Death and its surrounding culture, formerly called Death and the culture of death, passed away December 7, 2007, after three months of providing information to the Guerilla News class of New York University and the larger community. The blog is survived by two videos.

After much debate about what this story is about, this is my final article, an article about three courageous men who work in dangerous neighborhoods, trying to make them safer.

Morticians that Care

By Alexandra Zendrian

(2015 words)

On a hectic corner in west Philadelphia, a curve that typically hosts vendors selling sunglasses and children running around in the closest play area that they have, three white body bags and an opened taupe coffin overtook their playground.

At this busy intersection, three morticians were preaching to anyone who would listen as trolleys rolled by and locals gathered to chat.

Shaheed Luqman began, “No matter where you go anywhere in America, you will find that the death rate is rising. In Philadelphia, the murder rate is rising and rising. In Newark, New Jersey, the murder rate is rising and rising… what we gonna do about it?.. Who’s gonna save us but us?”

This intersection of Germantown and Eerie Avenues hosted more than just playful children and local vendors; it has also garnered its share of Philadelphia’s violence. There were 406 murders in Philadelphia in 2006 according to the Philadelphia police department. That number for this year is already up 17 percent.

Debbie Ingersoll, who works at The Eagle Bar sandwich shop on this corner, lost her then 24-year-old son, Mikal, two years ago to random gang violence in Philadelphia. When the Morticians that Care pulled up in their brightly colored green and white van, complete with silver coffin asfixed to the top, she encouraged the group to work in front of her shop.

So the three black men who make up the Morticians That Care, Luqman, Rasheed Reece and Tyrone Muhammad, looked at each other inside The Eagle Bar sandwich shop and nodded to each other, noting that they need to go where the people need them.

The Morticians that Care, a three man advocacy group against black violence, go out into these affected communities, now about once a week, with their coffin and body bags as well as two tags, like the ones used to identify corpses but magnified 100 times, that say, “Wake Up Black Man” and “How Many Body Bags Will It Take”.

The threesome were passing out flyers about sexually transmitted diseases and gun violence to anyone who would take them. The flyer created by the Morticians that Care said, “Over 40,000 black men murdered over the past five years. We’re becoming extinct. How many body bags will it take? How many more funerals and wakes? How many more black men will have to die? How many more black families will have to cry?”

They got to work, unloading their white body bags filled with newspapers and speakers blasting rap music about the growing HIV rate, increase in teen pregnancies and acceptance of gang violence and why that culture should change.

The three morticians, united by death, go out into black communities, primarily near Newark where they are based, to talk about what they see as the ills in the black community and why they need to change. But the group hopes to travel even further than Pennsylvania, realizing that there are other cities like Baltimore that are facing a similar fate.

While in Philadelphia, Reece reminded Luqman that a mortician “is anyone who deals with the dead.” While Luqman is not a mortician like Muhammad, who works for Peace and Glory Funeral Home in Newark, or a coffin maker like Reece, who has been making caskets for Sunnah Caskets for two years since his brother was murdered, Luqman may still be a mortician as he now enters communities to speak against death. This was enough for one mortician to dub him with that same title.

Morticians that Care was started by Muhammad in 2004 after he worked on Amir Wilkins, an 18-year-old who was shot in the back of the head in a car with a group of friends. He could not reconcile this young man’s last few moments, in a car with his friends, clueless as to what would happen to him. After working on Wilkins, Muhammad felt the need to stop this senseless violence. At that point, he asked God what he could do; this was the response he got.

“God wanted us to do this work,” Muhammad explained. “It’s not gonna be an easy fight but you have to stay at it.”

Muhammad feels that he has keep trying to reach the black community because almost no one else will. He thinks that many of the priests, community officials and celebrities have failed these young black men. Muhammad considers himself the heart of his community in Jersey City and Newark and he knows that when a person’s heart stops, it’s all over. Therefore Muhammad feels that he cannot stop.

