I think about this often enough that I think a psychologist would set me to working through it, whatever that means. The topic probably needs ‘closure.’ So, here goes.
I was in grade school when President Kennedy was assassinated. Although, I was a little kid and didn’t actually know the President, I consider him my first dead person.
Everyone around me seemed affected by this death and the coverage on our snowy black and white television went on for a long time.
I was certain, the President was naked inside the flag draped coffin. This certainty was born of the fact that there were no pictures of him actually being dead and he was covered. I did not express this conviction because naked was not a topic to bring up in any kind of conversation.
When I was in junior high school, my foster parents were terribly upset when Bobby Kennedy was assassinated and besides Marten Luther King, whom I also hadn’t met, this was a big deal. I do not recall, even to this day, many deaths in the family, foster or otherwise. This death seemed to be covered not on the color television with orange people but on the radio.
The recent crossing of Ted Kennedy places book-ends at my dead people experiences. I suppose I am blessed by my lack of personal experience with mortality. I have certainly written a lot of characters into the grave.
I no longer believe closed caskets are for naked corpses, and not seeing the departed buffers the experience. I can see a psychologist clearing a space on his couch.
If there is a waiting room on the other side, I imagine it is full these days, with celebrities, writers, actors, and politicians. I personally plan to cross gently a half a lifetime from now.
I’ll choose summer as a season and I’ll start off with a quick sight seeing tour of places I haunted in life. Of course, I’ll have to drop in to see that my funeral goes well. Then I suppose I have a standing appointment with a shrink on the other side who certainly wants to delve into the subject of naked presidents.
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Comments
One response to “Naked Corpses and the Other Side”
It is funny how the Kennedy assassinations are sort of an indelible time stamp on my own life. I don’t share that feeling for Teddy but on to your topic. From an early age I was interested in Ancient Egypt. In the sarcophagus, the mummies were always wrapped. I suppose for a long time, that is how I thought of people being buried. I didn’t go to my first funeral until high school and then it was a classmate.
You know, it makes sense they would be naked; I mean, who is going to see them?