Exhumed

I dug up a body once. Not many people can say that. I always wanted to do something unequivocal in my life and I think this qualifies. I did it all by myself too. The idea came to me one night while I was watching one of those old mummy horror movies. I wasn’t supposed to be up that late but sometimes I can’t sleep. I started getting curious about those mummies and how they had managed to survive being buried all those years. I wondered about decomposition and whether or not worms do eat our bodies.

Everyone says that when you die your body becomes worm food. After a bit of online research I learned that the rate of decomposition depends on a number of factors, the big one being the type of earth a body is buried in and how high the salination levels are in the soil. The higher the moisture the faster the decay, the same goes for the salt. Mummies were buried in the desert. There really isn’t much moisture or salt there so the body doesn’t decay as fast. I learned that the rate of decomposition occurs much faster when the body is left exposed to the elements than underground, and it occurs even faster when the body decomposes underwater. The average person, being buried 6 feet underground inside a casket, can take about a year to be left just as a skeleton with teeth. It interested me so much that I had to see it for myself. The internet is great but nothing beats seeing it in the flesh, or the bone in this case.

The next day I went to the local museum to see if there might be any bodies on display. I didn’t find any. I asked the two guys sitting behind the front desk if there were any bodies, in case I missed them. “It is not that kind of museum,” one of the guys said.

“But isn’t this a war museum,” I asked.

“Yea,” he said nodding his head.

“Well, don’t people die in wars,” I asked, nodding my head.

This time the other guy replied, “war museums don’t showcase dead bodies, okay?”

“Okay,” I said.

I left still feeling like a war museum should have dead bodies or at least pictures coloured pictures of them. I just really wanted to see a dead body, preferably one that was still decomposing. Maybe one that had been dug up by the police to help solve a cold case or an unsolved murder. With that in mind I decided to try out the local police station.

I waited in line for almost an hour before I got to talk to the police officer working the front desk. He didn’t look very friendly but I had gone all this way, I had to ask.

“Are there any unsolved cases that need bodies to be dug up, and if there are could I go and watch?”

He didn’t say anything for a minute and neither did I since I was the one who asked the question and it was his turn to talk.

“You want to watch a body being dug up,” he asked me.

“Yea, is that possible?”

“No, it is not. You should go see a priest kid.”

I didn’t understand why I should see a priest but I did understand that I wasn’t going to be able to watch a body being dug up to help solve a cold case.

“Try a funeral home,” he yelled at me as I was leaving.

I started to nod my head in agreement, “yea that’s a good idea.”

I thanked him and the next day I called my local funeral home and asked if I could stop by. My appointment was for 10 am.

The funeral director was a very nice man. I explained why I was there and he said that he understood and that it was perfectly natural for me to be curious about death. It felt nice to be understood. He took me to the place where they keep the dead bodies. It was like a big fridge. Everything was metal and cold. But there were no bodies inside because nobody had died and needed to be buried. Disappointed again, I thanked him and left. It seemed like I was never going to see a dead body.

That night I called up a friend and told him about the troubles I was having. He said that in some high schools kids get to dissect dead animals and that one time his dad got really drunk and dug up their dog in the back yard. He never got to see what the dog looked like, just his dad crying and clutching the little box that the dog was buried in. And there I found the solution to my problem. I was going to have to do it myself; I was going to have to dig up a body. I got off the phone with my friend and searched online for directions to the local cemetery. I decided to go there the next day to scope it out. But before then, I did some more research. I learned that it was customary for bodies to be buried 6 feet in the ground. There was no way I could dig that far down by myself, I was only 12. But I also learned that in older times people didn’t bury bodies as deep as they do today. I just needed to find an old grave.

The cemetery was huge. It seemed like it would be impossible to find an old grave in the sea of hundreds. I was going to have to check the dates on each one. The whole time I was walking through the cemetery I kept thinking about a joke my dad told me one time. We had just drove passed a cemetery when he said to me “how many dead people do you think are in there,” pointing out the window at all the graves.

“I don’t know,” I said and shrugged, “four hundred?”

Laughing, my dad said “no, they’re are all dead!”

It’s a good joke. I plan on using it one day.

I was in search for the deadest people in the cemetery. The ones who had been buried the longest. After a while I learned to easily pick out the old headstones. They were usually cracked and discolored with moss growing on them. There weren’t a bunch of them but enough to choose from. Most of them were buried in the back of the cemetery, close to the tree line. When I reached the tree line and turned around to face the way I came in, I could no longer see the road, just the tips of a few houses. It was perfect. No one would be able to see me, especially if I went at night time. Out of the handful of old graves I picked the oldest one, it had a deep depression in the earth, and it seemed like a safe bet.

Wasting no time at all I headed for home so I could get ready to come back that night. I expected it was going to be really hard to see since the grave was so far from the street lights, I packed all the flashlights I could find, and my dad’s old lantern.

