Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust, and Life is a Limited Time Offer

February 18, 2015Tonya Lanthron 2 Comments

I’m not sure which one(s) is (are) dead in the pic, but I’m pretty sure they all are by now.

It’s Ash Wednesday again- a day to reflect on personal mortality and the myriad imperfections of humanity, so here I am trotting out the postmortem pics collection. As macabre as it is, I know I’m not the only one who is fascinated with Victorian era postmortem photography. As for the kid in the above pic, he looks like he’s seen a ghost. Mom and Dad look pretty much comatose, which is why I can’t tell for sure who’s dead and who’s not. I’m pretty sure I would have the same expression on my face as the kid if I were required to sit that close to dead people, so that’s another reason why I wonder if the kid, the parents, just one or the other parent, or all three were dead when this pic was taken. The reality is, now anyway, that they are all dead, unless the kid is 120 or something. Physical death is a 100% probability- it’s going to happen- and it’s just a question of when.

I could even get into a little Southern Baptist soteriology (even though it’s a bit odd because SB’s don’t observe Ash Wednesday) right about now too. Turn or burn, baby. You are gonna be worm food, so now’s your time to Get Right with the Lawd-uh!

Somehow seeking salvation from a dog and pony show like this seems about as effective as taking driving lessons from Ted Kennedy.

I do like her wig though. If only it were black.

I have had a rather cynical relationship with organized religion through the years. When I decided to read the Catechism of the Catholic Church (which many self-proclaimed Catholics have not) I learned that if I am to be intellectually honest with myself and with God there is no way I can claim to be Roman Catholic. There is some Weird Stuff in there. I almost joined an SB church because their theology tends to be very black and white. Saved/not saved, sin/not sin, and so on. You can know if you’re IN or OUT. I love the Baptist emphasis on Bible study too- but- for me the big problem with Baptists in general is that they tend to put too much on human free will- such as we “choose” to believe. I’m here to say that I firmly believe it’s God doing the choosing, and I don’t claim to understand that.

I discovered confessional Lutheranism when I was in college, and of all the interpretations and expressions of Christianity, to me it makes the most sense. Lutheranism- in its classic sense, is not perfect, but it allows for the grey areas, and allows for intellectual honesty and questions. There is space for the mystery that is God. There is understanding for my lack of ability to comprehend.

I have a hard time understanding why you would take pics of a dead kid surrounded by paper angels, but it was a different time.

I wish I could believe spiritual things as black and white (and there are some things that are) but I find myself asking way too many questions- questions where I simply have to accept the mystery and be okay that the answer is either something I don’t know or can’t understand.

I’m glad that I’m not the one who makes the vast decisions of the cosmos. I’m doing good to decide what to wear or what to eat, and grateful to have both clothes and food.

I’m pretty sure no one is going to want to memorialize me in stained glass.

I have more questions than answers and more failures than successes, but I have to believe there is some reason why I am sucking up valuable oxygen for the time being, whether I get it or not.

(Jesus said:) “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal.For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Matthew 6:19-21 (NRSV)

Today’s questions would be, “Where is my treasure? Where is my heart?”

I really have to think about both of those questions today.

Rage, Rage, at the Dying of the Light, and Please Let Me Go Suddenly…

August 11, 2014Tonya Lanthron 2 Comments

I wonder- sleeping? dead? doll?

There is something just not right, something incomplete and unfair, in an untimely death.

A good friend of ours, who claimed at one point to be an atheist, died Saturday night. It was not a pretty death (if there is such a thing) nor was it a quick or painless death. The poor man had dealt with cancer for the past four years- a bout of colon cancer that almost killed him back in 2010, and the stage 4 lung cancer he was diagnosed with back in April that finally spread throughout his body and slowly, painfully and agonizingly did him in. To greatly summarize the gory story, this guy spent the past month jacked up on every narcotic known to man, and was almost always straight out of his mind due to the cancer spreading to his brain. Nothing could quiet the unimaginable pain associated with cancer spreading like wildfire, not even the Tramadol and morphine and whatever other heavy duty drugs that the hospice people have at their disposal. Cancer is a pretty shitty way to die by all accounts. I don’t say that to trivialize his pain or the pain that his widow is still going through and reliving all those horrors, but words just can’t paint an accurate enough picture. I pray to God that I don’t die that way, and that I would be spared the awful reality of being a primary caretaker of a loved one dying that way, because I don’t have that kind of courage or strength.

