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0140 — Cornelius's Advance Directive (Patreon)

Published:
2025-08-22 17:00:20
Imported:
2025-08
Tags:

Content

A while back I posted a recap of our hospice visit with Lauren's stepfather Mike ("Cabbie's Last Fare," April 19, 2025). As we sat at his bedside and the morphine lowered the drawbridge, it struck me that this man, always so generous, was, in an existential and indeliberate way, giving us one final, enormously vulnerable gift: to witness the release from life. Gentle, aproned volunteers brought warm cookies on trays, mallards waddled past the pond outside the window, and a clutch of dear ones rose and fell on sneaker waves of grief. My mind flitted to a moment in 1981, when my father woke me up early to ask if I wanted to come see my new sister be born. I didn't, I was scared by the idea. I've always regretted not sharing in that extraordinary human bookend, so I'm a bit with Cornelius here, but I'm also a bit with Téodor, inasmuch as life will in time likely press our faces against enough hospital — we don't need to force it early.

I would enjoy hearing any stories or thoughts you have on the matter, and as ever I've set aside time today to chat in the comments. Thank you for being in here, supporting this project, and making it all possible!

Posted recently in Tiers 2 & 3: All-new Ray's Place; TWO complete downloadable chapbooks (72 pages total of my notebooks/sketchbooks); more tales of fatherhood, terrifying home repair, and cuisine; a new Strip Roast; several big color archive strips. Plus, the making-of strip that posts after this strip every Friday!

Files

Comments

Josh Egbert

Lie Bot, what's the saddest thing?

b.zap

T will do anything for silver, but not that.

Rob Dalton

that poor li'l putative chicken tho…

Rob Dalton

"we all have it comin', kid." —eastwood in "unforgiven"

Rob Dalton

chris, having had my face pressed up against plenty o' hospital this past year, i thank you for this ontological romp; your wit and vulnerability have always been a balm, and sometimes your timing is just uncanny. tl;dr: thanks, chochocho.

A Big Old Skeleton

When my grandma died, the first person close to me I'd experienced dying, we ended up arriving like five minutes after the game was already over. It was still close enough, I think, to be a pretty harsh event for a kid of... I think 11 or 12 years old to get through. The two things I remember most, which probably doesn't say anything good about me, are the sound the machines made when they shut them off and also catching a glimpse of the catheter bag and thinking, bizarrely, "oh I guess people do piss when they die." Every other death I've only found out about after the fact - mostly because they've all been either sudden tragedies or because I've been too far away to get there in time to say goodbye. It's something I've had to accept as the cost of moving to a different country: I will only ever say my goodbyes, if I get the chance to, on the phone. I can't decide if that's been better or worse.

Achewood

I'd say the saddest thing is when Téodor is the only one looking out for you, but bless him, he's actually doing well in this category.

Achewood

I was as surprised as anyone

Ryan Boyle

Gladwell wrote the eminent orphan hypothesis, that loss of a parent in childhood can lead to success in adulthood; a third of US presidents lost a parent young. There's some intuition around becoming more self sufficient. But I'm with Teodor, that medicine is worse than the disease.

Achewood

This was an exceptional film. And yikes, a "classic" at this point...

Achewood

Thanks for the kind words, and for sharing that, Rob. Sometimes when I pause and wonder if a piece will connect with anyone, I remember we're all basically living the same obstacle course.

Achewood

A lovely set of insights, thank you. And it is the unique details of what you noticed that really humanize them. I remember wondering, "I wonder if the hospice staff put him in that Wisconsin golf shirt, or if that was his." And I, of course, was out picking up sandwiches for everyone during the twenty minutes when the big moment came.

Clench and Cheese

I think that he needs to run this idea by Ray who will figure out a way to live stream it and maybe create his own children's television show.

Tom

My mom passed away at home, which sounds nice but considering it was after months of cancer hollowing her out, by the end I think we were all too exhausted to even feel relieved that her suffering was finally *finally* over.

