Rigor Mortis & Tenderness

Like an addict for smack, I headed back to the closing bookstore today to make absolutely sure I left no curious tome unfound. I grabbed an interesting volume by Dr. Miles Bader entitled, "10,001 Food Facts, Chef's Secrets & Household Hints."

Being a vegetarian I found it oddly provoking that the page I flipped open to was in the "Meat" section. My eyes were immediately drawn to a paragraph, "Rigor Mortis and Tenderness".

"The process of rigor mortis occurs in all animals and is characterized by the stiffening of the meat and occurs a few hours after slaughtering. If meat is not consumed immediately after it is slaughtered then you should wait at least 15-36 hours which gives the enzymes a chance to soften the connective tissue."

I never really thought about this happening to the meat we eat(or used to eat). Instead, I associated rigor mortis only with the death of a human being.

My mother found my brother after he died. She stopped at his house on the way back from their cottage to check in and instantly thought it was odd that just the screen door was closed, the front door open. He was laying face down on the rug, like he had just gotten up from the sofa and fell flat forward.

Five years have gone by and I still cannot even fathom the scene. The shorts he was wearing, his legs blue, his shoes neatly placed to the side of the couch. His body stiff and cold to the touch. None of this I saw with my own eyes. My mother, running to him and crouching down, lifting his head up as fluids fell from his nose. "Oh Thommy, get up! Oh, Thom! Thom!" She rocked and held him, her lifeless first son.

My father called me on very sunny and beautiful summer Sunday. Wincing he told me he thought we had "lost" Thommy. What do you mean lost? He was headed to my mother. To pick her up.

Calling my mother's cell phone the voice of a man I did not recognize answers.

"Who is this?" I say, pissed off.

"This is Officer Blahdiddy-Blah. Who is THIS?"

"Let me talk to my mother!" I heatedly reply.

"Mom?"

She is not there. There is nothing but the sound of primal, gutteral sadness, horror, loss and disbelief. There is really no way to describe it. It was the deep and soulful wail of a mother in dire distress. Gurgling, groaning and grunting and then, a few almost undiscernable "Oh, Thommys", sporadically.

The image I live with is one I never witnessed, only imagined. The feelings I have are so painful and horrifying they make me feel like I am suffocating. My mother, how can I even begin to know what she felt and still feels like? The bleak and unbearable image of my mother holding and gentley rocking my brother in her arms back and forth, over and over, there is nothing she can do but grieve and wail. Wailing to will the life back into her baby.

There is nothing more tender and heartbreaking to me.


death, child, brother, wailing, mourning