‘Tis the season to visit your local cemeteries! There are some gorgeous burial grounds in these parts, and autumn’s the time to take ‘em in.
I recently paid a visit to Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge. It was a beautiful, crisp, clear day, perfect for climbing Washington Tower, with its marvelous view of Boston.
Well, OK, maybe “marvelous” is too marvelous a word for it. I mean, it’s still Boston. But it’s a nice view. As good a view as you’re likely to get, anyway.
I was there with my old friend Robert, the one who dragged me through the mega-maze the week before. And as you might expect given a trip to the graveyard, we got to talking about bodies, and what to do with them when you’re done with them (or what you arrange to have done with them once they’re done with you, which is the more likely scenario). I said I wanted mine disposed of in the most expedient manner possible, and thought cremation would do just fine. He objected to cremation, on environmental grounds. Chemicals and things, I guess. But until they come up with some sort of deep-space laser-blaster particle-dispersal mechanism, cremation will have to do. I certainly don’t want to be embalmed. I don’t want my body displayed (it’s as creepy as people staring at you when you’re sleeping). And I would never, never, never leave my body to science, for fear that it would end up in the hands of first year med students, who would give my corpse a pet name, and then cut off my head, hands and penis for laughs. No thank you.
If you want to know some of the ways in which your corpse is put to use when you leave it to Science, Mary Roach’s Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers is a good read. But not on a full stomach.
Robert said he didn’t know why I should care what happened to my body after I’d vacated it. It wouldn’t be me, after all. Just my body. Which I would no longer be in.
Well, whatever. I wasn’t going to get into that whole mind-body thing again with him. You know, I can understand if you have a contentious relationship with your body–and who doesn’t?–you might be thinking, good riddens! But it’s not that cut and dry. The fact is, we are our bodies (I feel like a property dualist today). If you don’t agree with the our bodies, ourselves hypothesis, go talk to some poor short, bald slob with bad teeth who’s making ten grand less than his coworker in the next cubicle, who’s a foot taller with a full head of hair and a mouthful of pearly whites. Go tell it to the disagreeable dude with the little prick in the giant SUV, honking his impotent horn and screaming obscenities at the guy in the minicooper with the placid demeanor who’s slung like an ox (trust me, I’ve done a lot of research on this, and size really does matter). Or the plain jane with irritable bowel syndrome and a persistant skin rash who can’t enjoy a day out with her perky roommate, who looks like Angelina Jolie, can eat all the ice cream she wants and never get fat, and loves to bungie jump with her hunky boyfriend, Brad. Not to mention that epilepsy, schizophrenia, clinical depression, and alcoholism are all physical ailments that play a huge role in bahavior, character, and personality–in who we are to ourselves and others.
But even in those of us without serious physical and mental conditions, don’t underestimate the power of a hardy constitution–or, conversely, the power of irritable bowels: our personalities and our characters are very much shaped by these things, too. The idea that there is some pristine spirit unaffected by the physical that’s just waiting to take flight from its gnarly old body is wishful thinking (mostly of those with irritable bowels, I think).
But I didn’t get into any of this with Robert, really. All I said was, I think of my body as a buddy, a companion in this life, and I would not want to think of it being molested in any way while I was helpless to prevent it. Maybe I’m selfish, but we came into this world together, and I would like us to go out together, too. I think a healthy concern for your own corpse is a quite natural extension of the survival instinct that’s kept you and your body together all your life.
He said, still, you won’t know any better, whatever the case. The only people it should matter to are those you leave behind.
He was actually rather strident on the point, but the fact remains, my remains are my remains. If he wants his thrown to wild dogs, I have no particular objections. What you do or have done with your body is up to you in the end. I, personally, have few sentimental attachments, aside from this. I have an odd affection for this vessel, and I don’t want to cast it off like some old junker I drove into the ground. Remember that Neil Young song, “Long May You Run”?
Weve been through some things together
With trunks of memories still to come
We found things to do in stormy weather
Long may you run.
Long may you run.
Long may you run.
Although these changes have come
With your chrome heart shining in the sun
Long may you run.
That was a tribute to his car, for chrissake. People love their cars like that, I can love my corpse.
Robert had expressed some interest in seeing the “Body Worlds” show at the Museum of Science, which I’d first read about a decade ago in The London Review of Books (I was so much smarter then than I am now), on a train from Frankfurt (and well-traveled, too), as I recall. (I mention all this only because I want to stress I worked through any issues I may have had with Creepy Dr. von Hagens long ago.) Der gute Doktor was taking his traveling macabre to all the capitals of Europe. There was a bigger hooha over the plastination and display of skinned bodies over there than there has been over here, surprisingly. I think if an American had done it we might have been more alarmed by it. We’ve come to expect this sort of thing from creepy doctors with German accents, and von Hagens definitely has that shtick down:
You can bet he’s wearing black leather gloves, too.
I do think it’s all in the worst possible taste, though I wouldn’t say it’s immoral. (Bad taste should be immoral, but it’s not.) And it’s not that I’m not all rah-rah! for science, either. But, anyway, von Hagens is more a showman than a scientist in the end. Defying British law he performed a public autopsy (the first in nearly 170 years) in the Old Truman Brewery in London’s Brick Lane back in 2002, and the reviews were luke warm at best. One eyewitness said von Hagens “often appeared out of his depth.” The Guardian reported: “He struggled to saw open the skull, handing over his hacksaw to an assistant as the bone splintered, and couldn’t find the pancreas.”
Von Hagens himself says he’s part artist, part scientist, but do his plastinated corpses hold up as art? I don’t think so. They’re spectacle. Period. they’re corpse as kitsch. You want art from corpses, take the sometimes appalling, often breathtaking, always horrifically beautiful photographs of Joel-Peter Witkin:
Hmm.
Should my corpse survive me, that’s what I hope it will aspire to.
To get to Mt. Auburn Cemetery via T: At Harvard Square Station (Red Line), take either the Watertown Square or Waverley Square trolley (#71 or #73). Get off on Mount Auburn Street at Aberdeen Avenue. Cross Mount Auburn Street to the Entrance Gate.