Since everyone has to die, I could only ask to go the way my maternal grandmother did- suddenly, via a massive stroke that took her from walking, talking and being completely normal to being pretty much dead as a doornail in an instant. It really sucked for the rest of the family, but it actually gives me some peace knowing that she didn’t linger around and suffer for months or years, slowly and painfully deteriorating until she was unrecognizable.

Stephen King said it in his book Pet Sematary: Sometimes dead is better.

I am not in any hurry to take the Dirt Nap- nor am I in any hurry for anyone else I care about to bite the big one either- but I still have a really hard time with suffering, and watching people sort of fade and melt away before my eyes.

Maybe that’s what that whole “mid-life crisis” thing is- understanding that personal mortality is about more than just the Dirt Nap- it’s the little bites of decay and loss and downhill slide of entropy that we endure every day. Things like the realization that my eyes don’t adjust to close vision when I have my glasses on, or that the people I went to high school with look like my Dad’s friends- and that a good number of my Dad’s friends are dead.

The places are either gone or drastically changed, and that’s not even been from the distant past. I usually don’t have too many reasons to go downtown- save for the paper nightie appointment once a year- because I go to a different primary care Dr. and his office isn’t downtown. Yesterday I decided to take my granddaughter to the art museum (which I must recommend, as they have lots of fun stuff for kids) and I was amazed on the way down High St. to take her back home at observing the OSU campus. At least temporarily, campus has been de-skankified and yuppiefied almost beyond recognition. I think they’re trying to overcome their reputation of being the Midwest’s #1 school to get robbed and raped. Good luck with that. Especially on the night of the Michigan game. Leave your car- and yourself- at home. Watch the game, if you must, on TV.

Of course, campus gets a makeover about once every 20 years. It will take about a year or so for the current renovations to get trashed, and when you think it can’t get any nastier, some builders come in with bulldozers, raze most of it, and start again.

Maybe that’s what’s going on with me. I could use a renovation.

Home improvement is nowhere to be found in my box of talents. Believe that.

I would like to expand my education- not necessarily in a formal way, because, sadly, most so-called institutions of learning are all about the almighty dollar and/or all about filling young people’s heads with socialist/globalist garbage. Even poor Steve-o had to take two courses that I believed were total politically correct garbage- one course in “cultural sensitivity” and another on “our global economy.” The first course mostly informed him that as a white male he is/was responsible for all of the evils in the world today, from inequality in the workplace to global warming (both concepts are crocks of crap, IMO.) The second was supposed to be on economics but it ended up being a formalized diatribe on how industrialized nations are victimizing tribal peoples in third world holes, and how we should bury our cars and wipe with reusable cloths. That would have been sort of funny, except that his major was automotive science.

I think I will embark upon a self-directed expansion of knowledge, even though I know that my biases will play into that. It’s no worse than a tech school requiring my son to take courses in BS to graduate.

Today is a New Day, the Hardest Things to Do, and More Victorian Post Mortems

May 3, 2013Tonya Lanthron 1 Comment

As much as I dreaded what I had to do last night, I have an odd sense of peace about it. Sheena’s not suffering anymore. Even until the end she was herself- conscious, aware, but trapped in a body that couldn’t work right anymore. She lost the use of her back legs Wednesday afternoon. All we could do for her until the vet could come last night was to try to keep her clean and offer her water as she wanted it (she was not interested in food.)

I know all too well the scientific/medical reasons for Sheena’s rapid decline. She’d had mammary growths removed twice. The first time I didn’t send out for pathology, (there is only one veterinary pathology lab in Ohio, at Ohio State, and it’s expensive and time consuming to get results) but the second time I did, and the lab said those were benign, but then the growths came back with a vengeance. More than likely- at least the third go-round, anyway- it was mammary cancer, which can be virulent and spreads quickly in dogs. By the time I had noticed the mammary growths again (round 3) there were growths in her “armpits” or more accurately, under her forelegs, (lymph nodes abide there in dogs, just as they do in humans) and I decided that I would not subject her to more surgery. If anyone can gain anything from this experience it is that spaying dogs early can help prevent mammary cancer. Sheena had several litters of pups before we found her. We had her spayed, but spaying a 5 year old who’s had several litters doesn’t prevent cancer as effectively as spaying before the first heat.

Sheena didn’t have a good luck of the draw. She was deaf. She was without a doubt inbred. She had severe HD to the point of pretty much not having hip sockets at all. Her teeth were a disaster from the cage biting. Her physical coordination was worse than mine. By all accounts, Sheena was “defective merchandise.” But she was my dog, and she had a heart of gold. Part of me wanted to end her suffering, but another part of me finds it hard to let her go.

