Walking With the Dead

Life is more terrifying than any Horror Scene - and more beautiful that we realise

Writing a horror scene isn’t easy.

One has to get in the mood, and for most of us, this involves the invocation of unnatural or supernatural events. The unseen or unknown provokes a terror that transcends the mundane.  But inspiration can also come from this present Life. The natural invokes its own fear; the physical world provokes a primitive dread more insidious than that of the metaphysical realm, because it is bedded in reality…

it haunts those who walk with the Dead.

I live in a family of First Responders  - volunteer FireFighters, certified Emergency Medical Technicians, Community Chaplains and Storm Spotters.  I myself was one such, before Some Healthlike Unexpected Stuff Happened (aka SHUSH); now I provide material and intel support for Chief ‘Runs-Towards-Fire’ and his homegrown Partner, Sir Chance-a-Lot. They both have a uncanny knack of being called out right before dinner, and as a result, I spend a lot of time waiting for them to show up.  When they do, it usually is accompanied by hunger and a need to talk. 

Not so last night; there was no call for Roast Beef and Potatoes, no clatter of dishes or chatter of excitement. They came in, mortality haunting them, their faces lined with the unease that comes from walking with the Dead.   

Escorting earthly remains to the realms of Life Everlasting is a terrible honour and a privilege. When the undertaker has not yet come, when the family is not yet notified, or the crime scene tape is still in place, there is a special reverence that comes with the task of walking with the Dead.  One is quickly reminded that there is nothing you can do; ten minutes ago, people were desperately working to save this life, to put it all back together, but now this earthly shell no longer contains what made it sacred - 

but it is still sacred.

It is also sometimes scary.  The progression from dust to dust is one with which most Modern Humans of the Civilised World are not familiar. They expect it to be neat and tidy, and contained; but Death is not tidy.

The journey is sometimes a swift one, unexpected and unwelcome.  Alone, beneath a tarp, on a roadside or in a quiet room the body waits for those who care to come carry it away. But where just a few hours before none would have left this precious person alone, now there is blood on the pavement and an abandonment to a cold, barren place, . Those who fear the Dead suddenly turn from the broken vessel, for they are not the ones who have been called - 

Other journeys have already been completed. The life departed, unnoticed except by neighbors, or friends who wondered why no one answered the knock at the door.  Then entry is made, and a swift retreat by those who fear the smell and the sight of Nature’s reclaimation of Life, for they are not the ones who have been called - 

enter those who walk with the Dead.

Theirs is the prayer, the respectful whisper that recognises life is passing from the body that housed Life.  They will wander about the scene, finding a little shoe, or a purse lying in the ditch, away from the crash. They may come in and find the dead sitting upright in a chair, barely recognisable as days have passed, with only a frightened little dog at their feet to testify this person was human. Theirs is the hand that remove tubes and tapes, smoothing wild locks of hair after rescusitation has been stopped, preparing for the family to enter-

Those who walk with the Dead see the horror of the end of life, the bloody brutality of trauma, the aloneness of the ones left behind; they also see the beauty of that Life that once was lived. The body, the memories, the house, the necklace, the mementos of love and struggle… this person was real. They existed.  They lived…

Once alive, nothing can erase Life. Death cannot destroy what was real, it cannot wipe out the past - the spirit housed in this body may be gone, but Life was here.

Those who walk with the Dead came in last night, the escorts of Souls past the Gates of this World.  It weighed upon them, all the Horror and Beauty that is Death and Life - 

and there was nothing I could say. We shall all pass through the Gates of this World and into the next, and those who walk with the Dead shall be there with us.  They will come - and we will be waiting.