tolerate the worst gross-outs, those sights and ideas that test courage,
the balance of the mind, and the gag reflex. In those days, Bobby and I
were fans of H. P. Love craft, of the biologically moist art of H. R.
Giger, and of low-budget Mexican horror movies full of gore.
We outgrew this fascination to an extent that we didn’t outgrow other
aspects of our adolescence, but in those days I explored death further
than did Bobby, progressing from bad movies to the study of increasingly
clinical texts. I learned the history and techniques of mummification
and embalming, the lurid details of epidemics like the Black Death that
killed half of Europe between 1348 and 1350.
I realize now that by immersing myself in the study of death, I had
hoped to accept my mortality. Long before adolescence, I knew that each
of us is sand in an hourglass, steadily running out of the upper globe
into the stillness of the globe below, and that in my particular
hourglass, the neck between these spheres is wider than in most, the
fall of sand faster. This was a heavy truth to have been carried by one
so young, but by becoming a graveyard scholar, I meant to rob death of
its terror.
In recognition of the steep mortality rate of people with XP, my special
parents had raised me to play rather than work, to have fun, to regard
the future not with anxiety but with a sense of mystery.
From them, I learned to trust God, to believe I was born for a purpose,
to be joyful. Consequently, Mom and Dad were disturbed by my obsession
with death, but because they were academics with a belief in the
liberating power of knowledge, they didn’t hamper my pursuit of the
subject.
Indeed, I relied on Dad to acquire the book that completed my death
studies, Forensic Pathology, published by Elsevier in a series of thick
volumes written for law-enforcement professionals involved in criminal
investigations- This grisly tome, generously illustrated with victim
photographs that will chill the hottest heart and instill pity in all
but the coldest, is not on the shelves of most libraries and is not
knowingly provided to children. At fourteen, with a life expectancy
thought to be at that time no greater than twenty, I could have argued
that I was not a child but already past middle age.
Forensic Pathology covers the myriad ways we perish, disease, death by
fire, death by freezing, by drowning, by electrocution, by poisoning, by
starvation, by suffocation, by strangulation, death from gunshot wounds,
from blunt-instrument trauma, from pointed and sharp-edged weapons. By
the time I finished this book, I’d outgrown my fascination with death .
.. and my fear of it. The photos depicting the indignity of
decomposition proved that the qualities I cherish in the people I
love their wit, humor, courage, loyalty, faith, compassion, mercyare not
ultimately the work of the flesh. These things outlast the body, they
live on in the memories of family and friends, live on forever by
inspiring others to be kind and loving. Humor, faith, courage,
compassion these don’t rot and vanish, they are impervious to bacteria,
stronger than time or gravity, they have their genesis in something less
fragile than blood and bone, in a soul that endures.
Though I believe that I’ll live beyond this life and that those I love
will be where I go next, I do still fear that they will depart ahead of
me, leaving me alone. Sometimes I wake from a nightmare in which I’m the
sole living person on earth, I lie in bed, trembling, afraid to call out
for Sasha or to use the telephone, fearful that no one will answer and
that the dream will have become reality.
Now, here, in the bungalow kitchen, Bobby said, “Hard to believe he
could be this far gone in three or four days.”
“Exposed to the elements, complete skeletonization can occur in two
weeks. Eleven or twelve days under the right circumstances.”
“So at any time … I’m two weeks from being bones.”
“It’s a quashing thought, isn’t it?”
“Major quash.” Having seen more than enough of the dead man, I directed