Nicholas Williams

In my life I have watched one person die and two people be born, and what did I have playing through the earbuds during each monumental event? You guessed it: Gasping Cadaver and the Tubercular Wraiths. Their first record (“Metal Hospice,” Arista, 1982) cranks so fuckin’ hard.

Achewood

Gladwell can be frustrating and alarmingly bogus at times, but he's a hell of a salesman.

Tom

Dad was her hospice nurse and I've wondered sometimes in the years since if he might of had a heavy thumb on the ol morphine drip at the end there. It would have been a mercy

Achewood

Ray knows a high-margin scarce resource when he sees one.

Achewood

Thanks for sharing that Tom. And yeah, I observed that application of the morphine etc becomes a pretty gray ethical area, but nobody wants the pain to continue.

Mike Duquette

I am slowly, slowly bracing for the day I may have to be in the room for such a thing. Closest I’ve ever come was, like someone said above, entering the room where my uncle had left (spiritually) before his body left with medical professionals, 11 Christmases ago. I wonder if it’ll be like the opposite version of being in the O.R. with one swaddled bundle of life and the determined and only slightly tense (for me—the doctors were professional) moment of making sure the other one was breathing properly. She was, sort of—was born with a cleft palate like her pop (they got my wife’s looks and my physical maladies) and spent five weeks in the NICU learning to eat and breathe simultaneously. Today she’s a repaired, 18-month-old gremlin who wags her finger when she says “no no” and is the spice to her two-minutes-older sister’s sugar. Wouldn’t change a thing. Sorry for the poem coming out of my face; it says press shift+enter to do line breaks but I’m on my iPhone, where only one of those “buttons” exists.

Bruce Wright

One of your very best, Chris. PS: I have watched two children being born, but I stayed up near the head end. Some images I don't need

zoë

my mother worked in hospice care for many years and always made great, age-appropriate, compassionate efforts to keep me informed and comfortable about death, but i have never seen someone die. however, i feel like i've done a lot of the prep and reading. i'm sure when it happens, if it happens, it will be nothing like i expect it to be.

Achewood

Thank you Mike, what a wonderful gift to have your little girl mended and on the hunt for life with her sister. Congratulations.

Achewood

Thank you! I figured it would bum people out, but sometimes people who are looking for happiness SHOULD be bummed out, amirite. Re: vaginal birth viewing: you do you bud.

Achewood

We have a friend who works in hospice. I really want to interview someone in that occupation to note the distinction between their relationship with death and that of the inexperienced. (Actually, I assume there are 350 podcasts about this, so it may be unnecessary)

John Robinson

I was in the ICU room with my mom when my dad shuffled off (April 23, 2006). He'd been sick for so long it was an unequivocal mercy. Mom and I broke down (of course), and about 10 minutes later I started calling family, starting with his sister, which was the start of a path forward: as long as I was DOING SOMETHING--calling relatives and friends, talking to the funeral director, driving my mom to the cemetery--it meant I didn't have to think about the hole in my world.

Achewood

Thank you John. That's entirely relatable. It's hard to lay into a journey you know has no end.

Bruce Wright

I've always had an aversion to gaping maws

Ryan Boyle

Better to be interesting than accurate!

Achewood

Now we're all seeing it. CROWNING

Stygian Gloom

I missed my own mother’s passing by just a few minutes. She was in in-home hospice and while we had all spent every moment at her bedside awaiting the inevitable, everyone but my older sister went to bed as the night turned into morning. My sister was there as she passed, around 5:30 in the morning. As soon as it had happened, she woke us all up, and while I did see her immediately after that, I always regret that I was not able to be there during her final moments, even though she had been unconscious for days at that point. I feel like I missed something very special.

Bruce Wright

Remember, ladies, it's not pain you're feeling, it's "pressure"

Achewood

This is my philosophy around golf, carpentry, and taxes.