That’s why Muhammad goes into middle schools, like his 16-year-old daughter Trinity’s, to speak to the crowd that he feels is most affected by this violence.

He is also working on writing a play with a Newark priest, Pastor Clark, called “At the End of the Day” which will include four caskets, with four people in those caskets, who will each explain why they are in that predicament.

Though Trinity entertains the idea of being a funeral director like her father, when Muhammad suggests that he comes to her school, she responds in typical teenage fashion by saying, “Dad you’re embarrassing me.” She is particularly embarrassed by the van that her father uses for his activist group with the coffin on top of it.

While Muhammad is proud of the van that he helped design, which he financed through a $15,000 loan, he is also worried about the attention that it may draw toward his family.

Every night when Muhammad parks the van in his Jersey City driveway, he looks in the rear view mirror and turns around, cautiously checking that no one has followed him home. Last year 96 people were murdered in Newark and Muhammad has buried all too many black men who became targets of gun violence either accidentally or on purpose. Muhammad knows that while he is out preaching against gun violence he could be shot, to make him an example to the surrounding community, but he hopes that this fate will not trickle down to his wife or daughter.

When asked about why Muhammad would want to possibly put himself out of business by discouraging gang violence, he shakes his head back and forth with disapproval, seeing that people don’t understand that his work goes beyond the funeral home.

“It’s so much deeper than funerals,” Muhammad said. “One day, it’s gonna be you.”

Muhammad knows that if someone does not stop this violent epidemic, perhaps he could be the next target.

“Our future generation, a generation that should be doing better than we are, is dropping in the streets,” Luqman said on the corner while people brushed past. “Where’s the outrage? Where’s the news media about this?.. We are going backwards in time. Stand up and take control of your destiny. Stand up and take control of your neighborhood.”

While Luqman was speaking on the street corner, surrounded by drug stores and other small businesses, some people stopped, including two men who told their respective sons to heed this group’s message, while others simply gazed from the speaker to the display and back again and then walked by.

As soon as the casket containing a white body bag stuffed with newspaper was opened, people began flocking toward the street corner, wondering what kind of craziness had now overtaken their street corner. There was a mixture of pure curiosity and disbelief with an air of gratitude and a slight mix of anger.

“We hate our own people, we dislike our own people; how is that?,” Reece said, yelling to the people waiting outside a pharmacy across the street. “It’s time to wake up. It’s time to get your life together. I was there. I was there. I was up on the streets. Let me give you a little history. I used to rob banks. I used to sell drugs. But it ain’t about who I used to be; it’s about who I am today. This is why I’m bringing attention to the streets because change can come.”

“Don’t worry about somebody gonna laugh you up, you gotta be about change,” Luqman said. “You gonna live your life hiding, you gonna live your life just going with the flow or you gonna let your life stand for something.”

Gordon Fletcher, a 62-year-old Philadelphian, was driving toward a store when he saw the display and these three men, stopped his car, and proceeded to walk toward the sandwich shop, intently listening and nodding his head.

“He’s saying what I’ve been saying for years,” Fletcher said of Reece.

Fletcher was appreciative that these men were out here speaking and hopes that people are taking in their message.

“People have got to stop long enough to hear what they’re saying,” Fletcher added.

“Those who want to hear, hear,” Muhammad said.

“You can lead them to the water but you can’t make them drink,” Reece added.

“Its seems like the value on young black men, there is no value on them,” Muhammad said. “It’s very frustrating… they don’t see it, the value.”

Muhammad is increasingly frustrated as a week after the event in Philadelphia he is at it again, working with a victim of violence, Travis.

