find it appropriate, while drunk, to text me in the middle of the night; and even my family, who were concerned I was losing my mind. But I wasn’t losing my mind – I knew exactly what I was doing. For the first time I was completely free to rest and try to still my thoughts. If I’d been rich, perhaps I would have gone to a health spa. Perhaps I could have ‘found myself’ while being massaged to within an inch of my life with luxurious oils, spending hours in a flotation tank and breathing deeply during yoga. But I was not rich and I did not want that kind of interaction. I needed to listen to me and me alone. I spent a few weeks researching and I’d discovered you could stay with nuns for as little as £20 a day. By the end of my first month ‘unemployed’ I was a tenant at a convent.
For anyone who has watched Father Ted or Sister Act, there is an idea that staying in a religious institution is like a comedy sketch. I can’t speak for every institution, but in my experience it was sometimes exactly like that. I had a whale of a time!
I had my own small room with a window, a few pieces of furniture, the electric heater I so adored, and a crucifix on the wall. That was pretty much it.
The nuns observed the Divine Office or Liturgy of the Hours, which is a way of marking the day with constant worship. The first, Nocturns, I’d observed at 5.30 a.m. There was also:
Lauds
7.00 a.m.
Mass
7.30 a.m.
Terce
9.15 a.m.
Sext
12.10 p.m.
None
3
.15 p.m.
Vespers
4.30 p.m.
Compline
8.15 p.m.
Meals too were on a timetable: breakfast 8.15 a.m., lunch 12.30 p.m. and supper 6.15 p.m. But I was free to do whatever I desired. I could attend services if I wanted or not bother at all. I could eat all meals, or avoid them, or I could make myself tea and coffee and eat biscuits as much as I wanted. I spent a lot of time in the amazing library, even discovering a copy of one of my favourite pieces of writing, Dante’s Inferno, from 1903. I found a small ante-room off the library with a fire and two rocking chairs and I wrote in there: ideas for a book, blog posts I might eventually publish, a bucket list of things I wanted to do before I died, and more. There was even an equivalent of Father Ted’s Mrs Doyle there in the form of a young Polish girl called Elizabeth. Every night around nine p.m., after Compline, she’d bring a cup of Horlicks or Ovaltine to my room when she knew I was winding down for sleep. I’d never thought it fit to consume hot malted drinks anywhere previously but in a convent it just seemed so right. The combination of the peace, the hot milky beverages and the complete and utter silence were soothing to what I can only assume was my soul.
I’d spent so many years reconstructing other people it was unusual, but nice, to be reconstructing myself.
* * *
Father Connolly, the resident priest, was usually at the table at mealtimes. He was from Ireland, wore incredibly thick glasses and snorted snuff. His Irish accent was so thick I could barely understand him so I was very surprised to discover he’d been living mostly in Egypt for sixteen years. In fact, he’d been working on an archaeological dig out there which gave us so much to talk about. I’d never expected to find myself in a convent discussing skeletal remains with an Irish priest whose sweater was covered in excess snuff that had floated down from his nose. He talked about how much he’d loved the air hostesses’ uniforms on the way over to Egypt and how he admired someone like Silvio Berlusconi rather than, say, David Cameron because ‘at least he had a personality’. It was hilarious how one minute he’d be making us all laugh with lewd tales then the next he’d be discussing torture and martyrdom with utter seriousness, all with snuff around his nose. He was a total character.
For me, being there and trying out the whole experience meant that I wanted to participate in as many services as I could – I mean, it’s not as though I was swamped with other things to do. It blew my mind that I’d usually been to four religious services by nine thirty – the time when most people were just considering getting out of bed on a Saturday. Mass was mostly a simple affair and the only one I’d actually go into the main church for, rather than sit in my usual place on the balcony. But on a Sunday it was much more of a spectacle with around three or four visiting priests, and a much longer ceremony. Father Connolly seemed like he was plucking his words from thin air, totally unprepared; the Italian Father Gino was young and suave – a bit too good-looking to be a priest; and ancient Father Paddy sat in a chair on the altar, not moving the whole time. He was like a tiny grey-haired turtle, somehow defying normal human life expectancy. It felt like he had no idea where he was.
One morning at breakfast after Mass, while we were discussing the difference between orange jam and actual marmalade, one of the nuns came in from next door to ask how we all were. There were more of us because it was Sunday and the visiting priests had joined us too. When she got to the practically immobile Fr Paddy, she asked, ‘Hello Father Patrick, and how are you?’ There was a beat of silence and then, in a very quiet but thick Irish accent, he simply replied, ‘Still breathing.’
