Dead Bodies

Yesterday D. called to say that C., a mutual friend of ours, had gone to the home of one of his employees to check in on her because she hadn't shown up to work in a few days, answered her phone, or returned his messages. The landlord let him in. She was dead. She was 55 or so.

I have seen many dead bodies. Dead people. I was going to say a lot, but I don't know if I've seen more than the average American or not. Obviously, many in the hospice time period. A few during the working-in-the-hospital years. Those were kids, and a couple of babies, since the hospital where I worked was a children's hospital. And then the dead people you'd expect at the open-casket mourning events.

I have found four dead people in my life. Three in the line of duty, overdoses all, and one not. M. was first. She was addicted to heroin and pills and crystal meth and she had an explosive temper. I used to see her for individual psychotherapy and I always had to sit in a chair by the door with the door a little open. And three times over the course of a year I had to call 911 to have the cops remove her from the office for screaming and making threats and refusing to leave and throwing things. She once threw my stapler out the window and when I went to leave at the end of the day, having forgotten all about it, it was lying there, dead, on the hood of my car.

Anyway she was a high risk for accidental overdose and that's what happened. I got a call from her landlord in August about an odor. I went out, he let me in, and she was in bed, dead, vomit and pills visible in the vomit and the whole bit. She was 22 years old and she really hoped she was going to beat her addiction and have a happy life. She really believed in herself and her future. She used to write these long kind of 8th-grade-rhyme-y poems about that and show them to me. I gotta hang on/cuz I believe in me/and I'm gonna dream on/cuz there's so much for me to be. That kind of thing. I really liked her a lot. I was glad I was the one who found her because her whole family was awful and so was her boyfriend and so were her friends. Predators all. It doesn't matter that I was the one to find her but I'm still glad it was me. All things considered, we had a good relationship.

K. I only knew for a few weeks. Heroin. Another landlord call, no odor, but rent not paid and no answers to knocks and notes pushed under the door. Dead on his side on the kitchen floor, with bunches of old plastic grocery-store bags in each hand, and a used condom on the floor. All the lights on. A digital clock radio in every single room, in the hallway, in the bathroom too, and no furniture except an office chair, stolen from our office, and a futon mattress on the floor, with a sleeping bag, and a bunched-up flannel shirt for a pillow. I still think about the clocks. Why?

N. was a junky's junky. She would ingest anything, smoke anything, inject anything. She was 45 and had been living like that since she was 12 or so. It was a miracle she was still around. It caught up to her. I went to pick her up to take her to a routine physical, her first medical care in 10 years. It was her annual treatment plan goal. Increase self-care skills. The only thing she would agree to work on. N. will attend and complete a routine physical exam with E.'s assistance and accompaniment for support by xx/xx/xx. She lived in the worst rooming house in Lynn, which is saying a lot. Light St. The saddest and most violent pit of despair and human depravity I've seen. We always went there in pairs except for that day. I ran in by myself because the person who was going to go with me called out sick but it was a big day, her appointment day, and I didn't want to lose momentum with her. Her door was open and the TV was on and she was dead in bed. Not long dead either. As I was calling the police on my cell a guy walked in behind me with his pants off and sporting a giant erection. He walked right out when he saw me. That was her life. Door open, sex for drugs, 24/7. I stayed there until the cops came even though I was scared to be in that building. I did not want that guy coming back in and I bet he would have. That place was that bad. It was stupid and emotional of me to do that. I recognize that. But its what I did at that moment. It all turned out OK.

The fourth is the first dead person I ever saw, and that was in Kenya. I was staying with a family in Kibera, the big slum outside of Nairobi. They always had my homestay brother walk me to the matatu, crowded little bus, and pick me up to walk me home. I knew it was a dangerous place though I still can't say dangerous in exactly what way. Murder? Rape? Pickpocketing? Anyway.

One afternoon I got off the matatu and he wasn't there so I walked by myself. I was supposed to wait but I was 20 and American and naive and didn't. I got lost. I found a main-ish road and followed it and there were lots of people walking with me who looked OK so that felt OK to me. And then in front of me there was a naked, dead, Kenyan 40-ish looking guy lying face up in the street. And absolutely no one paused, stopped, or even looked at him. Involuntarily I stopped, and stared, and then I thought, get moving. Because that's what it was like the whole time I was on my own, more or less, in Kenya. Don't stand out, and do what everyone else is doing. So I walked by too. My homestay brother found me not too long after and I told my homestay family about it and they were really, really angry with me. I don't know if they were angry with me because they were scared I did that and that something could have happened to me, or if I somehow put them at risk. I don't know if they reported the body or not. I was too rattled by how angry they were to ask.

That Kenyan guy looked perfect. Clean and healthy-looking and no injuries anywhere I could see, and a pleasant expression on his face, eyes open, just gazing into the distance.