the body snatcher
I was about eight when I encountered my first corpse.
It was at the funeral of a woman my grandmother knew, the woman from whom we’d bought our piano. Which apparently meant we owed her the courtesy of attending her funeral. My brother was the one who’d been playing piano since he was about five, and as luck would have it, he had a piano lesson. Convenient excuse. So I got to represent the family by attending the funeral with my grandmother.
Attending my first funeral would have been disturbing enough. But this one had a viewing. That’s right, everyone filed up to stare at a corpse. Because that’s not weird at all. (more…)