Does This Mean You'll See Me Naked? (5 page)

How do you snag the instant attention of a young class of mortuary students—or anyone else, for that matter? Just mention decapitation. Amazingly enough, it's a far more common cause of death than people think, particularly in cases of industrial or auto accidents.

Back in the 1970s, my classmates and I listened attentively as our embalming instructor detailed the proper procedure for restoring a victim who had suffered the separation of head from body. He outlined for us the fine art of plunging a wooden mop handle, sharpened on both ends, down the spinal column and positioning the head back onto the shoulders by inserting the opposite end into the corresponding column section. The surrounding skin would then be sutured and the sutures waxed over.

In my more than thirty years as a licensed embalmer, I have used this technique only twice. Both victims, one male and one female, were passengers in an automobile that a fully loaded gravel truck had struck head-on. Apparently the leading edge of the car's interior windshield frame had sliced off the heads of both occupants. Also, because of the tremendous force of the truck, the injuries were not cleanly administered. Jagged steel and glass had slammed into soft flesh, nearly obliterating all facial features. The only way to distinguish which head belonged to which body, in fact, was the long hair with feminine barrettes still affixed. I situated the heads back onto the corresponding shoulders, but otherwise there was far too much damage to complete a satisfactory restoration.

FIXING THE BODY

“They sure do good work here” is a comment I have been hearing more and more since I opened my own funeral home in 2001. My wife, who also works with me, did not quite understand its meaning at first. She assumed that people were congratulating us on our dignified, compassionate manner and the care we provided to client families and our visiting public. But actually,
good work
,
when we're talking about funerals,
is the term used in my part of the country to describe how natural dead bodies look while reposing in their respective caskets—and that all starts with embalming.

Injecting a preservative chemical into the right femoral artery or right common carotid artery and opening the accompanying vein allows the blood to drain out of the body, thus allowing the chemical to react with and preserve or harden the surrounding tissues. Today, formaldehyde-based chemicals “fix,” or firm and preserve, human tissue to such a state as to allow for preparation of the body and the funeral to take place.

Without such treatment, the unforgettable odor of decomposition would greet funeral guests. Even biblical scholars made note of putrefaction: “Jesus lay in the tomb for three days; surely He stinketh.” Biblical accounts report that the dead Jesus was anointed with spices, no doubt to abate inevitable odors. And Shakespeare's scene in which Romeo visits Juliet in her family's mausoleum for one last kiss? No way. Since Juliet wasn't really dead yet, she would have smelled just fine. But her grandparents' remains would have knocked poor Romeo right out of his socks.

The Egyptians were the first true embalmers. The Egyptians removed the brain through the nostrils with a pointed tool and then inserted natron-soaked linens. They removed the abdominal organs and treated that area as well. Because those organs had a mystical value, they were stored in decorative jars with carved lids depicting certain animals. The body was then wrapped in linen sheets dipped in spices and natron, a preservative, and—voilà!—a mummy.

This crude embalming process was successful, but there was another quality of the Egyptian process that resulted in the mummies we see today. The arid Egyptian climate lacked humidity, which speeds decomposition. Without humidity, the body simply dries up if left outdoors, whether or not any preservation is attempted.

By the early 1800s, time was of the essence in preparing the deceased. The dead needed to be buried in a hurry to avoid the inevitable ravages of decomposition. And until the 1860s, undertakers could offer only ice to retard the inevitable decomposition process. But early undertakers realized that if surrounding meat with ice, straw, and even salt successfully kept it fresh for a few days, then might such a procedure work with human bodies too? Ice was a precious commodity back in the day, so a premium price was added to the undertaker's bill if a bereaved family desired to have their loved one viewed in the home or in the church. And so the first “cooling boards” were developed, crude wooden tables with a shallow metal pan to allow for ice to be placed under the deceased. Sometimes the deceased was viewed and eulogized while reposing on the cooling board, but on most occasions, the body was placed into a wood coffin after any ceremony and then buried. The cooling board was improved and refined over the years to include padding for the reposing deceased and hinges in the center for easier transport and storage. Cooling boards in the early l900s were transported along with the embalmer's other necessary equipment to the deceased's home.

But then Dr. Thomas Holmes, a physician who had been fascinated with cadavers in college, experimented with fellow medical students to devise a preservative to allow the cadavers to last longer for more instruction time at school. Holmes tinkered with arsenic, mercury, and zinc compounds in solutions as possible preservatives, and arsenic seemed the best candidate.

During the Civil War, President Lincoln was greatly disappointed that many of the war dead from his hometown had to be buried on the battlefield because rapid decomposition precluded their transportation back home. Dr. Holmes offered his experimental arterial embalming procedure to the War Department in 1861. In a field hospital setting, Holmes and his assistants made an incision in any available area of the body. If the deceased had incurred trauma to the head and neck, then they made an incision into the femoral (upper thigh) space, raised the femoral artery and vein, and inserted an arsenic-based solution into the artery via a hand pump. In that way, by distributing the liquid throughout the arterial system, the blood would drain through the venous system. The arsenic solution replaced the blood, which was a major source of odor and decomposition, and “fixed” the tissues to retard or delay the ravages of decomposition.

The preservative qualities of the solution were amazing for the era, but there were serious problems associated with the arsenic. Because of its severe toxicity, the arsenic solution made several of Holmes's assistants ill and even proved fatal to a few battlefield embalmers. With no protective gloves available and a general lack of personal hygiene, arsenic on bare skin was hazardous. Danger notwithstanding, President Lincoln was reported to be summarily impressed with Holmes's efforts and commended him. Holmes was always trying new methods of preservation, including alcohol, but the advent of formaldehyde proved a watershed development.