Nineteen-year-old Travis McGovern was shot four times, three times in the abdomen and one bullet is lodged in his cheek. While Muhammad is working on preserving his small, 5’4” chocolate brown body for Travis’ viewing, he doesn’t need the autopsy report to know that this young man probably died as a result of gun violence. He’s seen it all before, a black teenager or man in his twenties, loaded up with bullets. And as he gingerly removes the stray bullet from Travis’ cheek, in a cold, sterile, clinical room in the basement of Peace and Glory Funeral Home, Muhammad can’t help but wish that he was in this room working with someone who died of natural causes.

“It really sucks,” Muhammad said. “The reason that it sucks is because this type of behavior [gang violence] is being congratulated. They think if you die young, you get some kind of reward in the community… (I’m) tired of burying these young black men,” Muhammad said.

The Morticians That Care were preaching and handing out flyers in Philadelphia on that corner for almost two hours. About 60 people stopped what they were doing to listen to what these three men had to say. The group then packed up their van with some help from onlookers to Marvin Gaye’s ‘What’s Going On?’”.

When the three men got into their van, headed back home to Newark, they were electrified by the number of people who did stop, converse and take their flyers. They were more struck by the number of people who wanted them to come back and start their own Philadelphia chapter.

While Muhammad was driving, the three men recounted tales of the people that they met and talked with and the enthusiasm that those people had for what these men were doing.

“Did you see that man who came up to Rasheed,” Luqman said to Muhammad of the tall, black man who looked particularly disgruntled. “I thought we were going to have a problem but then he just took the flyer and shook his hand.”

Reece smiled, acknowledging that he was a little worried as well but was thrilled that the man was interested in what they were doing.

“A few people stopped me and said that we should start something down in Philly,” Luqman said. “I encouraged them to start their own group and one man said that he wasn’t sure that Philly was ready for that yet. So I told him, ‘As long as you need us to come here, we’ll come.’”

As they were driving back to Newark in their van, they stopped at a street corner where the people in the car next to them were taking pictures of the van. Reece and Luqman got out of the car and posed next to the van, beaming after a long but fulfilling day’s work.

This is what my experience with embalming was like:

 Billy’s shirt is open in the back and his pants have been torn in two.

His shirt and his pants had to be cut in order to get him dressed this Thursday morning, one last time, as he laid in his oak casket.

Tyrone Muhammad, a New Jersey licensed mortician with the Peace and Glory funeral home in Newark, has been working on Billy for the past few days when he is not working at PSE &G, the New Jersey utility company. He has spent countless hours between the autopsy that was performed on Travis to repairing the bullet wound in his right cheek to embalming his body. He meticulously combed every inch of Travis’ five foot, four inch, 16-year-old body looking over and over to find any death-caused flaws that a family wouldn’t want to see.

Muhammad sympathizes with any family of a deceased loved one. He was in their shoes years ago when his mother died. At the time, he was 24. While he was planning his mother’s funeral, the female funeral director approached him very gruffly and treated him poorly Muhammad thought with the assumption that as a young man he could not afford the $5,000 funeral.

Ever since then, Muhammad hung up his scrubs as a student studying to be a nurse and became a funeral director to provide better service to other families.

Before beginning the embalming, Muhammad checks for any signs of life, checking Billy’s pulse and cloudy corneas. Muhammad joked that the day that a body actually sits up while he is trying to embalm them is the day that he would quit, although he sees being a mortician as his life calling which therefore means that he will be embalming for the rest of his life.

After noting that Billy is deceased, Billy is stripped down and a “modesty cloth” is placed over his genitals. This clothing is placed in large plastic bags and his personal effects are inventoried.

Billy gets a massage, as Muhammad slowly works Billy’s arms and legs to relieve rigor mortis. Then Muhammad poses Billy’s dark brown eyes with an eye cap and his mouth is closed with a needle.

The real embalming process begins with the arterial embalming which involves injecting chemicals into the blood vessels. Incisions are made in the neck, armpit and near the groin to get the embalming solution, made of formaldehyde, methanol and ethanol, to raise an artery and drain any remaining fluids through the veins. Billy gets one last massage to ensure that the embalming fluids are evenly distributed.