Distant Egg Song

A: I've never been in the room when somebody died. The one time I could have been, such as the case may be, I was 2 states away, studying for finals for various high school classes. From what my mom told me of the occasion, my great aunt dying was nowhere near as traumatic to watch as the battle over her will that started up before her body went cold (she wasn't wealthy, I just have a distant cousin who's an asshole and part of a cult that makes him tithe enough to barely stay north of starvation). I never knew if me not being in that room was for the best or not. I do wish I could have seen her one last time. B: Connie went to the wrong dude for that document if he wanted his death to be displayed to a captive audience. It makes me half think he wanted that confrontation with T, but expected it to end differently.

Tom P

Only time I saw my grandpa weep is when I was living with him and my grandma was terminal, and he had to talk to someone, and told me he wanted to give her the whole dose of morphine, but they didn't leave him enough to be sure it'd work. She had apparently asked him as much in a lucid moment. Anyway, get your colonoscopies.

Achewood

Exactly. I had been at the bedside for many hours, then volunteered to pick up lunch for everyone. He snuck out during the brief window while I was away, and I felt the same as you.

Tom P

I had my mom hit the floor when I was playing video games in the other room and fortunately for me my dad was home. Heart defect tore apart. The autopsy guy said she could've been in the cardiology surgical theater and it would've gone the same way - he saw a Vanderbilt basketball player in the prime of health go the same way. In a way, Mr. Bear is kind. It would not have been a surprise.

Stygian Gloom

My sister told us that right as it happened, a huge smile came across her face, and then she was gone. I really wish I had been able to witness that.

Achewood

Thank you Egg. The instinct to swarm with iron claws is indeed one of the uglier phenomema. A good reminder to die with nothing in the bank, so the living may not shame themselves. If Connie had gone to Lyle for this conversation, imagine the Marshall stacks and fog machines that would have been included.

Achewood

I'm sorry to hear of this tragedy, Tom. What a mercy to have a parent there for guidance. Thank you for sharing it.

Achewood

Thank you Tom. May the upside of this sobering thread be a raft of Chochachos shipping out to the gastroenterologist.

Achewood

A lovely assurance to the grieving, that the last experience on earth was of happiness.

Miles McMahon

I had to tell a doctor that my mom was ready to die because she couldn't tell him herself, due to the medically-induced coma. It was almost six months to the day after my dad snuck off this mortal coil while I was at my new job, three months in (he died on her birthday, that cad). After I told the doc to pull the plug, I left her bedside and smoked three cigarettes in a row. I am not sad that I wasn't in the room.

Douglas Wykstra

Everyone has at least one (1) belief about child-rearing that will get some significant looks and a distinct refusal to enter into conversation about the subject. The really fun thing is, most people don't realize they have one of these until they get that reaction.

Douglas Wykstra

Gladwell's observation works equally well as evidence that losing a parent in childhood breaks you in a fundamental way from which you never quite recover, particularly if you start looking into what most presidents were actually like.

Achewood

That is Cowboy, my friend. Thanks for the story.

Achewood

All children should get bitten by an animal, so that when the are adults they keep children from petting strange dogs. Discuss.

Achewood

Indeed. When you consider the kind of insanity that makes a person want to be President, it's hard to factor out massive trauma and compensating for control.

dmf 23

I was in the hospital room when my partner's mother died. The most striking thing about it, to me, and something I think everyone should hear, is that in her last minutes there was a semi-frantic crew of grim-faced medical practitioners crowded into the room, and then someone uttered the magic phrase "DNR" and there was a sort of group sigh, a moment of relaxing and release and relief. They quietly filed out and left us alone with the body, the last one letting us know to take all the time we needed to. Get yours in writing, people, and make sure it's on file with your providers too. It was such a blessing that she had.

Achewood

Thanks for sharing that, dmf. Vexation over those who knew the end was coming but did nothing to prepare things for their families has been a too-often topic in our lives.

