The mortuary experience
Remember me asking for a blood donor last week? That was for my ailing cousin who finally died early this morning. I was begged to perform the unpleasant task of using my car to convey the corpse to the mortuary.
Now, the mortuary always holds a kind of morbid fascination for me. Though I have a queasy stomach for certain sights, especially dead bodies, I still get this compulsion to look at them. That’s why any time I have the opportunity of visiting the morgue I try to look inside.
Well, the reason for this piece is the need for us to visit the morgue occasionally. The experience sobers us and reminds us once again about the futility of life.
When I peeped into one of the rooms I saw bodies still undergoing embalmment. They looked all sorts of colours but predominantly like decaying flesh. I had to beat a quick retreat but not before a fly which must have perched on the bodies perched on my right arm. I literally fled the scene and washed my hands outside. As I type, I’m still looking for one of those small sachets of hard drink to calm my queasy stomach.
But beyond it, the mortuary has once more reminded me about the fleeting nature of life. The man I drove his body to the morgue used to be a “big” man. He was a top federal civil servant in the eighties and enjoyed himself before he was arrested by prostrate.
He bowed to it after five years of fruitless struggle. Today he’s been laid among the “silent population” in the morgue. His immediate neighbour there may be a person of lower rank or even a mad person. But it doesn’t matter anymore. Death remains a leveller and makes no distinctions. It is a grim reaper which takes no bribe.
We will all someday be laid among that population and we will be deaf to the roars of exctasy by fellow fans when our team wins. We will be deaf to those sweet musical vibes. Our nostrils will cease to inhale the aroma of good food. Nothing will ever move us again.
Since this grim fate awaits us all, why do we still bicker with one another? Why not relax and enjoy ourselves while we can, the much we can?
That dark day creeps up on us with each passing day. Every “happy New Year” we utter hastens us to that ultimate day when our clock stops.
May we all live well in good health and happiness and never fall to any debilitating illness that will make those around us to suffer in vain.
For now, life goes on. Our world is brutal. No matter how we’re loved, it takes only days or months for us to become distant memories once we cross the bridge.
Indeed, it is the happy times we have that we will take to old age when it may be only such that will sustain us until that DAY.
The mortuary experience? We all need it.
