Find a Death

In high school my friend Omar, whose dad was the autopsy doc in town, had the best pin on his lapel. It read “dead people are cool”. Having been around a number of dead people I can assure you they are quite cool. You and I, unless you have a fever or are hypothermic, have a body temperature of roughly 98.6 degrees. But anyway, the reason for this post is findadeath.com where you can view the death certificates of famous dead folks and a lot more.

As many of you have noted I have sort of a weird fascination with death and dying and have had a variety of brushes with it.

I got started with death early. I had nightmares about mummies and dead people ‘coming to get me’ when I was just a wee lad. I’m not sure where I learned about them, but I have been terrified of death and the dead for as long as I can remember.

My grandmother’s house at 55 Phoenix street in Bridgewater was attached to and owned by Sweeny’s Funeral Home. I believe she even answered the phone for them for a while. Also she was the deputy registrar for the County of Lunenburg until her death in 1999 at 90 (when she was buried by the Sweenys). She was responsible to fill out all the death certificates within the county. She worked closely with all the funeral homes in the area. The owner of the local crematorium, whom she used to call, “Doodle Drawers” used to try his best to convince her to get cremated telling her it was all nice and warm in there. She would just slap his arm laughing and say in her Lunenburg drawl, “Oh da Lord!” It was all very Six Feet Under meets Green Acres.

I worked as map maker at the local cemetery for a time and then as a grave digger for two years after my map making contract ran out. I saw and learned a lot there and was even involved in an exhumation.

In the mid 1990’s I was working security to offset my lack of income from being a wannabe actor at Vancouver Hospital, where patrolling the morgue was part of my duties, when one of my co-workers dropped dead. It was Bob R’s first night on the job. We had to run up the stairs for a fire alarm on the 6th floor. Once we found it was a false alarm we returned to the 4th floor to reset the alarm panel. On the way down the stairs Bob was really out of breath and blanched white. I said to Tim, who was training him, “I don’t think Bob is going to make it.” He didn’t. Tim and Bob entered the alarm room and moments later Tim was on the radio for us to get our asses into the room. Bob was on the floor in full cardiac arrest. Tim said, “He’s having a heart attack” and at that moment everything let go. I actually saw a man die. One moment he was there, the next, definitely not. Tim, quickly arriving paramedics and the cardiac team tried to revive Bob for 45 minutes to no avail. I had nightmares for months and had to really deal with the fact of my own mortality.

The dead have stories to tell as well. I’m always curious about cemeteries around the world. I have visited some of the most famous, from Napolean’s Tomb in Paris to Hollywood Forever in LA (pictures taken by me on our LA Trip). One day I plan to go to Egypt to see the Valley of the Kings and the Pyramids.

Call me morbid, creepy or whatever, but learning about and experiencing so closely something that I’ve been afraid of for so long has helped me to come to terms with it.