Tom P

Would've been pretty rough if he'd still been working out of state!

GC

[[warning: rough, no chuckles]] My mother (almost ten years ago now) didn't have a DNR on file; everything had moved too quickly with her cancer and we never got to it. Meaning, more honestly, that we didn't know how to talk about it. The night she died--fifteen minutes after I'd said goodnight, to echo a theme below--I was at a hotel across the street, as an out-of-town visitor, and my father was at a charity residential facility about a mile away. They hospital, through dumb luck, accidentally called me first, and I was able to get there before he did and stop the CPR (which was not going to be of any use) so that it was calm when he came in. The CPR attempt was the most shockingly violent thing I've ever seen, and it played in a loop on the back of my eyelids for maybe two years afterwards, but I was able to let it go. He would have been watching that loop for the rest of his life. I can echo @dmf23 from the other side of this experience. PLEASE make sure that unless you can articulate a VERY clear and specific reason why a gravely ill or dying patient should get CPR, which will not bring them back into a life they want to return to, you and your loved ones should have a valid DNR on file. CPR is wonderful for fairly healthy and preferably young people who need oxygen in their systems while an ambulance is on the way (pediatric drowning, sudden cardiac events, etc.) I think it should probably be opt-in, not opt-out, in most hospital settings, and certainly in hospice.

Carl Johnson

I'm a dice roll's of days away from it being a year since the end of my father's struggle with Parkinson's. We were fortunate to know the date in advance, and I held his hand as his heart stopped, surrounded by family and loved ones. I feel this is one of those 'Adult situations' which we recognize as profoundly important and yet we hope to be able to shield the next generation from at the same time.

Matt Mitchell

When he chews out over the phone the guy who gave his business card attached to a candy bar to Phillippe. He takes his stewardship of Phillippe very seriously, even if P on that occasion said “I wonder if anyone has boiled shit?!”

GC

So C is offhandedly implying that Tèodor is serving in some sort of Judas Iscariot capacity by checking his advance directive? Perfect, and doubly perfect that Tèodor doesn't even raise a meek objection. But I'm calling it now: "Buy some little chairs for the big day!" is an all-time Achewood line. If I still have lips, tongue and breath, I'll be quoting it fifty years hence.

Bungus Bronbo

Sort of related but Conny, and possibly Molly, are the only people in the Achewood world that I'd trust to keep some sentimental plants alive if I had to go out of town for a couple weeks. Ray would forget and buy new, "better" ones, Beef would hate himself for letting the plants die, Teodore ehhhhh, and so on.

Walter Cooke

The only advice I can add from when my spouse died in hospice is that The End happens much faster than you'd wish. You think you have more time.

Julie (HiDeeHoGal)

Better to watch a quiet, dignified death happen, no matter who it is, than see some of the other ways people die. A lesson I think more kids will learn in the future. Source: Experience in both, mother in hospice with widely metastatic cancer who I think did just basically fall asleep because of the narcotics and benzos we were administering, and work with doctors, in the ER especially.

Julie (HiDeeHoGal)

My daughter was bitten on the hand by a dachshund who was wagging his tail and acting friendly. That taught her a thing about appearances for sure.

b.zap

Magnus Intactus all raising his paw

Julie (HiDeeHoGal)

Also extra sympathies to people who had to deal with sudden, unexpected type losses. There's always too much to do at the most difficult time to be doing much at all.

Julie (HiDeeHoGal)

Being the stand-in unofficial nurse for my mom in the same situation, I definitely was generous with the morphine and the Ativan. I think that happens a lot.

Marc Harkness

I'm really loving seeing the heartfelt sharing by fellow chos. Last November I logged days of hours of bedside vigil with a friend whose cancer spread alarmingly over a four month period, and it was my second time listening to the last hours of someone's breathing. I had my guitar and played fingerstyle to the rhythm of the breathing. We took a break to go outside and stand around a fire that had been lit for him, and that's when he chose to leave the room. The experience was one of awe, as much of awfulness and pain as he experienced on the way toward that end. It may be part of all the cliches, but his face after he passed was one of peace and a little smile i'll never forget.

