CADAVERS

 

Reading Bill Hayes's immensely entertaining The Anatomist, I have thought about how labels (words) change depending on thin lines of being, and attitudes. As soon as I die, the minute I stop breathing, I will become a cadaver, in a question of seconds. The name for a dead person or body is cadaver. My Random House Dictionary defines the term as: "A dead body, esp. a human body to be dissected, corpse." Webster gives these synonyms for cadaver: "bones, carcass, corpse, corpus, relics, remains, stiff." Of all of them, I prefer stiff. Somehow I think that before decomposition sets in, I will be just about the same, except that instead of being a person I will be a cadaver, a corpse, and people will probably look at me with apprehension or even disgust. Friends -few- will probably come to pay "respects", not to me, but to my cadaver, my corpse. I prefer stiff because this is what happens when rigor mortis sets in. "Delfín cuts a good-looking stiff" I hope they will say. In Spanish, I will probably be labeled a "fiambre". Despite these apparently gloomy thoughts prompted by The Anatomist, the book is a good read.