It's not every day that you see a dead man.
Unless "every day" is today and "you" are me. Or you are I. Or however one would state that properly.
I saw a dead man today.
It was not a funeral. It was not the Bodies exhibit. It was a guy, lying outside his apartment building, who had put a gun to his head and turned his body into meat.
We were told, afterwards, that he had purchased a gun two weeks beforehand, and that he had a box full of bullets and he had only removed one. And that one was all it took.
I don't know the man. I don't know why he had tattoos where he did or why he was wearing the hat that he was or what he had for lunch before he took his own life. I certainly don't know why he chose to kill himself.
All I know is that it was a unique experience for me. I would imagine that I will see more dead bodies at some point in my life after this (it seems mathematically probable) but I'll never see a dead body for the first time. While I don't know if the second time will be like the first or, in its own way unique, I am sure this will prove to be unique.
The first thing I noticed was the surreal nature of it. I could see the body through a window, and watched the way the police looked into the situation: they checked his pockets, they took pictures, they placed his hands in paper bags--presumably to protect GSR, although I can't be sure.
That I even know a term like "GSR" indicates why, perhaps, it was so surreal.
It was not that it reminded me of my own mortality. It was not that I felt an overwhelming sadness for a man I never met. It was not that a totally normal day had been interrupted by a unique experience.
It was that it felt a bit like television: looking through a transparent rectangular portal to a scene that was totally foreign to me.
Another odd aspect of this was... irrational happiness. I feel a bit bad even admitting this, but the fact that he was dead and I was alive made me almost giddy. Intellectually, I would have much rather been bored and a stranger be alive, but rather than blaming this odd behavior on some sort of perverted sense of right and wrong, I will call it defense mechanism.
Laughter is a defense mechanism and black humor (the Dr. Stranglove kind, not the Kat Williams kind) is an extension of that, I think... dealing with taboo and difficult situations by twisting them until you can't help but laugh. I wasn't laughing due to the corpse within eyeshot, but I wasn't reacting in the sad manner I would have predicted, either.
Further, during and following battles where people are dying, some people feel elation. This seemingly counterintuitive response may be another way of the body rejecting the possibility/probability of its death. Obviously I was in no danger, but maybe subconsciously I felt more vulnerable than normal, and my body was just pleased to still be alive.
Maybe, of course, I am damaged. Maybe, of course, I am twisted. Maybe.
But I'm alive and I'm glad that I get to keep thinking about it. And I'm not looking forward to seeing how I respond to the next dead body I see.
7 comments:
I bet this is the first time in your life wished you were dealing with Kat Williams over Stanley Kubrick before...
I've read about people's reaction to death - as written by Sam Harris, I think. He has an interesting perspective on how we deal with mass deaths (Like in Haiti). I also think of Sept 11. It doesn't affect me. I have an intellectual and almost academic understanding that thousands of people are hurting, and I would rather they didn't, sure. But it doesn't tug at the heart strings. Doesn't really make me FEEL sad. Not in the least. At first I thought I was cold-hearted or twisted myself, as a teenager, first coming to terms with mass casualties in the world around me, floods, famines, wars, etc. Harris explains it from an evolutionary point of view. We just aren't equipped to deal with mass deaths. They aren't a part of our genetic history. The human brain and emotional spectrum just never really had a reason to evolve a response to that. I think he is discussing morals and altrusim - the non-religious kind, from a non-religious perspective. It's an interesting read, End of Faith. Anyway. I'm not doing the text justice, but it is a good one, and in interesting point. Fear, hunger, sex-drive, and sadness at the loss of people we know that's natural, that's been bred into us a part of surviving, on a biological and a social level. But true sadness at the death of someone we don't even know - even when numbering in the thousands... we just aren't really equipped to care. That's one point of view.
Great comment by Dave. I've read the book, but since I've read another book since then, I can't remember it all that well. I feel better knowing that my apathy towards the Haitians isn't some cold-blooded reaction just w/in me, but rather something that was(n't) bred into me to begin with.
There's some thoughts that remind me of Dave's comment at
http://www.edge.org/q2010/q10_7.html#pagel
It relates to the internet, but also the way we're wired synaptically.
That's a very insightful little article. As a very active rock/alpine climber, mountain biker, scuba diver and back country skier, I am the recipient of much undue concern from friends and family. They fear avalanche, sharks, broken necks, etc. because they heard about a guy in Australia or a team in Alaska or "people die doing that every year" - well yes, but there are tens of thousands of people doing any given activity over the whole wide world. They don't get it. And the same is true - probably even more so - for exactly the things he is talking about. Somebody is gonna scam you. Somebody is gonna give you the Swine Flue. Our water has Arsenic in it. The flame retardants in our car seats are giving us cancer. Don't microwave plastic. Don't use plastic at all. Maybe if I could sit them down long enough to read that little piece, maybe they will understand, but somehow I doubt it. Bottom line: People worry too much, and now I am thankful to have one more little well-articulated tidbit to use when arguing against them. Thanks.
Dang.
That is tough shit for anyone to deal with.
It is double tough that he was a suicide.
People killing themselves is always really hard to reconcile or talk about.
You mean "What he did" not "Where he did". ; )
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