She always went to LA during the winter to get out of the freezing cold of her southern state. She always rented a car despite her friends offering rides or the convenience of Uber. It was the sense of control, being able to get up and go to wherever she wanted, whenever she wanted. She didn’t like to be stuck anywhere or have to wait. It was a typical LA night, hitting up a new sushi spot and then a couple of clubs for solid people-watching. The also-typical hoopla around celebrity hadn’t phased her when she was leaving her hotel at the start of the evening. Someone or many famous people were obviously staying in the same Beverly Hilton, the Grammy’s were the next night. But she was too rushed for her sushi date that she didn’t linger to ask anyone loitering in the lobby who it might be. It was late after the clubs when she finally made her way back to the hotel. Something was very off. A couple of cop cars had blocked the front driveway, and she could see an ambulance under the circular drive that led to the hotel foyer. All approaching vehicles were redirected to the back near the loading dock. There were cops with German Shepherd dogs stopping every vehicle. She had to roll down her window, show her driver's license and room access card proving she was an actual guest, open the trunk and backseat for the dogs to sniff around, and then finally told where her car could be parked and which entrance door to head through. Any inquiry as to what was going on was met with an emotionless declaration that an incident had occurred, but no one’s safety was at issue. Inside, hotel attendants were making sure guests went directly to their rooms. It was nerve-wracking and unsettling, to say the least, especially as she made her way to her room and noticed two cops standing guard in a hallway, and behind them what looked to be a commotion of detectives outside of one of the room doors. How long would she be stuck in her hotel room? It felt like a lockdown, which amplified her anxiety. Within a couple of hours of frenzied calls and text with local friends, plus a breaking news bulletin on TMZ, she learned Whitney Houston had drowned in her bathtub, likely due to an overdose. Wild. So close to her body.
Her aunt called to relay that her grandmother had finally died. The ward of the hospital where her grandmother was seemed to be in the basement. Walking down the hallway felt cavernous. It was entirely vacant; not even a nurse’s desk jutting out. The eeriness felt appropriate; the only sounds were her footsteps down the corridor. She figured someone would be in the room, but when she opened her grandmother’s door, there was only her dead body lying in the bed. Everything seemed left as-is. Even her aunt’s stuff was sitting in a nearby chair. Her grandmother’s fingers were disjointed into gnarly shapes and her mouth was gaping wide open, the last breath taken long ago. She simply stood at the end of the bed, staring. What was the appropriate amount of time to stand here? Turning right around as if she only showed up to confirm the death seemed inappropriate. But being alone with a dead body also felt creepy. She was frozen in between the world of emotion and facts, feelings and reality. It could only last a few minutes. She passed by no one when she was leaving as if the ward had been evacuated; as if this was her private apocalyptic moment. It would turn out to be.
~~~
He had died fourteen minutes before she arrived. His body was in the room at the top of the stairs. A bevy of hospice nurses and family were sardined into the room and spilling out onto the hallway. How many hours would she have to wait before the funeral picked up his body. This was not her family; she was an employee, so she stayed downstairs as long as she could.
They had to use a harness to carry his body out of the house because the stairs were too tight a curve for the gurney. Catching a glimpse of the action froze her because his mouth was agape, and his fingers were also gnarly. Surreal. It was just another day for the funeral employees; it was just their job.
She had avoided witnessing such a pick-up of her own loved one, yet here, she was trapped in a setting of a similar circumstance. It seemed like comic justice. She would have to bear witness, but here she could compartmentalize the emotions. But no, there was no avoiding it.
There was never a fear of being around the dead. She had actually dissected bodies at the local chiropractic college, long ago learning the trick of putting drops of peppermint essential oil under her nose to cover the smell of embalming fluid. Even as a little girl, she had reached out and touched the corpse of a relative during an open-casket funeral. So close, so intimate. How many times now? But those times she chose of her own accord. Death is something we have no choice in.
*Image by M.F. Husain, Untitled, 1971