Today’s Mournful Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
Roman law forbade burial in urbe (within the city). To preserve the sanctity of the living, cemeteries were located on roads leading out of town, such as the Appian Way. These laws derived from a need to keep the dead at a distance. The Romans feared their dead. In fact, Roman funeral customs derived from a need to propitiate the sensibilities of the departed. The very word funus may be translated as dead body, funeral ceremony, or murder. There was genuine concern that, if not treated appropriately, the spirits of the dead, or manes, would return to wreak revenge.
Technically, all that was necessary to make burial legal under Roman law was to scatter a handful of earth over the body. However, funerals were as significant to the Romans as they would later be to the Victorians. A lavish funeral, conducted by professional undertakers, was considered essential. Burial clubs enabled individuals to save for their last rites; even slaves could join. Funerals normally took place three days after death. The corpse was washed and anointed with oils, as it was believed that the body was polluted by death and would not rest easy without ceremonial cleansing. It was then wrapped in a special toga and placed on a bier. This was carried from the house as a chorus of paid mourners wailed, in contrast to the studied calm of the household. The funeral procession observed strict hierarchy, with the heir at the forefront, dressed in a black toga, the folds of which he held before his face, his hair deliberately disheveled to signify bereavement. The wearing of black was significant, as black garments were thought to confer invisibility upon the bereaved, protecting them from vengeful spirits.
Following directly behind the bier were the servants who would, in earlier times, have been slaughtered at the graveside, along with a warrior’s horse. Musicians and torchbearers came next, with the rear taken up by the mimes – sinister, silent figures in wax masks modeled on dead members of the family. The cortége would stop at the Forum, where a funeral oration was given, before the procession made its way out of the city walls to the cemetery where, after burial, a funeral feast took place at the graveside, with libations poured to appease the spirit of the dear departed.
Roman Funeral Procession, first century BC
Culled from: Necropolis: London and Its Dead
Damn. Funerals were better before!
“My Brush With Morbidity”
“My Brush With Morbidity” is a feature in which I share tales of the morbid sent to me by Asylum Eclectica patrons. If you have a tale to share, send it my way! (Archives can be found here.)
“My Brush(es) With Morbidity” by Hannah
So my parents are foster parents. Ever since I was born (and even before), they fostered children through both the state and private charity organizations. We have a license to take medical kids, too – children who use G-tubes to feed, or have tracheotomies, or are confined to wheelchairs, etc. There are a couple of devastating abuse cases we’ve seen because of our medical license, but there’s probably too many of those to write here. So I’ll just focus on the stories of my brothers.
So, I have three adopted brothers. Two of them are no longer alive. The first one we adopted when I was about 8 or so, and he was probably the first real miracle I’ve ever experienced. He was born without a brain (hydranencephaly) – possessing only the brain stem and a tiny rim sliver. We knew he would most likely die before his first birthday when we adopted him. His parents weren’t equipped to deal with the medical expenses/issues brought on by a child who would never learn to walk. In fact, the doctors said he would be a vegetable throughout his life – he would not be able to feed himself, or control his movements, or make sounds. He learned how to coo and smile.
He died in his sleep when he was around two (one-and-a-half?) years old. I still remember it to this day – my mom came into my room in the dark of night, and woke me up from my sleep. I could make out the form of my brother in her arms, even through the dim lamplight. She told me that he had passed away, peacefully, in his slumber. When I asked her what that meant, she explained to me that he was dead.
She let me hold him and cradle him, and look at his face – he did look peaceful, like she’d said. We could never really know what his last moments were like, but surely, they had been painless.
My second adoptive brother came to us when I was about 11 or 12 years old. He, too, was born with hydranencephaly, and his parents didn’t know very much English at all. They were hardly able to care for him in a country whose language they could barely speak. This time, I understood better what difficulties his life might involve, and the fighting potential that he might possess.
He was a fighter. He had a little less brain than my first adoptive brother – literally, only the brain stem. It was pretty fantastic that he was even alive. He was so cute! He never learned to smile or make noises, and we had to feed him through a G-tube – and, through it all, he was a total sweetheart. In his last days, he stopped eating and drinking. We couldn’t give him anything – his body would just reject the substances. We knew his death was coming – it wouldn’t be sudden, like my first brother’s had been. We prepared for his passing. He was prescribed morphine. Thing was, though, he refused to give in easily. He went seven whole days without liquid, which is pretty much physically impossible lol. Healthy human beings are thought to be able to live only 3-5 days without drinking. I remember the call I got – I was at school, then, and the teacher gave me a phone and told me to go out in the hall. My mom was on the other end, and she told me that my brother was dying. I asked her if she was sure, since he’d been holding out so long. She said yes; he was gasping, his breaths were shallow, and his skin was losing color. So I was rushed back home in the middle of a school day, and entered the bedroom to see my mom, dad, grandparents, and younger brother/sister all surrounding my baby brother. I can’t remember if I made it in time to see him take his last breath, but I got to hold his tiny body in my arms – just like I had my other brother, a few years before. He was pretty much skin and bones, considering that he’d gone even longer without food than he had water. He was all sunken in, kind of like a little ghost. He only half resembled his healthy self; the way he’d looked before he stopped feeding.
My two brothers are buried next to each other in the same graveyard, alongside my stillborn younger sister. I used to play soccer, too, and one of the moms of my teammates underwent a difficult pregnancy throughout which she grew close to my mother. Her son was to be born with serious defects, according to the ultrasounds – and, knowing what my mom had been through, went to her for advice and support. Her son died not long after his birth, and he, too, is buried next to my younger siblings. There is also a foster child buried there (one of the cases of the private agency we’re a part of) who died shortly after birth. His parents, after delivering him, moved out of the country – never to return. He has no family members here to remember him, so we were entrusted with the job. We keep watch and care for all five of their graves, even to this day.
Since then, I’ve decided to go into medicine (you can see why, lol), and I’ve had a lot of cool brushes with morbidity because of it! I was able to go to a camp this summer for prospective premeds, where I attended 4 live surgeries, 2 demonstrations, and sutured a cold slab of human flesh (yup, it stunk like formaldehyde and felt like blubber). If you’ve ever seen the really serious surgeries being performed onscreen in TV dramas or movies – well, lemme tell ya, that’s bullshit, lol. The surgeons I hung out with were hilarious and very practical. They were playing Rihanna (and a bunch of 90s alt-rock hits, wtf?) in the background. When one of the patients began snoring very, VERY loudly (sleep apnea), they kept making fun of his ridiculous noise level. They’d hold up the guy’s arm to us, or something, and explain the situation very calmly. They’d pick at his tendon with the scalpel (it looked like a candycane!), point out the yellow layers of fat, and show us what was what. At one point, the blood collected in the guy’s arm cavity went spurting everywhere, all over the floor and on our clothes! They had it all under control, of course, but they were all like “oh shit, sorry” and the nurses mopped up all the blood.