Today I took a human brain out of a Tupperware and held it in my hands.

It’s not every day that I play Dr. Frankenstein, poking around human dissections with latex-gloved fingers.

But today I was a participant in a cadaver lab. A good friend who was studying healthcare had invited me. As part of her studies, she had no option. I did, but given a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see dead people I didn’t already know, I took it.

I confess that if I’d understood ahead of time that we’d be peeling back layers of skin and muscle from corpses, I likely would have declined. Somehow I thought it would be more of a morgue situation, and because I frequently write about death, I wanted to push my comfort limits, to get acquainted with the inevitable. I pictured bodies trussed up for casket display, or maybe fresh in from a hospital death, still on a gurney but certainly not opened or dismembered.

As the students and guests were given gloves and splotchy lab coats (ewwwww is right), we filed into the basement. My stomach lurched in terrible anticipation. The room did indeed have an unforgettable stench, but it wasn’t nearly as vile as I’d expected. I’m not recommending it or anything- just saying it was less awful than I’d thought it would be.

About twelve people were laid out, bagged in plastic and covered with white sheets, all on individual examining tables with bright lights overhead. The scene of shrouds in stark medical light was like something from a movie. My heart was beating wildly as I pondered whether I should turn back now, or stay.

I stayed.

Within moments, a serene calm came over me. The calm dissolved briefly when the plastic bag was peeled off of Exhibit Number One, and I gasped to see not just a naked corpse, but a corpse cut open completely so that med students could look inside of her.

The doctor who was teaching very casually pulled off a layer of fat and started pointing at connective muscle tissues and so on. The sight was far less traumatizing than I’d expected, and I felt strangely grateful that this generous woman had given herself to science. Cutting her open was not undignified in any way. It was terribly, terribly beautiful.

We are amazing. What is the spirit or consciousness that  makes our beautiful, ugly bodies alive? We barely understand how our bodies work, but after meeting with several cadavers, I had a terrific sense of how I am put together. It is incredible.

I turned my attention away to another table, where a doctor was removing the white sheet. Something plopped out onto the floor. Yes, a piece of this human being spilled out and landed on the tiled floor. The doctor nonchalantly reached down and picked it up, as if it were just a pen or something. This poor chap was in a state of disarray, to say the least. As I approached, the calm inside turned to nausea very quickly as I saw a peculiar bowl-like bone, and realized that the dude’s skullcap had been sawed off. But I took a slow breath of formaldehyde-laced oxygen, and moved in for a closer look. The doctor was holding up a piece of skin that was still attached to the head of this poor chap.

It was part of  his face.

At one station, there was a man whose leg bones were connected with a metal instrument. I realized that he had an artificial knee. At another station, one student was holding up a grey mass that looked like some kind of sea coral. “Intestines,” he explained. There were also the bones of a pelvis, and we discussed whether or not it had belonged to a man or woman. Then, there were some plastic bins. Someone opened one, and I looked inside to see a human brain.

None of the anatomy drawings or all of my years of studying psychology and reading up on how my medications affect my nervous system could prepare me for that second. It was one of the most stunning moments of my life. I took a human brain into my hands and held it. It was a grayish, dense mass like plasticine. Within this small organ in my hands was the most miraculous computer in the whole wide world. In this grey bundle in my hands, was the whole of a human life.

Underneath the ick factor and the deep emotional impact death has on the living, anytime, anywhere, I was deeply moved. I felt a well of tears inside, for our beauty and our hideousness. We are meat and bones. And we are something that makes that flesh come alive, something no one has ever yet been able to describe or know, though we have always tried.

I haven’t felt God for a long, long time. But here, the mystery was so big, so vast, so ineffable, that I found myself praying and giving thanks. I felt the dawn of history, when we traveled in small groups crossing the savannahs, hunting. I felt the electrifying miracle of technology, the bounty of today’s cutting edge. I felt a connection to everyone and everything in this moment.

Holding the human brain was one of the most profound things that have ever happened to me. I was feeling so peaceful- there’s nothing to be scared of in the physicality and the decay of death. The spirit or spark departs. The meat rots. Ashes to ashes.

The stench has lingered on me for the rest of the day, and a small wave of nausea rose up every time I remembered the peculiar stink. But part of me felt connected to life in ways I have never been before.

I wondered if my words would ever be worthy enough to outlast my body. And I felt a renewed inspiration to honour my body and take care of it, so that it could create more words. One day, I too, will be laying on a gurney with med students poking at me like I was a carved turkey. Soon, but not too soon- I’ve got so much work to do before the lights go out.

Check out Lorette’s popular series, “A Matter of Life or Myth”, and other articles here in The Paleo Garden.  You can also check out here her Fascinating People, gossip for smart people.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 6th, 2010 at 7:56 pm and is filed under DeathAndLife, Lorette. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.