Crime scene cleanup ad lifts Handel's Messiah



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I would totally love to get my hands on one of those playbills.

-- Nephele

While I like the idea of people being kind enough to offer such services(for a price! Capitalism, ftw!) I think the fact that people cannot handle cleaning up after a loved one passes is sad. To me, a family member's death is personal and I would see that as an intrusion. I dislike how removed death is from day to day life. No wonder people can't handle the thought of growing olde and dying these days.

I had an odd sense of.....territorial-ness(?) or maybe jealousy that some stranger was going to be washing and preparing my Grandmother for the death services. It just didn't seem right that someone who didn't know her would prepare her body.

I understand that many people these days are far more squeamish about such things than I am, though. And I'm glad they have these services available.

Wolfie, that is such a good point! Modern-day society really has gotten away from caring for our own dead, and performing those touching, final acts of love, that were more often done a century ago. In traditional Judaism, one never left the deceased loved one alone prior to burial, as that would be a sign of disrespect. The (not embalmed) body was lovingly guarded until burial (which would be within 24 hours of death).

I don't think, though, that Timothy Riley's Crime and Death Scene Cleaning business deals with preparing loved ones for death services. In fact, I'm not sure if they deal with the bodies at all (the forensics people have that covered). Tim Riley's people are mainly in the business of taking the toothbrush to the tile and painstakingly scrubbing up the blood spatter and brain gobs following violent deaths (either by murder or suicide).

Anyway, you know that I'm totally on board regarding how we need to make death more a part of our lives. But I think I would hire Tim Riley's cleaning crew, because I'm not very good at cleaning up the detritus left by the living, let alone the dead.

-- Nephele

Nephele hit the nail into the head with the crime scene clean-up; it's a hazardous business that few can stomach-the cleaning of a room after a person has been dead for several days or weeks, the collection of belongings covered with bodily fluids, the disposal of possessions for those who have no family. There was a crew on (I think) an A&E show a few years ago. Some of the workers couldn't handle it.

As for the dead, not to argue with you two, but get them out of the house and to those to prepare the dead. I don't want to wash or dress them. I want to donate their clothes to avoid depression, miss them and then get on with life without them.

I will, however, call the team of Wolfie and Nephele in to handle this when the time comes. Price list, please!

I saw an episode of "dirties jobs" or "worst jobs" about this line of work. It's interesting to see how messy people can get when killing themselves.

Yeah..Dirty Jobs had a crew on. It is rather a mess, isn't it?

Lach, I pass no judgement, hun. I was speaking of caring for my own loved ones who pass on(and whatever mess they might leave).

I am reminded of this story. Made the national news at the time: A funeral home picked up a dead woman, and due to some situation I don't remember they ended up not being able to get rid of the body so rather than find a freezer to stick it in like any rational funeral home would choose to do, they left the corpse in one of their hearses. For days and days. The human soup soaked into the fabric of the interior, even the wood of the casket table. And it's not like it was some cheap beat on, 80s first call car the company had been wanting to get rid of for the last 10-15 years.

You know how cars that had been submerged in hurricanes smell like mold forever no matter how much of the interior has been replaced and/or steam cleaned? This is so much worse than that. Insurance companies will actually let a flood damaged car get sold as a parts car for salvage purposes. A decomp case? They send straight to the crusher.

It takes a special kind of person to do that kind of work. Smells don't normally get to me, but I am not sure I would attempt a clean up of someone who had been left in a hot car in the deep south for a couple weeks to liquidize. No matter who they were or what the car was.

Corpse juice pooled under the subfloor in the rear. Wouldn't quite use the word amazing but it was an experience to see. Just like Arby's roast beef starts as a gel that solidifies into meat - well, this must have been a similar process.

That whole process of stripping down the hearse and cleaning it up was fascinating!

-- Nephele

I will never be able to eat at Arby's or look at roast beef the same way after that quote. Thank you, Elphie!

Decomp juice will be the only glue we will have left after the zombie apocalypse.

Why can't we use bird spit? It seems to make pretty good nests.

Same here...nope!




..and you WERE being judgmental...I know you were!

Yes, I judged that quote to be quite icky!

Didn't I watch a movie with this premise once?