Bodies Bodies Bodies

I am pulling out old writings. I’m not great at ending them, tying them into a neat bow. Sometimes it is better to put out an imperfect story rather than wait for a perfection that will never come.

Here is one from summer 2025.
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The dead body was not what I was expecting.

It looked like a pile of brown rags fashioned to look like a human. It looked like human-shaped dried leather. It looked like a dog chew with a bit of meat still on it but those bits of meat were in the shape of a human. 

The face and groin were covered with a cloth. When I was warned ahead of time of this, I imagined two polite squares of pure white to preserve dignity. This was not that. The cloths were stained an uneven light brown, wrinkled and bunched. 

I often visited the mummy at the Louisiana Arts and Science Museum as a child. My heart would beat faster as I walked through the hushed darkened corridor to get there. There was a sudden turn and I would see it: the mummy laid out in permanent rest in a spotlight, with dried skin that doesn’t look quite like skin and shrouds stained by the embalming process.

The mummy in which I speak.

The body reminded me of that mummy.

How I got to be here:

My sixteen year old child Turkey Vulture, TV, wishes to be a doctor. I learned that a local chiropractic university offered a tour of their cadaver lab. I signed the two of us up for the experience.  I did not consider any of the practicalities of this ahead of time.  

We had two student guides who introduced themselves in terms of which trimester they were in. Even now, after I witnessed them handling bodies and with aplomb and professionalism, I struggle to think of them as anything except children. 

We began in a small lecture hall. We put on latex gloves. We were told that the smell of formaldehyde may make us feel sick, or hungry. (“It’s weird,” one student shrugged, “but its apparently a common side effect.”) We were offered Vic’s vapor rub for under the nose. We had to leave all of our items and phones in that room. We were warned that taking pictures was a federal offense.

(I only just now realize that is probably not true. I wonder if this is a fiction that is passed around by students or if they were told this by a professor. Perhaps the students were conflating it with the laws around tourists picking up bones in the catacombs. Also, consider: Alive bodies do not have federal laws around being photographed without consent. It is legal to photograph another person if they are in public. You can stand behind a woman and take a photo of her ass. You can stand at a playground and photograph children.)

We left our belongings into the lecture hall and walked through an adjoining door. In the very normal college lab with bright lights and bright windows, there were 15 or so dead bodies.

They each lay on their own individual metal table. They were covered with vaguely translucent white plastic sheets, thick enough to obscure details but thin enough to see the blur of the bodies. Three or four of the bodies were uncovered and had students bent over them, working on cutting into various sections of naked flesh. I had barely a moment to take all of this in as we were walked over to a body in the corner. The body. 

One of the tour guides went to the far side of the body while TV and I stood on the other side. The first thing she did was flip open the window of skin on top of the body. “Here, you can touch the skin, it doesn’t feel like you imagine!” she exclaimed, holding open the flap in an offering to us. TV reached out and touched the skin.  

The guide began to pull out organ after organ.  She listed the different parts and pieces of each organ in rapid succession, offering us both the Latin names as well as the opportunity to hold whatever piece of body she held at the moment.  

It was sudden. It was shocking. The smell of formaldehyde made me uncomfortable. It felt surreal to watch this child who likely can’t legally drink handle bodies quickly and adeptly, without fear or hesitation. 

I turned away as TV was handed a lobe of lung. I asked questions of the other tour guide, a peppy boy who was always ready with a smile and quick answer. 

The bodies, it turns out, are not bodies. They are always, always, always called donors. “One of the professors refers to them as silent teachers,” the tour guide offered.

All of the bodies were donated directly to the chiropractic college. I don’t quite fathom this level of allegiance to an institution of higher learning. I have not yet been inspired to send even a small donation to either of my alma maters, much less gift them my dead body.

The students are told nothing about the body itself. Not the name, none of the history of body. It is up to them to “play detective”, a phrase that the tour guide used several times. I imagine these children in Sherlock deersucker hats and a scalpel in hand, peering over the bodies with a magnifying glass. They work their way from top to bottom, cutting and exploring and learning.

Students are not told the cause of death and must guess from the clues. They find tumors, pacemakers, knee replacements. “Actually, we find a surprising amount of breast implants in women of a certain age,” the guide said with a wry smile.

Ah, I thought. Are the wives of elderly chiropractors statistically more likely to have fake boobs? After that thought I immediately felt guilty. It was sexist to assume that these were the wives rather than the chiropractors themselves. Also, I was pretty sure that the term “fake boobs” was derogatory short hand for the more accurate description of “someone who made a medical decision for themselves and their body and I should fuck off with my instant judgement”. I wondered if it threw off the tour guide to have to think of women “of a certain age” as someone who was sexual.  It probably just felt comical to the young.

Wait. That the phrase “of a certain age”--perhaps didn’t mean what I thought it meant. I assumed that these women, the bodies with the higher than average statistical probability for having breast implants, were in their late 60s or 70s. Google has informed me that “of a certain age” can be anywhere from 40s to 60s. I am 42. I am of a certain age to the child giving me a tour of the dead bodies. 

I turned back to the table as the anatomy lesson wound down.  I watched the student guide expertly fit each organ back into the body, like a macabre jigsaw puzzle. 

TV spotted it at the same time I did. The body had a beautiful acrylic French manicure. It was completely out of place on the stringy hands that looked like dog bones. Super common, the tour guide said. Sometimes the nails pop off unexpectedly and scare you.

Ah shit. I thought.  This is not “the body”. This is a woman.

She is not a pile of rags or leather in the shape of a body. She is definitely not a pile of dog bones.

She was a human who had beautiful French acrylic nails.

She was a human who decided to leave her body for the education of others.  I wonder if she ever pictured it: a group of students huddled over her body, peering inside of her as if she contained all of life’s answers.  Strangers caressing her insides. It felt to me like a violation, some sort of indecency. 

But perhaps it feels more like an homage to her, to her body.  This was a gift she gave after she was gone.  She is not buried and forgotten.  Even in death, she is seen and known from top to bottom.  The students that spend the semester with her, dissecting her, will never forget her.  My child TV will not forget her.  I will not forget her.         

In that moment I made the decision to touch her. As the guide was carefully fitting her organs back into her, I tentatively stroked the skin on her stomach. I briefly held her kidney in the palm of my hand.