A Map for the Dead

I spent part of the morning on the phone, researching for some new material I'm hoping to write this weekend. I've got a dead body and I had no idea what to do with it until now...

I started with a local county hospital. Turns out, with suspected drunk driving accidents where there are no survivors, the cops have the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office perform an autopsy. So I called the L.A. County Coroner's Office at (323) 343-0512 and was on hold for more than 10 minutes before I hung up and called right back.



They said, depending on how busy the county coroner's office is, they can do the autopsy within 24 hours. Once they write their official report, the bodies can be released to the families. If the coroner's office doesn't have a family contact or if no one claims the body within 90 days, they send it to the Los Angeles County Morgue. So I called the L.A. County Morgue at (323) 226-7161 next.

The morgue said once they get the bodies, they schedule a cremation using an outside crematory they contract with. A family has 2 years to claim the ashes (at the price of $352 and this does not include the cost of an urn--instead, families get the ashes in what the morgue described as a "hard plastic container"). So I asked, "What if someone doesn't have $352 dollars?!"

Of course, the woman on the phone with the L.A. County Morgue must have thought I was crazy. She said the family has 2 whole years to get the money and pay for the ashes. I asked if someone could pay in installments, ya know, if they offered a payment plan but the woman said all money has to be paid all at once. Otherwise, the county owns the ashes since they pay the money upfront to have the body cremated. Imagine that! You have to buy back your relatives ashes!!!

So I asked again, "What if in two years, you still can't pay the $352 to retrieve the ashes?" The woman told me that the ashes are then buried in a mass burial with ALL the other unclaimed ashes. I asked how many this could typically be in 2 years and she referred me to the crematory they contract with. So I called them next at (323) 268-5111.

The man who answered the phone sounded like the Grim Reaper (if the Grim Reaper had a voice). Seriously! His voice was menacing. I asked him how many ashes are typically buried in the mass burial every 2 years and he said thousands. Then I asked him if a family couldn't afford to pay the $352 for the right to claim the ashes, could the family then attend the ceremony of this mass burial? The scary Grim Reaper guy said, no. There would just be too many families attending with all those bodies and they can't accommodate that many people at once.

So there you have it. I know exactly what I'm going to do with my dead body now. It was interesting to find out the process and also very sad to know that unclaimed ashes are buried by the city by the thousands.

One odd note, the Los Angeles County Coroner's office is the only coroner office in the country with a gift shop. A frickin' GIFT SHOP, people! There's a Boo-verly Hills Drive, a Pacific Ghost Hwy., and other madly lanes for tourists or those interested in dead bodies in Los Angeles. Check it out!

Now it's back to writing for me!

Sold by Patricia McCormick

I recently finished reading, for the first time, Sold by Patricia McCormick. Many thanks to edithspage for letting me borrow this book. I held it hostage for half a year!

Truthfully, I started this story and stopped. Started and stopped. I kept having nightmares in my sleep of Lakshmi. These dreams were so harrowing that I would have to step away and pick up another book with new words to scrub out the ones from Sold that conjured the images in my mind. (I know this may sound weird to some people but I'm aware that I operate like a sponge at times, making it very difficult for me not to feel. I'm just too spiritually sensitive to such things.)

In other words, Patricia McCormick writes with a brave and an unflinching eye. The story is told from the POV of Lakshmi. A novel of this proportion is difficult to summarize because this story is about everything: all that we hold dear and all that we fear, the hopes we have for our children and the dangers that exist for many other children in the world, the strife of women and the bias of men...I could go on and on but instead will focus on, what for me, is the novel's triumph: the power in believing.

Lakshmi believes that she is old enough to help earn money for her family; when they lose their crops to a monsoon and her stepfather demands that she be sold, Lakshmi is brave and looks forward to the opportunity to help. She believes that this will help the family put a tin roof over their home, clothes on her baby brother, and food in their stomachs.

Once she is sold, she believes Bajai Sita and Auntie are going to set her up for housework. When that doesn't happen, she is taken under the care of Uncle Husband, whom she believes will protect her but instead, he sells her into the hands of Mumtaz--the sadistic owner of a brothel called "Happiness House." This girl, for all that she is forced under in her sexual slavery, is strong. Initially, she believes her hunger can outlive Mumtaz's threat to starve her if she doesn't work. Actually, Lakshmi's belief is correct because it was Mumtaz who grew tired of waiting for Lakshmi to give in so Mumtaz begins drugging her.

The details from then on are harrowing and like I said, I had to put the novel away several times to give my mind a break from the pain Lakshmi endured. It was all so vivid and made all too real after reading McCormick's author note.

After a while, Lakshmi believes that she can pay off her debts. When she finds out that Mumtaz has no intention of letting her go, Lakshmi holds on to the belief that an American worker will rescue her. Make no mistake about it, though Lakshmi is rescued, it is Lakshmi who had the power to cause this rescue. She never gave up and before the teaboy left, she made sure to ask him to find the Americans and to tell them to come for her. The reader has to believe then that Lakshmi is rescued not by some chance but because she never stopped believing that there could be an end to her suffering.

The ending is so breathtaking, so exhilarating that if this were another book with another child in a safe place, I would believe that I'd just read a moment where a young girl has learned to ride her bike for the first time, pedaling fast and free and far away from a ghostly world. At the beginning of the novel, there is a drought. Sure enough, by the end, the reader is made to feel as if a wonderfully cleansing rain has just poured into Lakshmi's life.

I can't say enough about this book and yet there is so much more that my heart knows needs to be said, like the way the characters survive through the power of language, how education should not be a privilege but a right to every person in this world, the crisis of health care and fighting to educate communities about HIV, the power of friendship and memory...there's just so much in this novel. Goodness! I HEART McCormick for writing this book and you will too if you haven't read it already.