Fr Gino complained of a bad back so the housekeeper Elizabeth handed him a leaflet for a massage parlour as he was finishing his toast. He was sceptical and said, in broken English, ‘But what if … this … it kill me?’ Then he had concerns that, as a priest, he might go into the ‘wrong’ type of massage parlour, to which Fr Connolly, of course, said, ‘If there’s no red light in the window you’ll be fine, Gino.’
* * *
Also staying at the convent was a woman named Regina. Regina means ‘queen’, but she didn’t look like a queen. I mean this in the best way, but she looked and acted the exact opposite of one: humble and kind. She was short and slightly rounded with dark hair and glasses and always wore an outfit that could have been a uniform. I don’t know what she actually did – she was visiting from America as she had always wanted to come to this famous convent and church. I learned from her that there were actually related communities all over the world under the one name and people often visited from one to the next. I wondered if she was a novitiate.
‘So what is it you plan to do while you stay here?’ she asked me one day in the library. She never asked me why I was there – no one did. It was as though they knew it was my own business and didn’t want to pry, just to help.
‘I don’t have a definite plan,’ I replied. ‘I suppose I just want to spend some time thinking, reading, writing. Just get some peace and quiet.’
‘All good things,’ she said. ‘But of course the best thing you can do while you’re here is spend your time in adoration.’
I thought about that long after I’d left the convent. ‘Adoration’ means something specific in the Catholic faith – worship and prayer in front of the exposed Blessed Sacrament – but it resonated with me on other levels. The best thing I can do while I’m here on this Earth, perhaps? To adore things: myself, my family and friends, nature, every moment that I was alive, the smallest things like the smell of fresh coffee in the morning, the sound of rain on the window when I didn’t have to leave my bed, the endorphin rush after going for a run? All of those things we take for granted and can only appreciate properly when we understand how short our time ‘here’ is.
I keep saying I ‘took the time to think’ at the convent, and I really did. I realised I hadn’t been getting the time to process anything that happened during my hectic life, and perhaps it’s the same for many other people. I had always thought it was enough that I would enter a ‘Zen zone’ while stitching the deceased or clearing out plugholes in the mortuary sinks; I thought the quiet time during my runs was enough to fully clear my mind. But it wasn’t. I was just assimilating each day’s events. I wasn’t far away enough away from my situation actually to contemplate it.
I thought back to my first mortuary manager, Andrew. So serious. He did very few autopsies unless they were particularly interesting cases, and at the time, as a trainee taking my cues from my trainer, I resented him. It was only now, years later, I realised it had been an amazing experience for me to be thrown in at the deep end and carry out autopsies every single day. I had learned more and worked harder in my three years at the Municipal Mortuary than some other APTs do in ten.
And the men at the Metropolitan Hospital who I had so disliked working with; perhaps they just weren’t used to having a female in the workplace and didn’t act in a manner I felt was appropriate? And perhaps I was too sensitive after making a dramatic life-change and moving to London with barely a second thought. My GP in Liverpool had told me after my London bombings work that I had post-traumatic stress disorder when I’d simply gone to see him with the flu and a cold sore. ‘Why would I have PTSD after working a job I’d wanted to do since I was a child,’ I’d thought, ‘especially on such an important case?’ But he may have been right: during those two weeks in the capital I’d been sleep-deprived, constantly under media scrutiny and right in the middle of the biggest terror attack we’d ever seen. Perhaps, then, returning to London and working with Danny and Chris again brought it all screaming back to me without me realising?
I thought back to St Martin’s where I’d eventually found myself doing more paperwork than post-mortems and it had irritated me. I couldn’t see it at the time but all that managerial experience, and organising funerals and viewings, meant I hit the ground running when applying for other jobs later on. I’d felt hurt by my female colleagues by what I felt was their lack of support aft
er my miscarriage and subsequent fragility. But perhaps it hadn’t been personal? Perhaps they never knew the full story about what happened.
All these things I looked at from a different angle once I was finally far enough away. And I let them all go.
My observation of Thomas and Tina’s relationship – two mortuary professionals, happily married – inspired me to do something no one else had done before: create a dating site specifically for death professionals. My mum helped me to come up with the title: ‘Dead Meet’. I knew some people in the industry might find it macabre and others hilarious, but I was on my own path now. Inspiration was hitting me from all angles and I knew that everything up until that point had ‘happened for a reason’, as they say. Whatever direction I was being pushed in by fate, I intended to follow it. I then began a blog to ensure that my opinions on the death industry and death theory, as well as the display of human remains, were in the public sphere. I kept up to date with academic research, even found my niche area in the strange connection between anatomical displays and the sexual gaze (i.e. the connections between sex and death) and started a Master’s degree. I began to flourish; not like the moonflower this time and perhaps not quite yet finding the sun, but more like my favourite line from the book I’d spent so much time reading at the convent.In the Inferno, Dante finally escapes the Underworld and the series ends:
The Chick and the Dead Page 23