Formaldehyde was cheap and safer than arsenic-based solutions, but best of all, it proved the best preservative ever conceived, the very one used almost exclusively today. After the Civil War, arterial embalming dwindled because of a lack of interest and the fact that so few were capable of performing the procedure. Dr. Holmes maintained his keen interest in embalming and began to develop, sell, and demonstrate his preservative fluid to undertakers around the country who would entertain the presentation. If Dr. Holmes had trained an undertaker, then the undertaker could refer to himself as an embalmer and could take advantage of the new preservation technique to garner new customers who were anxious for the opportunity to view their dead for a longer period of time and to actually schedule a funeral ceremony instead of hurriedly placing their loved one into the ground. In 1882, the Cincinnati College of Embalming (now the Cincinnati College of Mortuary Science) began operations with a precise emphasis on embalming.

Today the embalming process buys time—enough time to hold a funeral visitation and service three or four days after a death. Embalming, however, is not forever. The procedure merely retards decomposition for a matter of days, or perhaps weeks. In time, the skin begins to leather and eventually assumes a grayish-brown tint, known among funeral directors as formaldehyde gray.

HE LOOKS JUST LIKE HIMSELF

Years ago I worked at a funeral home where comments concerning deceased appearances were universally negative. Rarely were congratulations expressed—much to the ongoing chagrin of my former employer. As the low man on the totem pole and an infrequent, inexperienced embalmer, my input was neither encouraged nor welcomed. But when the chief embalmer resigned, his duties fell to me, and a marked improvement began.

My older brother had always stressed that people come to a funeral home to see a deceased loved one looking natural and well groomed. The smallest details, from buffed fingernails and hand placement to an impeccable knot in a gentleman's necktie, are equally essential. That dedication to a dignified presentation has stuck with me to this day, and I have repeatedly stressed and ranted to my own sons that such devotion to duty is the only thing I will accept.

In time, my former boss, who no longer felt the need to enter the preparation room at all, was duly impressed and delighted with the sudden satisfaction of his clientele. In those archaic times, he would greet the deceased's family upon their arrival and then take full credit for the “good work,” as if he had performed everything in the prepping stage.

My next stop on the employment road found me at a funeral home where the employees felt as I did—that the attractive appearance of the deceased, not the sale of an expensive casket, should be the ultimate goal. Although most funeral home visitors briefly admire the casket in which the decedent is reposing, as well as the spray of flowers adorning it and other bouquets blanketing the entire area, it can be difficult to distinguish one casket from another. The deceased loved one is the star. Rarely have I heard departing guests whisper, “Wow, Stan sure had a beautiful casket.” More likely they say, “Wow, Stan looked like he could get up and talk to you; they sure do good work here.”

That good work unfortunately seems to be missing from today's corporate-owned funeral homes. The company's stock exchange performance and the general manager's bonus expectations are far more important. One result is the purging of experienced embalmers and funeral directors in favor of kids fresh out of mortuary school who lack the proper seasoning but whose salary requirements meet bottom-line qualifications. As an elderly embalmer informed me many years ago, “It takes at least ten years to become a professional.” I share that adage with my sons on a daily basis.

To present a dead human for viewing to his or her grieving family sounds like a strange custom. Why is it necessary that the deceased be present for a funeral to take place? Simple—it satisfies the need to say good-bye to a vessel that once held a beloved soul and that others still carry a strong emotional attachment toward.

In
The American Way of Death
(1963), the author Jessica Mitford heavily criticized the way that Americans care for our dead, particularly in regard to our purchases of ornate and costly caskets. Mitford also railed about the funeral ceremony itself and the display of a dead individual looking as if alive. Her scathing book gained a substantial following, and the ideas she proposed were moving quickly toward universal acceptance—until a sudden, tragic pivotal event occurred. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated mere months after her book's release.

BARBARIC—OR NATURAL?

With the death of President Kennedy, what did America see for the first time on live national television? A funeral of the grandest proportions, complete with a dead human contained in a very expensive solid mahogany casket, provided by a funeral home in Washington, D.C. That wasn't the casket from Texas, however. Upon Kennedy's death on November 22, the Secret Service contacted a Dallas funeral home to come to Parkland Memorial Hospital with the finest casket available. The dutiful director arrived with a solid bronze casket into which Kennedy's unembalmed body was placed. The president was then spirited off to the airport and flown to Andrews Air Force Base for an autopsy by navy doctors.

It was later reported that an actual tug-of-war with President Kennedy's body occurred between Secret Service agents and the Dallas county sheriff. The sheriff correctly noted that a homicide victim should be autopsied in the county of death, but he was overruled, and the body left Dallas. The temporary casket was never paid for, although the Dallas funeral director billed the Kennedy family on numerous occasions. After never receiving payment, he mentioned the problem to a newspaper reporter, and the negative publicity from the story damaged his image so much that his business suffered and eventually closed. The same bronze casket was stored in the basement of the White House for several years until 1967, when Robert F. Kennedy, the president's brother, had it unceremoniously dropped into the Atlantic Ocean.

Secret Service agents accompanied Kennedy's body throughout its travels, from the trip back to Washington, D.C., to the naval hospital's autopsy room, and finally to the funeral home. One agent, unimpressed with the pomp and circumstance of the funeral and believing the embalming process was a crude, barbaric, and unnecessary procedure, wondered why Kennedy wasn't just cremated, since there was so much damage to his head. Later, however, that same agent was reported to have been totally amazed at the work of the embalmers and their restoration process. He had watched as the formaldehyde-based chemical was injected and the color quickly came back to the president's face. The Kennedy family was able to privately view the body in a most presentable state, looking very natural—unlike what Mrs. Kennedy had experienced in Dallas, when she was photographed attempting to retrieve pieces of her husband's skull and brain tissue from the trunk lid of their open limousine.