Carla Valentine - The Chick and the Dead - Life and Death Behind Mortuary Doors

My granddad’s father, my great-granddad, had been a Gypsy boxer, despite having arms so short he wore garters to hold up his shirt sleeves long after they were fashionable. He had one long thumbnail, a bit like Sport from Taxi Driver , and he used this to mend clocks. He also pierced people’s ears (no, not with his thumbnail), and he turned his one-hoop earring into a wedding ring for my great-grandmother. After they married they had five children but all of them died as was fairly common a hundred years ago. After moving to the UK in around 1903 they had another five of which my granddad, Frederick, was the eldest. This is really all I remember of my granddad’s life.

More vivid in my memory is the look on his face during his death.

Just after he sank back into his comfy chair that day he began to convulse. From my vantage point at his slippered feet I looked up at my granddad but found myself staring into the face of death itself. His eyes rolled back into his tilted head and one lone droplet of blood trickled from the corner of his lips and painted a delicate crimson trail across his crêpey cheek. Then, like an exclamation point, his dentures comically shot out of his mouth and landed on the carpet with a thud. I don’t remember who but somebody wrenched me away from the scene, and the implication was clear: this was something a seven-year-old child shouldn’t see.

My granddad had suffered a massive stroke. He didn’t technically die in that chair but he never recovered once he reached the hospital. He passed away with my mum and aunts around him. I didn’t go to the funeral because I was considered too young, and I don’t remember how my family behaved on that day. But I do remember one thing about his death◦– I had been intrigued as well as afraid.

I was quite a ballsy child and I think I inherited that from my father, a rather arrogant and headstrong man from a huge Catholic family. In me, the eldest of two children with a less rigid upbringing than he’d had, those personality traits just manifested as independence, a desire for knowledge, and a need to be frequently alone with my books or with my thoughts. I learned to read at about two years old and apparently I could tell my mum what time my favourite TV show was on by reading it in the paper. Once, when attempting to punish me, my mum sent me to my room, as all flustered parents do. After an eternity of what she considered to be ‘difficult solitude’ she came by to investigate and found me quietly and happily reading. ‘It’s OK, you can come out now,’ she reassured me, to which I replied, ‘I just want to finish this chapter first.’ Some punishment!

My brief encounter with death may have terrified lesser children but I was of different ilk and, fascinated, I saw this enigmatic Grim Reaper as a challenge; something to research. I had an innate acceptance of the way the world worked and I understood at a young age that there could be no light without darkness.

Perhaps for that I can blame my strange pagan Gypsy blood. Perhaps it was my father’s morbid Catholic influence. Perhaps blame my insatiable appetite for Agatha Christie at an age when I should have been content reading Enid Blyton. Or perhaps you could blame the Bunny Massacre.

My father would sometimes, out of the blue, gift me and my little brother random pets. Once it was two young black and white rabbits, and even though we hadn’t asked for them, the last thing children do is turn pets away, especially little bunnies. So, one huge hutch and a lot of hay later, the two new rabbits were happily sheltered from the elements in their new home: the garden shed. We’d let them out of the hutch to roam around the shed every day, or watch them run free in the garden, safe in the knowledge they were protected from cats on the prowl. Or so we thought. One day, without warning, there was a cacophony of high-pitched squeaking and snarling from the garden which caused us in the dining room to freeze, forks halfway to mouths. Eventually, coming to our senses and rushing out into the bright daylight, we were assaulted by a tableau like a scene from a US sorority house movie: as though several lithe female students had just finished their sexy pillow fight, and errant feathers were now floating delicately down on to their languid, heaving bodies. Only instead of white feathers it was clumps of fur, and instead of sticking to sweaty tanned limbs they were sticking to twitching, bloody rabbit carcasses.

You see, my father had chosen a male and female rabbit and, unbeknown to us, they’d mated and she’d given birth to what seemed like a million babies. They were so tiny they’d ingeniously hidden from us in the crevices of the shed whenever we’d gone in there: between the hutch and the wall, behind the chest freezer, under the lettuce and behind the water bowl. We had no idea they even existed. It seemed that a determined cat had managed to sneak into the shed through its tiny window and had a field day, much like Mike Myers on Halloween. Before we even knew of their existence this cat had slaughtered all the little newborns, just for sport.

Well, nearly all.

Once the final clump of fur had settled and we’d raked over the carcasses like a bunch of hyenas, we did find one tiny bunny still alive and shaking. I remember being able to hold this pitiful creature in the palm of my hand because it was so small, and I recall feeling its frantic, delicate heartbeat against my skin. I felt helpless, as if I should have somehow seen this tragedy coming, and if not that, then at least be able to put it right somehow.

Death, my Old Foe, had struck again.

The more you know about something, the more you can control it. In the case of tragedy, demystifying it helps you to regain control of the emotions. I did that with death. They say ‘keep your friends close and your enemies closer’. Well, I kept my enemy, Death, so close to me it eventually felt confident enough to shoot ahead, do a complete lap around, and join me once more as my friend.

A stroke is medically known as a cerebrovascular accident (CVA), although in some ways there’s nothing ‘accidental’ about it. One of the main risk factors is tobacco smoking so my granddad, with his roll-up cigarettes, had contributed to his own death. Other risk factors include high blood pressure, high cholesterol and obesity◦– all things we can try to manage ourselves. I know this because years later, as a trainee APT, I would hold in my hands the brain of someone who had died from a CVA while Dr Jameson explained all this to me.

‘A stroke occurs when blood flow to part of the brain stops, either due to a blockage or the rupture of a blood vessel. Here◦– you can see the rupture.’ He pointed to a dark red area of blood in the pale brain slice. ‘You can decrease the risk of a stroke with blood thinners like the humble aspirin and generally taking good care of yourself.’

‘And can you tell if one is coming?’ I’d enquired, thinking of my granddad as I carefully placed the fragile brain back down on to the dissection board.

‘Yes. One side of the body may go numb or the vision in one eye may deteriorate. There might even be weakness to one side of the face and slurring of speech.’

And there it was; I felt like I’d known it or at least wanted it to be the case since the day my granddad passed away: you could see Death coming if you knew what to look for. You could control him.

Well, at least you could try.

The first time my mum heard I wanted to be a mortician was when I was about nine years old, in the salon chair, as the hairdresser carried out the usual ploy of chatting to me to distract me while she removed chunks of my hair, lest I start screaming.