The regular staff in the hospital where I once worked used to get us part-timers to help lay out the dead. We were an odd mix of students, artists and bums, so well-qualified for the task.
My first client, an old woman, stared at me lifelessly throughout the proceedings, her head propped upright by a pillow. As I stood by the bus stop on my way home, I felt that the darkness had followed me out and would be, from now on, a persistent companion.
To counter my fears, I tried my best, treating each new case with respect: washing them carefully and tenderly, adjusting the linen precisely as a finishing touch. Each one a masterpiece. The work had hope and meaning in an improbable way: like a conversation with oneself. I spoke to my patients at times - they were patients till wheeled away - impressed by their silent dignity.
Standing back one day to admire the work, I noticed a stain spreading across the new-laid sheet. 'Life' doesn't cease in every physical sense just because a brain is dead. I won't say more. "Can you believe?" screeched my colleague, a trainee from Lagos. Excitable at the best of times, her voice soared angrily. "He not meant to do that!"
"He's dead!" I replied.
"It not right!"
"Not right?" I could hear myself shouting back. "He's free! He can do what he bloody likes. There are no rules for the dead!" She gave me a steely look. "You crazy," she said, and reached for fresh sheets.
"That makes two of us!"
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