On call for body collection
Students help transport corpses to funeral home at all hours of the night in exchange for a free place to live
Liz Essley
Issue date: 4/23/09 Section: News
If the person died recently, the corpse feels as if it is just asleep, Heisman said; others have stiff-ened with rigor mortis.
After they give the family time to pay respects to the body, they drive it back to the funeral home.
Heisman said his hardest body call was for a deceased man who was "supposed to die of old age," but instead died from other causes.
His eyes glistened as he recalled the scene.
"The granddaughter found him. She was pretty shaken up," he said.
John Reist, professor of Christianity and literature, worked in a funeral home as a seminary stu-dent. He said the job taught him that he doesn't want to die and doesn't want to be embalmed.
But he learned another lesson, too: "Living at the funeral home also reminded me that what you have, you must savor and relish."
His coworker George once told him about how everybody goes out "toes up."
"To think that in 40 or 50 or 70 years, you're all going to be going toes up, it's quite moving, isn't it?" Reist mused.
Heisman said the job has forced him to reflect upon the unfairness of death.
"I guess I don't think death was meant to be part of life at first, but it definitely is now," Heis-man said. "It's unfair, yes, but a lot of human experience is unfair. It's something that's hard to make sense of. In some ways it's a human experience and in some ways it's not."
After they give the family time to pay respects to the body, they drive it back to the funeral home.
Heisman said his hardest body call was for a deceased man who was "supposed to die of old age," but instead died from other causes.
His eyes glistened as he recalled the scene.
"The granddaughter found him. She was pretty shaken up," he said.
John Reist, professor of Christianity and literature, worked in a funeral home as a seminary stu-dent. He said the job taught him that he doesn't want to die and doesn't want to be embalmed.
But he learned another lesson, too: "Living at the funeral home also reminded me that what you have, you must savor and relish."
His coworker George once told him about how everybody goes out "toes up."
"To think that in 40 or 50 or 70 years, you're all going to be going toes up, it's quite moving, isn't it?" Reist mused.
Heisman said the job has forced him to reflect upon the unfairness of death.
"I guess I don't think death was meant to be part of life at first, but it definitely is now," Heis-man said. "It's unfair, yes, but a lot of human experience is unfair. It's something that's hard to make sense of. In some ways it's a human experience and in some ways it's not."
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