Clara and Lilo know where she’s buried. The two of them (they are both older than Sheena was) are still in good health, for which I am thankful. Clara and Lilo have always been close, but as soon as they figured out Sheena was dying they have been almost joined at the hip. Lilo has been carrying Sheena’s favorite toys around, and Clara has been rolling in the places that still must smell like her. Dogs grieve, too.

Today is a new day, but saying goodbye to a friend is always one of the hardest things to do. It’s got to be the hardest thing about life with dogs and cats. They just don’t live that long. For me, while it’s painful to say goodbye, it’s even more painful and empty to choose not to share life with dogs and cats. No, I am not looking for another #3- I think I’ll let Clara and Lilo enjoy things with just two dogs. I have four cats, after all.

The problem is, I know those are the famous last words. If I know Jerry, we will be back to three dogs within the month.

While I’m in the realm of the macabre, and still feeling a bit melancholy, I’ve found a few more of everyone’s favorites: Victorian-era post mortem pics. Yeah, I know it’s creepy, but as popular as these things are I can’t be the only one who finds them grotesquely fascinating.

I think this one was a mob hit- got the entire family, which was sort of sick.

This one is more tragic than anything. It’s bad enough these twins were likely stillborn, but for someone to want $756 for the original print?

This one sort of leads me to wonder if this child was OD’d on one of the many patent medicines of the day- that contained opium and alcohol?

I bet it happened a lot more than was ever found out.

From the unnatural position of the legs and arms, I almost thought this was a kid’s doll,

but then in Victorian times nobody would have wasted an expensive photograph on a doll.

Better Living Through Technology and Chemistry, and Disturbing Thoughts

March 5, 2013Tonya Lanthron 3 Comments

No one is more anti-smoking than an ex-smoker.

Even though back in the day I smoked the cowboy killers, (yes, I chain smoked the cowboy killers) today I find few of other people’s habits more annoying. The exception to that would be Jerry’s uncanny ability to spot either puke or shit combined with his complete unwillingness to actually clean up said puke, shit or other noxious mess.

On one hand, since cigarettes are legal and the government makes money on them, people should be allowed to smoke up- anywhere and everywhere- should they so desire. On the other, I am not a fan of having my airspace polluted by some jackwagon’s cig smoke.

I know it’s too complicated for Jerry. But there may be hope for others.

The above illustration doesn’t mention the damned cellophanes, but then again most smokers don’t just toss the foil and cellophane on the floor to clog up the vacuum cleaner, either. No matter how you scour the floor for cellophanes, there’s at least one that avoids detection and ends up clogging the vacuum cleaner, which begs one question and one statement.

1. What’s the bloody point of having a vacuum cleaner if you have to pick up half the shit on the floor before you vacuum so it doesn’t clog the machine?

2. Jerry was raised by wolves, which is why there is unauthorized detritus on the floor that shouldn’t be there to begin with. I should be grateful he knows how to wipe his ass.

I think some of the really weird Victorian artwork actually is drug-inspired. I mean, this dude was even impaired in his fashion choices. Elton John wouldn’t even wear this ensemble. When alcohol, opium and God only knows what else were readily available in just about every patent medicine in existence, I’m sure there were plenty of guys who wore bad clothes and thought they were riding around on (stoned) giant white pigeons.

I’m thinking duct tape would have kept this poor dead kid’s head up for the pic.

I’m assuming the little girl in the very front of this pic is dead by the vacuous stare and the way her head is flopped over. However, her mother is hanging on to her hair in a manner that would make an old-time Catholic mother proud. The expression on the mother’s face seems to be one of those “You will sit still dammit,” expressions rather than a mournful pose. Perhaps the two boys in the background were getting on her nerves, or maybe she was peeved because the dead one kept on flopping over. Maybe she grabbed the dead kid by the hair just to keep her steady in one place.

I have to wonder how many child deaths buried in the overwhelmingly high infant mortality rate of the Victorian era were actually inflicted by the mothers?

It would be easy enough to cover up one’s crime. Lots of kids died, and died suddenly from everything from typhoid to a good old fashioned case of the runs. An autopsy of that time – should anyone insist one be conducted- probably wouldn’t reveal poisoning or suffocation.

Just put it in their drink.

emetic:

adjective

1.causing vomiting, as a medicinal substance.

noun

2.an emetic medicine or agent.

I can think of a lot of things that have emetic qualities:

Obama. Just thinking about him and his illegal squatting in the White House makes me want to puke.

Exposed hairy butt cracks. Wrong on many levels, and tacky on either male or female.

I don’t throw up easily, which in this world is probably a good thing.

