A friend who was a mortician once told me something. It’s a shock for the family to come face to face with a corpse that dies in a horrible accident or with an agonized expression. The body has to be prepared so the bereaved family will be able to accept it. And she had to do so fairly often.
In difficult, time-consuming cases, many of her coworkers would try to use physical force to muscle the body into shape. But in her case, the more difficult the circumstances, the longer a pause she took before touching the person. And she touched them as little as possible. When I asked her why, she said:
“Unless you have the cooperation of the deceased, it’s impossible to prepare the body.”
Do the Dead Really Not Feel Anything?
There are many steps to preparing a body for a funeral. Time is limited, so using physical interventions is the optimal method—or rather, it’s considered to be the only method. That must be why not a whole lot of attention is brought to the question of whether it’s the best method for everyone or not.
I’d like you to imagine something. What would you do if someone you’d never even seen before started touching you all over without your permission?