The Happy Morgue Employee

When I was in charge of the Faculty of Medicine of Geneva (Switzerland) as Head of the Administration and of the "University Medical Center", one of my reports was in charge of the morgue. This was the place where medical students dissected the corpses to learn about bodies and master their surgical skills, but it was also the place where dead bodies were stored before autopsy.

Two employees were sharing this duty of preserving these bodies and preparing the autopsy rooms for the doctors and students. One of them was just unbelievable...

If you would meet him in the streets, you might think that he is a clone of one of the musicians of ACDC, the former hard-rock group. He wears the same outfit as the musicians which is quite astonishing when you encounter him in the cold and antiseptic premises of the morgue. All day you can hear hard rock music echoing in the corridors that he only turns down when families visit the mortuary. In that case, he welcomes them in the little chapel that he arranges depending on the profile of his "client". It is absolutely surreal to see him arranging the small chapel with furniture and drapes adapted to the music he chooses for the family members. It can be baroque music, it can be lounge music or Richard Clayderman playing softly on his piano.

When he opens the drawers where dead people lie with a sticker hanging from their toe, you don't pull back with horror, only because before he opens the drawer, he has told you the story of the person who lies peacefully in it. His imagination is amazing. Even if you know that his story is totally made up, you listen to the exciting tale he is sharing with you.

Like all these people who have a difficult or repellent jobs, you are always in awe when these professionals seem to sincerely love what they do and that they can share their passion with you.

How imaginative he was to be able to turn these bare tiled walls into a Wonderland and make us forget the smell of formol. Whenever I feel that smell again, instantly I see him again talking about the dead like   a bed story.