Existing Within Death
I have spent almost 20 years trying to keep people alive. Either on the streets in an ambulance, supervising those working in an ambulance, or teaching those that would go out and take care of the sick and injured.
The month before COVID-19 fully kicked off in my city, I took a job as the emergency manager for the medical examiner’s office. I joked that my job was going to be figuring out what to do with the bodies when shit went bad.
That statement is not so funny anymore.
I had not spent much time with the dead prior to this job, neither in work or spiritually. For work, I had a rule: you don’t get to die in the back of my ambulance. Either you died where we found you and there was nothing we could do, or we weren’t going to stop trying to keep you alive until we got to the Emergency Room and let the ER doctor decide your fate.
Spiritually, me and the human dead never really had much to do with each other. I honored my ancestors but never sought them out. I spent plenty of time working with animal spirits, nature spirits, and others, though not with the human dead.
That changed the very first day I arrived at the medical examiner’s office. I met spirits in the morgue who were there to make sure there were no lingering bits of the soul that would experience the trauma of having an autopsy done on the body. When they noticed that I saw them, it was a bit overwhelming. They had lots to say after working so long in anonymity.
In that first month, day after day, the dead realized what my job was: to support those who cared for the bodies of the dead, to tell the story of their final minutes.
If you have never had an experience with a Medical Examiner`s office, you probably don’t know how much they do. There are the Investigators, those who go to the location of the dead to gather information on the final moments. There is the Transport Team, who respectfully collect the dead and bring them back to the morgue. Mortuary Technicians examine the body, remove personal effects, take photos, and (if needed) fingerprints for identification. Finally, there are the Pathologists, who determine if an external exam is needed or a full autopsy.
It is now my job to make sure that, should a major incident occur—like an active shooter, bombing, plane crash, or pandemic--that they could all keep doing what they do during those trying circumstances. During COVID, it was my job to make sure we could keep respectfully handling the dead and keep them safe until the families could make their final funeral arrangements. Our goal was to not allow the events that have occurred in other cities: bodies found stacked in u-haul trucks, un-refrigerated, or stored in ice skating rinks to store them.
In those first few weeks I struggled, because I kept trying to fight death. I could feel it swirling around the city. Death is different than the spirits of the dead. Death feel like a force existing and moving around the city, ending lives.
You may have heard about how many more fatalities occurred in many cities because those with chronic health conditions did not go get regular care or call 911, or go to the hospital out of fear of catching COVID. Our average deaths per day in the city quadrupled, but only half of those were from COVID-19. The other half were what we call Natural Deaths, and those deaths happened at home instead of hospitals and in much greater frequency.
All those years of fighting to keep people alive put me in a sort of automatic response: I kept trying to fight Death. That is an exercise in futility. I drove myself to emotional and mental exhaustion, trying to keep Death from doing what it does.
I can clearly remember the moment when I realized what I was doing, the moment when I was able to let go, to stop trying to fight Death. It was after work: I was walking home from the subway. Suddenly there was a huge sense of relief and I wept openly, walking along the sidewalk.
I wouldn’t say things got easier after that, but they at least became manageable. Setting up a disaster morgue site, having conversations about weekly body bag usage, discussing questions about what type of shelving we should install and how many bodies can we store in a refrigerated truck: these are things that will stick with me for life.
One of the most intense memories is when we consecrated our Disaster Morgue site before we started operations. A rabbi, an imam, a pastor, a priest, and an Army chaplin all stood in a circle and invoked blessings for the dead that would come through that place and for those that would care for their bodies. I said my own prayer to Freyja and the Valkyries. A crow landed, and called out.
Most people in this city don’t know where the disaster morgue site is. That is on purpose. We don’t want people coming just to look, or the press showing up to try to snap some sensational pictures. Funeral homes come and collect the dead from us, so it is no secret. But it is a sacred space, and we don’t want anyone coming by and being disrespectful. It is guarded by National Guard Military Police, and I am ok with that. If anyone wants to come by and do something to disrespect the sanctity of that place, I want it guarded by people who will not fuck around in stopping such nonsense. Some may believe that those in the military do not respect life or the dead of their enemies, but probably more than any other group, the military fervently respects their own dead.
We have also been working with Air National Guard, Army National Guard, and Army members during this emergency, almost 40 of them at peak. These are people whose job it is to handle the dead of wars, now at home handling the dead of a virus. That’s got to be a big shift for them. They have all been the hardest working and most respectful people I have ever interacted with. I have never been called sir more often in my life, and it felt super awkward every time.
So now this city, where I have lived for 2 years, is stable for the moment. We are on the downward trend of “the curve,” and fatalities are down to roughly 10 a day. In a period of 3 months, we took care of over 600 COVID-19 fatalities, and provided a safe place for the bodies until the families could retrieve them.
I know this is just the beginning. Round two will probably kick off in the next few weeks. Between the people going out on Memorial Day weekend, the phased re-opening of our city, and the marches against police killings, the virus is going to come back.
Once this is all done, maybe a year from now, I know I will leave this city. Perhaps even earlier. I cannot fathom how I could keep living in a place after existing within Death for so long.
Ferrus has been working with emergency services even longer than he has been working with the spirit world. A companion of Freyja, spirits, animals, and angels, he is learning how to work with the Dead to protect those living in the Capitol of the Empire.
He finds tea, candles, and frankincense and myrrh necessary for life, and his favourite dinosaur is the Triceratops.