Achewood

It's always surprising to hear Philippe swear, which has happened what, three times? Two? But T was spraying that stuff around like knockdown plaster, so clearly he'd been given contextual permission

Josh Egbert

Never really understood T going off like that. The Lil Shaver didnt care what was taped to his sugary ritualistic offering.

Achewood

Thank you! I was concerned that last line didn't have enough punch, so I'm very happy to read it stuck the landing, however wobbly.

Achewood

Thank you Carl, well put. And what a profound moment to share with a father. I feel a strange kind of jealousy for a thing I never want, if that makes sense. I'm not even going to try to imagine my kid going through that, at least until after dinner.

Achewood

At least if Lyle watched them they'd be topped up on uric acid and nitrogen.

Achewood

I'm sorry Walter. It was much the same experience here. We heard it was "the week," flew across the country the next day, and he was unconscious by the time we touched down.

Achewood

I'm gearing up for one of those Assisted DMT deaths, personally. In a hundred years. When I am one hundred and fifty.

J. Alex

T is gonna sheepishly apologize and ask for that silver the second he remembers that he likes to buy and eat food.

Achewood

Many beautiful and heartbreaking stories are coming out indeed, and this is certainly chief among them. We played his favorite music while he passed, unconsciously and on the morphine, but I believe the sounds factored positively into whatever form his final brainwaves were taking.

Achewood

There is no smaller dog with a bigger chip on its (faulty) shoulder than a dachshund.

Achewood

He has a latent parental instinct, and a healthy awareness of how shameless the modern world — particularly real estate agents — is. So, he was as good a place as any to channel my rage about this thing that happened in my actual life, to my cute teensy kid.

Achewood

That's what fishing around in Ray's couch cushions is for. Which has been slim pickins lately, due to "tap to pay" meaning no more cash anywhere.

Julie (HiDeeHoGal)

After 150 years your brain will be trail mix. You will think you're having a DMT trip while watching a sunset. Not a bad thing though. Personally I'm hoping for a boatload of Godfather OG, a refined carb binge to end them all, some clean fent if there is any, then a long shot of propofol. Holst's Neptune on repeat. Maybe burning some kyara fugaku. DNR/DNI/NO CPR. Amen.

kdusjjdhxksj

I have never been there when someone died, and I think I'm okay with that. On the two occasions where I've knowingly said goodbye to someone I would not see again, I didn't do well at putting a satisfying button on Everything, and then for some reason felt bad about it later. I have only seen one dead person as far as I know, a good friend whose family had opted for a truly inexplicable open casket after he had shot himself in the head with a .45. If you're not a gun person, that's a pretty big bullet, and I did not enjoy that experience. I see Connie's point but I'm leaning Teodor on this one, I feel like you can get a pretty good handle on the Great Comings and Goings without personally observing them

Joel Shaughnessy

I was in a dive bar drinking PBR with 6 improvisers and our coach after a practice session when my mom called. I walked out front of the bar and tried to understand. Dad had a heart attack. My father-n-law had had a couple by this time so I asked if I needed to come home immediately or we’d take turns at the hospital but it became immediately obvious it was silly to ask and it was too late. We always assume we’ll have more time. When my next morning early flight arrived he had been gone for a few hours. I declined the opportunity to see his body. A few months later my family stood on a hill while my 8 year old nephew dumped his urn in the grass, getting a hefty portion of the ashes into his Nikes. My father had bootlegged 500+ dvds before he died, stockpiling them to watch in retirement. He had Netflix and Blockbuster-by-mail subscriptions, arriving daily, copying them and sending them back, printing dvd labels and jackets and putting them into cases. We threw them all out in a purge the weekend after the funeral, not wishing to inherit the FBI’s wrath.

