Normal service will resume after this short sensible interlude:
It's always good to learn something new about those closest to you. Sarah and I were talking about dead people this evening (prompted by something on TV) and she told me that she talks to them. At which point I should probably point out that she's a nurse and not a psychic hotline operator. It sort of generated out of a train of thought that involved 'what are people aware of after they die'.
She was saying that when people die, she talks to them because she if they are still aware of what is going on when the heart has stopped breathing, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that we don't just switch off all at once. For instance, after you die, your hair and nails keep growing. Various other functions carry on too, even if they're in a negative connotation. The biology of a dead body is that things are still happening even if those things are decay.
So, I wanted to know what sort of things she said to them and it was simple things like "I'm going to shut your eyes now" and "I'm just going to put this pillow under your chin so that your mouth doesn't gape open" - I think that's kind of sweet. I find it peculiar that she can spend this amount of intimate time with a dead body but we never even made it to the opening credits of Scream when we went to see it.
Anyway, this continued and I found out that she also catalogues out loud the items that she has to remove from them, such as rings and watches, which get bagged and sent with the body to the undertaker - the bit she doesn't like though is the final part where the face gets covered with the sheet. Almost as if she was personally responsible for saying "The End" to these people.
It's a job I couldn't do. I've never actually seen a dead body. Sarah is not religious but I think sometimes she wonders... when she knows somebody is dying, she'll stay with them and watch them go - to which she always says that it's the weirdest thing. One minute you have an animated body, no matter how frail and immobile and the next moment, a very obvious empty husk that looks the same but is nonetheless, empty. What left and where did it go to? When you're faced with that on a daily basis, you have to wonder comes afterwards, but she doesn't. I think it would drive her insane.
But where do we go? It's obviously the consciousness/personality/character/soul that leaves but where does it go? Does it just go out? After millenia upon millenia of people dying, it's hardly surprising that the possibilities the human race has come up with for what comes next are so disparate and clung on to so dearly. As nice as some kind of afterlife appears to be, it's just as plausible that the series just ends. No commissions for a second season. No repeats. Dusted.
I needed to get that out of my head. Back to thinking about Doctor Who memorabilia now.
