So our neighbor, an elderly woman who'd been suffering with dementia and an inoperable brain tumor for several months passed away a couple of nights ago. Her common law husband called my gf to tell her around 10pm. My gf and the neighbor lady weren't exactly close, amicable at best, but as they'd been neighbors for over 13 years, she asked if we could come over to pay our respects that night as the funeral home was on its way to retrieve her body; the husband said we could. My gf had been making meals for them and checking on them since the woman had come home for hospice after all, so she felt the need to be there. We walked into their house, and the woman's body was on a hospital bed right near the front door covered head to toe in a quilt. We stood politely in silence until my gf asked if the husband would mind if she looked at her. He obliged very graciously like it was no problem.
Now, I've not seen many newly-dead bodies, but the few I have had been arranged in a respectful manner; when my gf pulled the quilt off of her face... horror. Her denture-less mouth was open with the lips curled inward and her fucking eyes were open, staring at the ceiling. I was mortified. It took all I could to not to outwardly show how uncomfortable I immediately was. My gf spoke up first to the hospice nurse asking why she hadn't closed her eyes and mouth, and she said she only does such things if the family requested it, and her husband hadn't. Honestly, the only person less phased by the situation WAS the husband. I know it was expected, and at their age, death isn't exactly a "surprise," but he spoke in his thick southern drawl as if he was discussing the weather. When my gf apologized for getting emotional and tearing up, he commented "that's alright; you're a woman." Fucking pig, WTF? You're wife just died, is laying in front of you looking like a zombie, and you're handwaving "a woman's" emotional response?
knowyourmeme.com
www.theguardian.com