“ The average time for a non post body, meaning there have not been no autopsy on it, can take about 45 minutes to one hour,“ Muhammad said. “An autopsy body about one to two hours. It varies and depend on the condition of the body.”

But Muhammad can spend a whole night working on one body; just when he thinks that he is done, Muhammad turns around, takes one more look at the body and finds some slight imperfection that needs to be remedied.

Muhammad began working on Billy on Monday, when the autopsy was performed. Billy was involved in a drive by shooting outside of Newark, where a bullet was lodged in his cheek.

“Oh my goodness you couldn’t image the satisfaction and rewards that come along with being a funeral director,“ Muhammad explained. “You’re in placed in the very unique setting. The families that I meet on a daily basis are unsure, confused, and detached from reality when they lose someone they love. I think being in position to provide them with the assurance that everything will be ok. Giving and showing the Love, to a point, comforting, caring and consoling them and putting a smile that leads to them on the road of recovery and being professional and giving them just for the last moment a good remembrance of their love one in the casket is the reward in itself outside of the monetary rewards.”

Before he starts making the final preparations, Muhammad likes to ask the family of the deceased to tell him a few things about the person. He takes those pieces of information to heart and remembers a lot of those details, making that death more personal than it would be otherwise.

While embalming, Muhammad thinks with a mixture of objectification (thinking that the corpse is a body), and compassion, leaning more toward compassion.

“I like to remove myself from that thinking, it can prohibit me from doing a good job on their loved one,” he said. “But don’t get me wrong I do feel for the lost of life, innocence, purity of the person but I think of them when I talked to them based on what the family tells me about them during the arrangements now most people that I tell that to say, ‘Muhammad you weird.’”

This is how I was planning on starting my magazine article. Since I feel really connected to these paragraphs, as they just flowed when I wrote them, I wanted to post them so that hopefully someone can appreciate them. Enjoy.

Travis McGovern, 19, was laying outstretched on a cold metal table, his shirt open in the back.

Travis waited quietly, as quietly as his formerly jubilant body could be, his brown eyes closed. He was waiting for Tyrone Muhammad to put on his suit.

Travis’ long sleeve white collared shirt probably was the nicest shirt he ever owned. Muhammad fiddles with the collar, adjusting it slightly ever few seconds, deciding whether at a 35 degree angle is minimizes the small remnants of the bullet in Travis’ cheek.

The small, clinical looking room that Travis and Muhammad occupied in the basement of the Peace and Glory Funeral Home in Newark, New Jersey, has white regulation tile, picked out because it is easy to clean when blood splatters on it, a regular occurrence in the funeral home. The room has a scent of body odor delicately dotted with formaldehyde looming in the air.

Travis had already had an autopsy done after he was shot four times earlier that week, so he has already been embalmed. But Tyrone Muhammad still needed to clean Travis up and make him as presentable as possible for Travis’ family. Muhammad took a breath, calculating the task before him, and got to work.

The first thing, the most major post-mortem blemish that Muhammad had to correct, were the sucres lining Travis’ head, which engineered a receding hairline. Muhammad took a tuft of hair from the back of Travis’ head and, using Vaseline, adhered it to Travis’ hair. Next, the cheek. Travis was shot four times; three of the bullets were lodged in his abdomen but one grazed his cheek. The abdomen, Muhammad knew, would be covered by the clothing, but the cheek would pose a problem. Muhammad delicately pulled the bullet, and some of its fragments, out of the created cavity in Travis’ cheek. There was a microscopic piece of bullet left, which Muhammad agonized over for 15 minutes, changing his position attempting to find a better place to remove the egregious fragment. After he’d shifted positions six times, Muhammad gave Travis the last once over, decided that he was pleased with his work and left the funeral parlor just a few hours before Travis’ viewing.

Before Muhammad starts making the final preparations, he likes to ask the family of the deceased to tell him a few things about the person. He takes those pieces of information to heart and remembers a lot of those details, making that death more personal than it would be otherwise.

