"Down Among the Dead Men: a year in the life of a mortuary technician"

     "Down Among the Dead Men" is an autobiography of Michelle Williams.  While this is not the type of book I typically pick up, the book caught my interest, as I feel that a lot of what happens to our bodies after we die is not talked about. It is handed off to a funeral home, and then there's a funeral and that's it.  No one ever sits down and talks about what happens at a funeral home or in a morgue, so I thought it would be interesting to read some books about these subjects and educate myself to an extent.

     This book follows the life of it's writer, Michelle Williams, for a year.  It begins with her applying for a job as a mortuary technician as a way to change up her life a bit as she wasn't completely happy in her previous job. After being hired as a mortuary technician at a hospital, Williams tells about learning the different parts of her job, and the reader follows as she is introduced to, and becomes successful at different tasks that are done in the mortuary.

     This book is not merely, 'I went to work, I eviscerated some people, I went home.'  Williams tells about the funny bits and getting to know and become friends with her coworkers.  She also gives the reader some insight into the more surprising and/or challenging parts of her job, a motorcycle accident resulting in decapitation, "What lay in front of us was a headless body; fully clothed, but headless...Resting between his knees lay his motorcycle helmet, so it was a road traffic accident, which gave me a little clue as to what had happened to him...I looked into the visor and found myself fixated by the face behind it." 

     As well as a man so overweight he could not be fit into the refrigerated body storage, "Our only decent gurney had a 560 pound body on it, but was designed to take no more than 500 pounds.  A larger patient in the days when the mortuary was designed was probably about 350 pounds maximum.  There was absolutely no way Mr. Patterson was going to allow himself to be refrigerated and so he was going to have to stay on our gurney at room temperature until a post-mortem was ordered...Since if a body is not cooled, it starts to rot, this is what was going to happen to Mr. Patterson."

     I enjoyed reading this book and getting some insight into what happens to people after they die.  I would definitely recommend it if you have any interest in the subject and are not too queasy, as some bits do get a little graphic.  Williams does a good job at not being too incredibly graphic, but when writing about dead and decomposing bodies, there is only so much you can sugar-coat.

     Let me know what you thought about "Down Among the Dead Men" if you have read it and leave me suggestions for books to read in the comments below!