Party Like It’s 1895, Late Winter Apathy, and More Victorian Death

March 4, 2013Tonya Lanthron 1 Comment

Dead? Nah, it’s just early March in Central Ohio.

Early March in Ohio is about the same as late February. It’s cold. It’s windy. There is at least one form of precipitation happening at any given time. The season of Snowbooger Grey lingers on. Sometimes it lingers on until May.

So I figure I’ll go back to some of my favorite art (yes, photography is an art) and dig into some postmortem scans. I don’t know why I find 100 + year old pictures of dead people fascinating, except maybe to underscore that death is a constant and to remember that one’s time above ground is short, unless of course, you’re at the BMV.

“Lifetone” Embalming Fluid- for keeping stiffs fresher longer!

Someday, if I am ever free to determine my own décor, without having to worry about things getting ruined, broken or permeated with cigarette stink and dust, I would furnish my entire house in bizarre ephemera and trinkets that have a macabre twist- like the kinds of stuff featured on the show Oddities. The only problem with that (other than Jerry is as messy and destructive as a horde of hogs, so valuables have to be kept out of his reach) is that stuff is generally expensive if you don’t procure it in strange places like yard sales and flea markets and such.

I probably should go with Jerry more often when he goes to estate sales and yard sales and auctions but I really don’t have the attention span. I’m looking for completely different stuff than he is. He generally looks for redneck crap (lawn mowers, tools, beer-related ephemera, camping and fishing stuff, and occasionally firearms) to resell, while I look for the cool antique conversational items that are a bit harder to find.

For a generation of people who were prone to maudlin sentiment, I find it interesting that some Victorian era greeting cards were just plain emotionless. Maybe it’s like today, where you save the formal cards for obscure relatives and business connections with whom you wish to remain cordial, but not necessarily friendly.

Translation: I like you less than Neal Schon, but more than the Quaker Oat Box Guy.

The nice thing about this card is that I could pretty much say that about anyone who hasn’t gone out of his or her way to piss me off. I could design my own Victorian cards.

This is nice and neutral, but it begs the question:

Upon which list do you appear?

I’ve never really been the greeting card type. I like cards if they’re funny, and if they are relevant to the one getting the card. I don’t do maudlin sentiment well though, and I tend to be a bit of a wise ass if given the opportunity.

If they can walk on two legs, then they can carry AR15s. Just sayin’.

It’s bad that I’m this bored. However, it’s good that I am entertaining myself in a quasi-constructive way. The guys I work with really don’t like it when I put their faces on fat bikers, hippos, or even bimbos with really big boobs in bikinis. The bad thing is with the rise of both the easily concealed digital camera and WalMart, there is no end to just plain awful pics.

Some fashion statements are better left unsaid.

Tonight I have to drop Jezebel off to be spayed and declawed. I am always somewhat ambivalent about declawing cats, but Jezebel has a rather destructive habit of scratching on the door frames instead of the scratching post (F.B. also has claws, but she’s older, very sedate, lets me clip her claws, and actually uses the post.) Jezebel also gets caught in the curtains and on the furniture, and even though she will take medication without going spaz, she will not allow me to clip her claws. Isabel was a curtain climber when she was little as well as she had a rather disturbing habit of climbing people so she could ride around on your shoulder. Fanny almost destroyed one end of a chair arm, and almost gave me a really nasty cat bite when I tried to trim her claws, before she was old enough to be declawed. Cat bites are serious business. The only thing worse than being bitten by a house cat is being bitten by an AIDS or hepatitis infected human. Cats have bacteria in their saliva that can literally infect your blood and eat your flesh.

Jezebel won’t be contributing to the feral cat overpopulation issue.

Some cats can learn to use the post and/or deal with having their claws clipped. I have had a few cats who I didn’t need to declaw, and I don’t do it capriciously, because I know it’s not a fun surgery. But if a cat is strictly indoors, and it’s an issue of declawing vs. the cat being homeless, I’ll go with declawing. I know. Mean cat mom, I know, but it would be more cruel for Jerry to catch her going to town on a door frame and drop kick her across the house. When he’s five sheets to the wind I wouldn’t put anything past his drunk ass. The plus side to declawing, if there is one, is that our vet is a very good surgeon and she has always done a fantastic job on declaws. I still hate doing it.

Creepy. Not a good retouch job on the eyes at all.

Of course, I don’t even care for open casket funerals. The idea of old-hen relatives of the deceased filing by the coffin and making commentary is rather distasteful to me. I still remember my relatives’ commentary when Aunt Ellen died. “Doesn’t Ellen look lovely?”

