The preservation of body
(mostly) on embalming
pre·serve
/prəˈzərv/
verb
maintain (something) in its original or existing state.
"all records of the past were zealously preserved"
bod·y
/ˈbädē/
noun
the physical structure of a person or an animal, including the bones, flesh, and organs.
"it's important to keep your body in good condition"
“We preserve so as not to lose.” — Brian Mitchell Murphy, The War to Preserve Everything
~
On the first day of my summer internship at the funeral home, I was told there were two bodies to embalm. I’ve seen dead bodies, I’ve watched people die, but I’ve never been quite this close to a body void of a life I never got to meet.
I watched my preceptor set the features of the face— plastic eye caps under the eyelids to keep the eyes shut with sharp ridges that stick to the inside, a simple four-point suture to sew the mouth shut, shaving the face if needed, and a thorough cleaning of the nostrils. I watched her make an incision just above the collarbone to find the jugular and the carotid artery. She showed me how to pull back the sticky muscle and make a small enough incision to insert an instrument into the vein to pump embalming fluid into, as the blood pumps out of the artery and onto the table and down the drain with the assistance of the hose waterfalling from the top of the table.
It’s not as unlike working with a dead animal as I thought it might be. I wondered if being a human would make it harder to see a dead human than it is to see a dead animal. And to be completely real, as someone who has seen a lot of dead animals, it’s very hard to see a dead animal. I think the answer is sometimes, but not yet.
I know that we have to work hard as a society to stigmatize death, because overwhelmingly the experience of seeing a dead body feels normal. It has also become clear to me that this body really is just a sack of flesh that we get to drive around for a little bit.
My previous spider metaphor last newsletter really could have rounded itself out if I had realized this when that was published, because there is nothing more molt-like than a dead body. So why do we try to preserve it?
The answer quoted at the beginning of this piece is we preserve things that we don’t want to lose. Peaches, tomatoes, data, our loved ones. While the peaches have a pretty decent shelf life, and the data is more dependent on the future of techno-oligarchy and hard drive management, preserving a body is more akin to collecting vacant snail shells.
If we go with this answer, that we don’t want to lose the things we preserve, then preservation could almost be synonymous with control of. I want to control death so fucking bad. I don’t want my boyfriend to be dead, I don’t even want my grandpa to be dead. I don’t want my friends or my kid or my dog or my chickens to ever die, and I know that I can’t control that, and that doesn’t stop me from trying.
For me, an attempt to control death is often extensive research. What I mean by that is that I have dedicated much of my life, and my literal career, to learning everything about death as I possible can because I am so afraid of losing anyone else. I used to think I was preparing for grief by learning everything I could about grief, and then the intimate grief happened and I realized I never could have prepared for that.
But I don’t know that I’m satisfied with the idea that we only preserve the things we don’t want to lose. Embalming is often a method used when a funeral service is delayed due to complicated logistics involved with end of life arrangements. It is necessary when shipping a body to another state or country. More traditionally, it is used when families want one last look at the vessel that housed someone they got to exchange very real energy with.
I’m not saying they want to lose that person, but I do think some people need closure in seeing the lifeless body. We like confirmation. I have always craved the confirmation that life is really gone when someone is dead. You could say I definitely got that when aspirating organs for the first time (I will spare you those details).
There are other things, however, that I preserve specifically to make meaning out of. For example, I write my dreams down when I wake up from them to later comb through and search for themes that might make meaning of the things I keep deep within the psyche. I preserve stories I make up in my head by writing them down, by printing them out, by sharing them with others.
There is no perfect preservation, though. A body eventually decays regardless of the amount of formaldehyde pumped through their arteries or inhaled by the embalmer. The way I feel about my own stories always change over time. I always end up needing more storage in my phone and deleting all the selfies I thought were important enough to preserve. We are a people that love to preserve and continue to fail at preserving.
As far as bodies go though, I think that’s shifting. It’s hard to make a living as an embalmer these days because so few people get embalmed. Most people want to be cremated, and there continues to be an increase in natural burial interest. Families may continue to preserve a version of their loved ones they thought existed, but many of us are learning how to find agency in our own deaths by pre-planning and appointing designated agents to make affirming decisions for us after we die.
It’s another one of those thought experiments without a clear answer which I seem to be drawn to lately, and while a part of me wants to preserve the black and white ideas of preservation and decay… I think I’m just going to focus on preserving the nuance today.