Sedric and Charlie

Bitten kids make dilligent parents. Dilligent parents make unbitten kids. Unbitten kids make lax parents. Lax parents make bitten kids

C C

Right on HiDeeHoGal, right on.

C C

Ray is a good thought. I was thinking Beef because he has probably thought of this exact scenario before. Except he was the one dying

C C

Instead of doing anything I had planned to do around the house this beautiful night, I have read through every one of these 80 comments so far. I'm just amazed at how they have touched me. August Wilson said (among other things) "Times healing balm is essentially a hoax". My Mother died 3 years ago. This women I knew, this mother I had, was among the strongest people I have ever know. Fiercely intelligent and competent, with a very artistic sensibility, but a take no shit person if there ever was one. For the last five years of her life, I watched her lose her hearing and than her eyesight. A person who drank in life and pissed out nails, cut off from all sensation and experience. And, there was nothing anyone could do about it. She knew that too. She was living at my sister's house, the hospice workers told us she was close, for some reason it took me by surprise even though I should have known it. I had just never thought there was anything she couldn't beat. I sat by her bedside and held her hand, she had not been 'conscious' that whole day, finally My wife and I took my Dad back to their house, he wanted to feed the cats and we all thought we would be coming back in the morning. She died that night, it was crushing to wake up my Dad and tell him. The family has never been the same. It's said that "death is a part of life". I tried to be wise and console my Dad when I said that to him. He said "No, life is life and death is death" I'm still not sure what that means, I couldn't say anything.

Datura

just slap some subway surfers on the bottom he'll love it also vinyl flooring (especially grey skeumorphic wood) is literally evil and demonic and i mention this at every opportunity possible regardless of circumstances

cody

I dislike that specific style too but your passion suggests there’s more to your distaste than that. Spill the beans!

Strange Matter (edited)

Comment edits

2026-09-20 10:00 This comic hit hard, like in a cartilage head kinda way. "I proved myself a coward who would desert a dying man" is always in my internal dialogue over death, in a warning sense, about those close to me who passed before I could do this or that for them, with them, whatever it was that was next, or even for not being in the room when they left. Its a good thing to remember, and a good guide in the coil, to remember to greet death when she arrives, but its also good to balance that with letting go, accepting that there was always something else with these people, something unfinished, because life isn't long enough for everything good.
2025-08-25 06:15

A. C.

To be frank, I don't know which side of this issue I fall on...

Achewood

I think that anecdote about the baffling open casket choice is going to be revisiting me for at least several days.

Achewood

Thank you for the story, Joel. I appreciate the unique and idiosyncratic details, along with the chronicling of those few terrible moments of realization.

Achewood

Thank you for the story. Wonderfully told.

Achewood

I too would like a spilling of the beans. Personally, aside from looking tacky and cheap, I assume they're an environmental nightmare to produce, and also off-gas terrible things into the home for years. Have I installed them in a house I was preparing for sale? Yes. Would I put them in my own home? We chose cork when it came time for that kind of solution.

Achewood

There are innumerable European countryside paths to wander down, Japanese treats to eat, flowers to press between the leaves of Oscar Wilde novels. While we can never get to everything, this is an irrefutable reminder to not waste time, either. Today, I uninstall the Reddit app.

Achewood

I don't think either side is entirely correct. This comic was just one of those where an idea which has no solution is bandied about until someone got the last dig. Next week: Roomba Cinema of all Werner Herzog films.

Walter Cooke

@Ruxine: a perfectly valid rumination on the concept of impermanence.

Gryffyd Dempsey

I wasn't there when my brother died of leukemia, but evidently it was painful, and in effect was a doctor-sanctioned overdose of morphine. Perhaps at seventeen I could have handled being there, and maybe I wouldn't still be having dreams over forty years later that he was still alive and my parents had concealed this somehow.

ladiesbane

Why must you turn this strip into a den of lies? (Alternatively: "you'll be baaaack")

ladiesbane

The vinyl flooring you describe looks like a dodge-tide day in the dungeon dimensions, a frozen moment of slack water at the sludgy shores of hell. I thought it was intentional.

