What Do We Do About The Dead?

We mystery writers deal a lot with dead people. In fact, the name of this blog uses the word "Murder." Even the coziest of who-dun-its manages to drop a corpse among the tea and scones. But what have we done in real life when we chance upon the deceased?

We know enough from crime drama that if we find someone who's obviously expired, to leave the body be and let the authorities handle it. After all, we don't want to disturb a crime scene and compromise evidence. Which made me ponder about the times growing up when I first encountered a dead person.

For most of us, that probably happened at an open-casket memorial service, usually that of an elderly relative. Even with good makeup, the departed didn't look asleep but, well, dead. To the touch, the skin felt cold and waxy. Growing up, I never had the chance to attend a funeral as those we knew had been interred far away.

The first dead person I saw occurred when I was about 10. My nextdoor neighbor Gary and I were walking down Main Street in the middle of the day. As we passed a tire shop, we noticed that the office door was open and a man lay on the floor in a pool of blood. We stared, not sure what to make of the scene. We discussed calling someone. Who? The police? The operator? This was before 9-1-1. We opted not to call anyone since a phone call cost a dime and we had better things to do with our money. Just then police cars, sirens blaring, arrived at the scene. Turns out the man had been murdered by a business partner.

A couple of years later, during a family trip into Mexico, I saw an old woman get hit by a car as she tried to run across a rural highway. She was struck with a loud Wham! and her body went rag-dolling down the pavement. My dad turned our car around and drove to a gas station where he called the police. On the way back along the highway, we passed police cars and an ambulance. The woman's body remained where she had come to rest, at the end of a long smear of blood. We commiserated about her death but at the same time thought about our good fortune in that had the other car not smacked into her, we would've.

 

Image by ChatGPT 

 

Like all of us, I've had my share of tragedy and the heartbreaking loss of loved ones and friends. However, aside from the body I saw in the tire shop years back, I never again dealt with what the police call a DRT--Dead Right There. That was until my stint in the Army Reserves during Operation Desert Storm. I was with an armor unit, just outside an area where a big tank battle had been recently fought.  I volunteered to help with a burial detail, and as we proceeded toward the battle area, the twisted remnants of wrecked tanks loomed from the haze like the bones of metallic dinosaurs. The retreating Iraqis had blown up the oil fields and dense gray smoke obscured the air. The gloomy scene was decidedly spooky, made even creepier by the sight of dead Iraqi soldiers, some in pieces, laying about. Tank-on-tank combat is incredibly violent. Fortunately, the American KIA had already been recovered. Strangely, we saw black and white sheepdogs wandering the area, even though the closest Arab herders were miles away. Drawing close, we realized the dogs were feasting on the corpses. Someone in our party thought that would make for an interesting though macabre photo. But was we approached, the dogs shied away and kept their distance.

Before visiting the battle area I wondered what would be my reaction to the results of such wholesale death? Then when there, aside from the bizarre and ghoulish sight of dogs eating the dead, my reaction was much like that to the expired guy in the tire shop. What had happened had happened, and since I had no idea who the fallen were, all I felt was a muted philosophical remorse about such loss of life. I was just glad to be on the opposite end of the shovel.

Ghosts, shoes, and suicide.

My post this month coincides with the Halloween weekend, the time of the year for ghosts and other scary things. I'll start by talking about shoes, specifically these shoes, which are the pair my father wore when he committed suicide thirty-three years ago.

The shoes have been on my closet shelf, unworn since that fateful day. It may seem macabre to wear his shoes, but they fit and every time I put them on it's an homage to him. I'm familiar with the saying, walk a mile in my shoes--there's even a song with that title--however I don't need to wear his shoes to understand what caused him to break and disintegrate into self-destruction.

These shoes are plain, army-issue low quarters and were the only style of shoes my dad wore. Obviously he wasn't much for fashion. My mom detested these shoes, but he ignored her requests to wear something with more pizazz. What most bothered her was that the only time he'd get them polished was by a shoe-shine boy during twice-monthly trips to Juarez. In between those visits, if the shoes got muddy or dirty, so be it.

Several years after my dad's passing I was at the bedside of my paternal grandfather. Even until late age he remained robust and active. However because of brittle hip and knee joints he couldn't walk. He lay on the bed, emaciated, wearing diapers, his only companions in that dark, lonely house a live-in attendant and a terrier named Chachi. In his prime my grandfather had been a colonel in the Texas State Guard, a judo instructor, and one of the earliest activists for Mexican-American rights. He gazed at me and began mumbling and it took me a moment to realize that he thought I was his son, my dad, long since dead. Carefully, I corrected him, and he regarded me with a pat on my hand and then fell asleep. Seeing my grandfather reduced this way weighed on me. During the drive home, his spirit and the ghosts of my dad and all my other dead relatives swirled around me so very real and terrifying that I had to pull off the highway and compose myself.

This week I decided that I needed a pair of black casual shoes and these were available, so I dusted them off and took them to a shoe shop to be refurbished. When the cobbler inspected them he noted the heels had nylon inserts and so exclaimed, "I haven't seen these in forty years!" I let him keep the heels for his collection of vintage footwear.

Though I wear my old man's shoes, he and I are on different paths. In fact, I've lived past his expiration date by twelve years. Most years, the anniversary of his death goes by unnoticed. Sure, I don't have to wear his shoes to remember him or to remind myself that we have to take care of ourselves, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. I wear these shoes because they are comfortable and that I need a pair of black casual shoes.