Fabulous Cadavers!

I just finished reading "Stiff:The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers" by Mary Roach and it may or may not have changed my life (and by life I mean death).

The book is a study of various things that cadavers have been used for over time and the many strives they have helped the living to make in science and research. This may be the only thing I've ever read or watched or researched that made me slightly LESS afraid to die. Roach glorifies the cadaver and the decision to donate one's body to science. This does not means she leaves out all of the gory details.

I think my favorite chapter (Crimes of Anatomy) discusses the messy history of cadaver dissection. Sometime in the 1700-1800's anatomy schools, particularly in England and Scotland, became very popular, but the overgrowth of students had no way of obtaining cadavers (lots of laws on who could be dissected for science). This turned into the lucrative business of body snatching. Body snatching is a wholly different thing from grave robbing: the latter involves digging up graves to steal jewelry and whatnot from the deceased; the former requires stealing the entire body and selling it to anatomy labs.

I'd never considered donating my body to science. I think at some point my father even discouraged me from being an organ donor. This book has made me think twice. Mostly, I think I like the idea that after I'm dead, I can continue to do good despite the fact that I won't know about it. But at least as I'm dying I know that somehow I'll be put to good use once I'm gone. Even if that good use is just being cut up by a med student, who, from what I can gather, will respect and revere me, get to know me, and miss me when the semester is over. It seems a nice feeling that I can go on to touch one more person's life after I'm dead, or to help make cars safer, or military armor stronger, or bullets less deadly.

I had an issue with one thing in the book, which came in the final chapter. Roach talks about her possible plans for her death, what she may or may not do with her body. She believes that if the surviving loved ones are uncomfortable with whatever choice has been made for after death, that it should not be done. The dead are dead and have no say anymore, why not make life simpler for the living? I think I disagree. I would hate to be dying and thinking "Well at least I'm going to science", or "at least they're going to shoot me out of a canon", or "I finally get to have my ashes spread at Graceland" and then have that not happen. I know technically it doesn't matter. Technically we've said goodbye to our bodies and to our loved ones, but why not do what the dead person wanted?

She states a specific instance, a woman who's husband died and wanted just to be burned up in a plain pine box: no funeral, no memorial, no burial or ash spreading. He was not religious and she was very Catholic. She felt shunned by her fellow churchgoers for not having a memorial, she felt horrible that his ashes weren't buried, she even left the ashes in a closet for a long time, not knowing what to do with them. How is it that you were married to this man in life and could deal with the differences between you, but not in death? You respected his opinion for years, and cannot honor it when he's gone? I find this angering. Roach's point was that the woman should have just done what made her comfortable. I would say this would piss off her dead husband.

We don't know what happens after death, if anything, and maybe I'm just superstitious but I wouldn't want to risk pissing off the dead.