Sunday, April 17, 2011

cremation

Lohbado wandered down a sidewalk, which sloped downwards, outside the hospital. Years ago, he worked in a hospital. One of his jobs was to burn things from pathology. When the freezer got full, he'd wheel a cart loaded with black plastic bags to the incinerator and burn them. One time he and his buddy Edgar tore open some bags to have a peek at what was inside. They saw livers, brains, a stomach and stuff like that, body parts from autopsies or operations. Edgar opened the metal door. They threw in the garbage bags and pulled a lever.

Everything would turn to ash. Eventually his body would be a corpse. Lohbado wanted to be cremated. Sometimes, as a body burns, it has to be raked with a poker, to make sure all the bones get burned. Little chunks of bones sometimes remained in the ashes. The ashes would be put in metal boxes and then given to someone who knew the deceased. If nobody claimed the ashes, they would be stored for a few years before being buried along with the contents of other unclaimed urns.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

2 + 2 = 5