Ellen did NOT look lovely. She looked pretty damned dead. She was so orange she looked like she passed out at the Oompa Loompa Prom. And she had to be dead to be wearing all that day-glo orange lipstick. She was a Pentecostal, which means she wasn’t allowed to wear makeup, but she did have to wear dresses when in public.

When I die, I hope Steve-o honors my wishes and has me cremated, but he has the same sick sense of humor I do. He will probably have me taxidermied and use me for a coffee table.

Genealogy is Addicting, So Far So Bad, the February Funk

February 3, 2011Tonya Lanthron Leave a comment

I don’t know why I find long-dead relatives intriguing, but investigating my own personal history becomes a lot more interesting on the rare occasions in which I find pictures. I stumbled upon this pic when I was actually looking for pics of my relatives’ grave markers of all things. This picture is of my great-grandfather, Wert, his first wife, Ethel (who died at the age of 31, in 1910, several years before he married my great-grandmother) and their daughter, Nellie (I would assume she would have been considered by great-aunt?), who died just a few days before her sixteenth birthday in 1913. They also had a son, Harold, (born in 1907) who died at four years old in 1911. They were married when he was 22 and she was 16. I’ve not been able to figure out what they all died of. I’d always thought there’d been some sort of epidemic or something- but not when the deaths are a year or more apart- unless they had TB or some other condition that doesn’t kill you right away. In the early 20th century you could die from stuff that is generally curable today, and I know there were several cholera and diphtheria epidemics in Marion County back then- along with all the common stuff like strep or pneumonia that people get all the time but can get a script for and get rid of today. I know full well I would have been dead many years ago (probably in infancy, considering I was born with pneumonia) had it not been for antibiotics and modern surgical technology. I guess I could figure it out if I were willing to pay the state of Ohio $16 for each death certificate, but I don’t have that kind of money just floating about. If I had to take a guess though, I would probably bet on the contagious disease du jour.

My great-grandfather died in 1942 at the age of 69. He and my great-grandmother had four kids including my grandfather. Anna, my great-grandmother, had five kids already from her first husband, who died young- so there was a house full of kids. Anna died in 1970 at the age of 88. Grandpa outlived all of his brothers and sisters and half-siblings by many years. I think he had one brother- Maurice- who made to 1997. Maurice was younger than him too, but Grandpa was 91 when he died.

I don’t know how bad it would screw with your head to lose your spouse and two kids in the span of three years, but I would have to believe it would be a serious blow to one’s sanity.

Pictures of long-dead people are fascinating even when you don’t have any background information on them. The pics become even more interesting when you can put a name with the face and even a bit of history to go along with it. I would estimate that the above pic was probably taken in or around 1898. Nellie looks as if she is about a year old or so. It’s kind of sad, really, to look at that pic knowing she never made it to her sixteenth birthday. What is even more sobering is realizing that her mother was only 17 when that pic was taken. They had been married over a year before Nellie was born. I was too young to get married when I was 21 and for that matter, too young the second time I got married at 26. Hindsight being 20/20 I’d have been better off to remain an old maid living quite happily in the company of dogs.

I am glad that Nellie was very much alive when the pic was taken. In that time period photography was extremely expensive, so they must have been somewhat affluent. From the clothing I gather they weren’t exactly poor. In that era, pics were often only taken of children when they died. There is an entire category on E-Bay: postmortem photography dedicated to (primarily) Victorian-era dead people pics. They go for big money, too, even if the seller has no clue who the dead person is, which is sort of macabre when you think about it. Some of the postmortem pics are pretty graphic, especially when you can tell they painted on the eyes or that the body has started to rot in places. In high summer, without benefit of embalming, I would assume dead bodies wouldn’t stay terribly fresh for long.

Being that it is February, and the weather is a major contributor to the February funk right now, death and dead relatives are appropriate topics. Oddly enough, none of the relatives for whom I know their date of death died in February, even though there are more deaths on average in February than in every other month.

It bothers me sometimes the lack of information I have on my relatives. Some of what I do have is rather frightening, some of it enlightening, and some of it downright sad.

So much gets forgotten over time. Then again, if some descendant of mine happens upon my name and statistics a hundred years from now, I wonder how they would see me? Would they see my pictures and then realize why they’re coyote ugly? Would I be regarded as one of those shithouse rat crazy skeletons in the closet?

Then again, I don’t think I’ll be here to care.

ELYSIANHUNTER, ALWAYS INCITEFUL:

Because comedy is the flipside of tragedy

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postmortem photography