If you have been living under a stupid rock, “LOL” stands for “laugh out loud.” People have been LOLing since digital messaging began. Grandmas lol. Millennials LOL. Hipsters LOL ironically.
Everyone lols in their own way.
What does lol have to do with an open casket? Nothing.
But I wanted to draw a comic about death, dreams, and a charred body. I thought LOL would make everyone more comfortable. LOL.
Few things are more uncomfortable than looking at dead bodies.
But seeing a body must help internalize something; give a sense of finality.
We didn’t have an open casket for my sister, Melissa.
The plane that carried my sister went missing with no witnesses and no recorded flight plan. It felt extremely fake.
The night before she went missing, Melissa and I spoke on Skype.
We talked for over an hour. She did not mention plans to board a plane the next day.
While she was missing, my family went to Melissa’s apartment to double-check that she wasn’t hanging out in her room and ignoring her phone calls. Also to feed Melissa’s cat, Snibbles.
I asked my mom to look for the camera, to which I was now oddly attached.
Snibbles is a de-clawed indoor cat on whom we project fantasies of escaping to the great outdoors.
My family learned that Melissa had gone on a plane sight-seeing trip with some friends around Glacier National Park.
Glacier covers over one million acres of places to hide plane crashes. The park is also surrounded by millions of acres of additional plane-crash-hiding forest and wilderness.
It was like playing “Where’s Waldo?” but less fun. For several days, rescuers searched for the plane.
Did the plane fly to Canada? Did they crash in a river? Did they crash and die, their bodies eaten by bears? (a ranger told us this happened after a plane crash several years earlier). Did they crash in the wilderness and were attempting to hike out on broken legs?
Of course, most of the survivors in JP3 are later eaten by dinosaurs.
After three days of scouring the remote wilderness, search parties found the wreckage. My younger sister Emily messaged me on Skype.
My dad called. Turns out it wasn’t a ruse by Snibbles after all. LOL.
I returned home to prepare for Melissa’s funeral. On arrival, I was welcomed by new terrible details.
Snibbles pretended like nothing even happened.
Melissa was getting regular dental checkups. Good for her.
It took the coroner a few days to report the cause of death.
My family was terrified that Melissa and her friends had survived the crash, only to be trapped in the plane during the subsequent fire.
The autopsy came. I never read it, but I remember the manila folder sitting in our living room.
My mom told me what the autopsy said.
They weren’t killed in the fire. They were killed before the fire. lol.
The casket was closed at Melissa’s funeral. Was having it open even allowed?
Did I want to see her remains, knowing I would never be able to un-see? I don’t know. I know that I was curious. I know that I was scared.
I still don’t know the extent of the damage to the bodies. I never asked to see pictures.
We gave the mortician a yellow dress for Melissa to wear inside the casket. She had been searching for a yellow dress, and a few days before she died, she called my mom to say she had found one.
Did I really want answers?
I wanted to see Melissa’s body when we found out she had died. I wanted to protect her body, even if she wasn’t “there” anymore.
I hate that her body was burned after the crash. I hate the images my mind conjures. I hate knowing that there was any type of injury on her body at all.
I wanted to cry over her like they get to in the movies—and some people get to do in real life.
Sometimes I think not seeing Melissa’s body, and not having an open casket at her funeral, is at the core of a problem I’ve experience since she died—incessant “GOTCHA” dreams.
GOTCHA!
Before Mel’s death, I imagined my dreams would allow me to reconnect following the death of a loved one. I assumed dreams would be a way—the way—to stay connected to a person after their death. It would be a beautiful, calming experience.
Instead my dreams after Melissa died are … disappointing.
In the dreams, Melissa tries to lead me astray with bogus excuses of her whereabouts.
New Dumphries? Cha-right.
Definitely a fake school.
My sister was a terrible liar.
Waking up from these dreams is the worst.
But I don’t hug her.
Instead of appreciating her, I drill her with 20 questions about her whereabouts, irritated by her implausible answers.
Would I have the dreams I romanticized—where I get to reconnect with Melissa and it’s an awesome and beautiful experience—if she hadn’t died suddenly? Would my dreams be rose-colored if her body hadn’t been blacker than burnt toast, and I could have seen her?
I have no idea. Lol.