Taylor

Yeah real CPR is an act of violence on the body. Movie CPR is practically a massage compared to it, though I still couldn’t stand watching even that for a few years.

Taylor

Can’t speak to 40 years, but I can say that 5 years later even after being in the room at the time I still have the “they’re alive but have been gone for other reasons” dreams. So that may just be a thing

Achewood

Thank you for the excellent term "dodge tide"

Achewood

Thanks for sharing this Gryffyd. I've had dreams about the dead where we get to interact again, and I consider those moments gifts. I hope you've had a similar experience.

Alexander Rediger

Someone trying to talk to Cormac McCarthy about children.

Achewood

Note to self: read Blood Meridian at some point

Achewood

I cain't be callin ye every bloody week now cannae

Kriegsaffe No. 9

...oh man that hit enter and submitted? I didn't even realize, wow. Chiming in to say I really felt this one too, I've lost three aunts and an uncle this year alone. Aunt Judy was the proverbial invincible fool--she once got bitten by a black widow spider and slept it off. She just passed away a few hours after we saw her last. Aunt Gloria we saved from an internal injury after doing a check-in, only to lose her just as abruptly a few weeks later. I'm waiting as we speak to see if my best friend has cancer or not. I am both Teodor and Mr. Bear in this scenario. I miss them and I wish I were there but relieved in a sick way that I wasn't. It's the sheer human beauty of Achewood that makes me love it so much. Thank you.

Achewood

Thank you for the extremely kind words. I hope the universe realizes that by stacking your tragedies like cordwood this year, you're owed a brilliant and happy 2026.

FactWino

I was there, but not actually present in the final moments. Same dreams, that my parents just thought it would somehow be better if they pretended he’d died, then I find him now. Been going on over 40 years for me too. Man, the elation if feel when I see him again makes me wish I believed in heaven. Interesting that this is a common dream.

Jimbobalinski

I watched my maternal grandmother suffer unconsciously through her death rattle some years ago. She was in a hospice at the time, and got to die of natural causes. Her father built the first public school for black children in their county back in what I guess was the 20's. The difference between back then and now astounds me sometimes. I'm certain she witnessed many amazing things, but she was not the kind of person who could ever articulate her memories in an artful way. Her memory is still extremely vivid in the minds of her children and grandchildren. I've also spent a non insignificant amount of time around corpses. My best friend was a mortician for many years, working out of the town's oldest mortuary home which was built before radio and looked like a properly haunted place, complete with an embalming room fit for a psychological horror movie. He would get late night calls and ask if I wanted to give him some company while he did his work. We would burn one in the parking lot and I would watch him jab a trocar into some dead man's stomach, then turn on the diesel punk embalming machine which sucked out most of the body's fluids and replaced them with a churning mix of pastel colored embalming fluids. Sometimes he had to get really rough with the body to make it cooperate, such as forcing the jaws shut and holding them together with metal wire inside the mouth. Sometimes barbed plastic hemispheres were lodged under the eyelids to make sure they remained closed. There is a big difference between the living in the dead. You notice it immediately. The body becomes an empty husk, as it is often described. There is no spark. No fire in the boiler. This makes the miracle of life seem all the more precious. It's not exactly something that I would insist a child witness, but maybe a family pet passing away can teach the same valuable lesson that Cornelius is trying to impart on Phillipe. Life may be a momentary distraction on the way to the grave, but it's also the only game in town. Valuing it is the only sane thing we can do in such an insane world.

Achewood

This is a really lovely piece of writing, thank you. I apologize for missing it first time around. Stuff like this could easily take the throne abandoned by Bourdain, Ruhlman, et al. (I know they're food writers and this is about embalming, but "write what you know.")