Relating to A Corpse

 

All are alike in death? Naaahhh, some were buried outside of the ordinary churchyard for being "bad", poor or just not part of what was considered socially acceptable. Many, many people lived hard lives, toiling for very little and they were scorned by society as such for being powerless in a world in which money, family and relationships were the general keys to respect. There they are, eternal witnesses to the abuse they not only saw, but endured in what in the most cases were short lived lives. Were they loved? Yes, maybe by relatives who shared their lives, but in the most cases they were just forgotten.

 

Embalming surgeon at work on dead soldier (WWI)

 

That was not an option that was open to poor people, but a wealthy family may pay to have it done, maybe to have their son brought home from where he died. They felt that he still was who he had been when alive ans this was a way to keep him with them. Very understandable, but what if he had looked like this? 

I take it that this is the beheaded murder victim that is under investigation by FBI or the like. It obviously isn't a fresh corpse, so this dead person has lost some of his normal human looks. Actually, that is part of what baffles me when it comes to corpses and the way living persons relate to them. For the police this is somebody who lost his life in a non-natural manner and they are to find out what happened as that's their job. He is a CORPSE and as such he is dissolving, changing and thus losing his personality. However, to the people who loved him when he was alive he may still be that person although he has changed looks, smells, is dissolving for their very eyes, thus becoming more and more an object of disgust to others. After all, corpses both are - and are NOT - whom they were before death ....

A woman moving to another village takes with her the bones of her dead son. (Balkan Front, June 1916) 

To me this is a touching as well as very, very strange photo. OK, the bones she is carrying are of her dead son, but it takes some imagination to see the face of the living in the skull of a dead man. He sure isn't what he used to be so what makes her recognize him in these dried and fragile bones? Is it some kind of wishful thinking that some day they shall be together, both of them "arisen from the dead"? I shouldn't be surprised if that's how she feels, but still it takes some imagination to see the person she obviously loved in his remains. Actually, I don't think many of us would feel that way: We may love someone who died and worship them by visiting their graves, but I think that's the limit for most of us ....

http://crossbones.org.uk/history/

 

Wikipedia