I couldn’t wait. My curiosity of seeing a real live dead body mixed with the excitement of doing something very illegal had my senses on the run. I waited until my mom fell asleep, and then waited an hour after that to be sure she was really asleep. While waiting, I thoroughly checked all my supplies, testing each flashlight. Then I placed all of the items in my book bag in order of importance. Flashlights were on top, then a PB & J sandwich in case I got hungry. Next was a rain coat in case the weather turned bad, and lastly my dad’s Polaroid camera to record my findings. I snuck out the patio door because it was quieter than the front. It led to the shed where my bike was, as well as the gardening tools. I chose the lightest shovel and tied a rope around each of the ends so it could be slung over my back like a bow. My back pack was heavy and it swung from side to side as I biked my way towards the cemetery. The gate to the cemetery was locked, I had to leave my bike and climb the fence. Once on the other side I pulled out a flashlight and made my way to the chosen grave. It was really dark and it only got darker the further I went. I couldn’t see anything beyond the beam of my flashlight. I bumped into headstones constantly and once fell hard over a broken one. I landed on my face and scraped my knee. I realized then how foolish I was having not packed a first aid kit. This was a dangerous mission, I should have known better. I got up and as I walked I could feel blood trickling down the hairs on my leg, it tickled and hurt at the same time, but I pushed on.

I made my way to the old headstones. I must have shone the light on all of them a dozen times but I couldn’t find the one I had selected the day before. It wasn’t there. I walked around and around but couldn’t find it. I should have marked it with something. Disappointed, but not defeated, I resolved to choose another. I found one, from what I could tell in the dark had a fair sized depression. The date on the headstone read 18??- 1854. It was hard to read in the dark. It wasn’t as old as the other but it would do. I surrounded the grave with flashlights and my dad’s old lantern, and set to digging.

I lifted off the layer of grass first. It took a while but once it was off I started to dig. It was slow going at first because of all the roots, something I hadn’t expected. Every time I stuck the shovel into the earth it got snagged on a root. When the roots were too thick I had to pull out the shovel and try again in a different spot. It was slow work. I checked my watch periodically to gauge my progress, it wasn’t good. I planned on having the body dug up and photographed by 3:00 am the latest. I knew then it wasn’t going to happen that way. The best I could hope for was to finish before the sun came up and have time to fill the grave back in the best I could before the world woke up.

With the time deadline driving me I dug faster. Sweat poured down my face and I listened to myself grunt as I drove the shovel into the ground. My knee throbbed and it hurt when I bent my leg to pick up the dirt. But I didn’t care.

When it seemed like all I had ever done was dig and all I would ever do was dig, I found something. I heard it before I saw it. It clinked against the shovel in a way that a rock doesn’t. I chucked the shovel to the side and grabbed the closest flashlight. I scanned the toiled earth, moving it gently with my fingers trying not to rebury what I had uncovered. My hand brushed against something cold and small, I squeezed my fingers around it. I knew what it was before I saw it, a nail. My heart beat with excitement and I shone the light on it. It was only a few inches long with a flat top and square edges. It was a handmade nail, an old nail. Something that could have been used to close a coffin. I put the nail in my pocket and kept digging. I heard the clink again and reached down to find another one. This one still had a little bit of wood surrounding it. I figured I was probably very close to the body by now and that the coffin wood had most likely decomposed. I worried that if I kept using the shovel I might damage the body. I got down on my knees and started to dig with my hands. I had to take the flashlights into the grave with me so I could get a good look at what I was doing. I was about a foot down. I flung handfuls of dirt behind me. I was in search for the prize, the skull. As I ran my hands through the dirt I started to feel little clumps of what I first thought were tiny rocks. I picked up one of the clumps and looked at it closely under the light. It was a dark brown, the color of the soil Sand it had little hairs coming out of it. I shone light onto the spot I was digging and could see dozens of these little things, some were bigger than others. I grabbed a fair sized one and snapped it in half. Bone. Small bone fragments and the little hairs were fibers. I had found the skeleton, or part of it at least. I just hoped that the whole thing hadn’t been reduced to small fragments of bone. That would be quite the disappointment.

I kept digging and whenever I found bigger fragments I put them aside the lantern by my head. I got excited again when I found a tooth, a front tooth. I turned it over in the palm of my hand, it was pretty big for a tooth, I put it with the bone fragments. Having found some teeth I figured I was probably straddling the chest area of this corpse. I checked my watch, 4:15 am. The sun would be up in under an hour, I didn’t have much time. I needed to find something that resembled a human body soon. I dug faster, taking less care of the tiny bone fragments. I found more teeth and part of the jaw. But when I had dug down about another half foot I knew that I wouldn’t find any more of the skull. It must have decomposed. I checked my watch again, 4:45. The sun hadn’t broken through yet but its rays were lightening up the sky. I resigned myself to quit and start filling in the grave. I took pictures of the grave and then teeth and the piece of jaw bone. I waited for the pictures to produce and checked to make sure they came out good. I saw something in one of the photos. Something shiny. I put the picture down and looked for it with the flashlight; it was in the spot I had been sitting. I reached down and pulled it out. It was a necklace, a silver one, a locket. I rubbed the dirt off it and let it twirl in the light. It was beautiful.

Seeing the locket did something to me. It humanized the human corpse, gave it a history, a life. I realized that I had dug up the body of a woman and flung her bone fragments all over the grave. ‘I am sorry,’ I whispered. I took a photo of the necklace and then placed it back where I had found it. I put the bone fragments and teeth that I had collected back in the grave and set to reburying the woman.

By the time I was finished the sun was almost completely visible. My mom would be up soon but I didn’t care. In the light of the day I could read clearly the name on the headstone, Abigail Smith, 1802 – 1854.

I left the cemetery that day different then when I had entered it. With my back pack on and shovel hung over my shoulders, I climbed the fence and rode my bike home thinking not of corpses and decomposition but of a woman named Abigail Smith. I had something new to research.