Status Updates From Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: An...

While it’s true that bodies create offensive sights and smells, a dead human body poses very little threat to a living one, the bacteria involved in decomposition are not the same bacteria that cause disease.

If they asked whether their body would rot before cremation, I’d say, “See, the bacteria start eating you from the inside out as soon as you die, but body refrigeration really puts a stop to that.” The strange thing was, the more honest I was, the more satisfied and grateful people were.

Decomposition was just another reality of death, a necessary visual (and aromatic) reminder that our bodies are fallible, mere blips on the radar of the vast universe.

Royce was vivid green, like the color of a 1950s Cadillac. He was a “floater,” the unfortunate funeral industry term for bodies found dead in the water, in Royce’s case, the San Francisco Bay.

“All this stuff,” he pulled his gloved hands apart to reveal the yellowed deposits, “this is why you can’t be fat!”

I must have looked insulted at this accusation, because he quickly added, “Naw, I don’t mean you specifically can’t be fat, girl, you got a good figure. But I know you must have fat friends. Tell your fat friends.”

Mike was always politically correct in his terminology. He once referred to the victims of Oakland’s gang violence as “young urban men of colour.”