Before beginning the embalming process, Muhammad, a convert to Islam, a religion that does not believe in any bodily mutilation (even after death), has to take a breath and block out his thoughts when he begins embalming a body.

But Muhammad gets over that initial hesitation against embalming because that is what the family wants and that is why Muhammad became a funeral director – to serve families. That is why Muhammad traded in his scrubs as a student studying to be a nurse for the scrubs of a funeral director, a smock, coveralls and paper-like shoe covers.

“The average time for a non post body, meaning there have not been no autopsy on it, can take about 45 minutes to one hour,“ Muhammad said. “An autopsy body about one to two hours. It varies and depends on the condition of the body.”

But Muhammad can spend a whole night working on one body; just when he thinks that he is done, Muhammad turns around, takes one more look at the body and finds some slight imperfection that needs to be remedied.

Muhammad meticulously combed every inch of Travis’ five foot, four inch, 19-year-old body looking over and over to find any death-caused flaws that his family wouldn’t want to see; everywhere from the middle of his torso to his forehead.

The death penalty may be abolished soon in New Jersey.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22133264/

According to this article, legislators in New Jersey feel that it is not deterring crime and that the death penalty is more expensive than life in prison. This will be the first time that a state has made that kind of decision since the middle 1970s.

I wonder whether this will become a trend. What do you think?

A conversation with a mortician

This is part of a conversation with funeral director John Pantoja. He discussed, among other things, his job, his perceptions of our death culture and how his job has changed since 9/11.

Warning: This website made me nauseous, so if you get a little bit squeemish you may not want to click this. But the following website is of several off-colored toys related to death:

http://www.perpetualkid.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=2350

For the first time in a little while, I’m speechless. Hanging Harry? Hanging Harry. That’s what our world has come to, a toy meant as a joke about someone who committed suicide?

The fact that we can joke about suicide like this I think says a lot about our death culture.

I’ve been analyzing our death culture for the past few months and honestly I’m a little bit surprised by this Hanging Harry character. Like funeral director John Pantoja said in the podcast, I think we largely live in a death denying country, where we try to avoid death at all costs and prolong lives through medical treatments and death is not casually discussed in conversation. But then that concept of death denying is counteracted with the proliferation of zombie and death-related movies out there, which maybe shows that Americans deal with death to a certain extent but its primarily in an imaginative, non-realistic way. But now, Hanging Harry, a plastic little man with a light cord around his neck, crosses both realms of the realistic and the imaginative, I think.

Americans need to talk about death more and we need to bridge the non-realistic with the realistic, but I don’t know that Hanging Harry was the right first step that we needed to take.

 What do you think?

C:\Users\Owner\Desktop\Maple_Grove_4\publish_to_web\small.html

CNN just posted this about a Myspace suicide:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/12/03/internet.suicide/index.html

It’s awful to think that this message may have contributed to this girl’s suicide. And a possible cyberspace caused suicide is something that I never would have thought could happen. It’s such a shame to think that technology can add to the suicide rate, although ultimately it seems like it was the message, rather than how the message was transmitted, that might have caused this suicide.

 A video from Megan’s parents was posted on www.msnbc.com if you search for MySpace suicide. It was really interesting to hear from this family, as unfortunately we hear with many of these families who experience tragedies, that there is nothing that anyone can do to understand how these people feel. Life is precious.

I saw a piece on the Weather Channel this weekend about heat wave related deaths. What was interesting about it, besides the fact that some people die with fans in their apartments that aren’t being used, is that different cities count their dead differently.

In Philadelphia, the dead from that heat wave were numbered in the range of 150-200 people in a matter of a week. In that same time, New York had similar temperatures and only reported four people dead.

This got me thinking: Does New York really have that much more resources than Philadelphia to keep people cool during a heat wave?

The answer: Perhaps, but largely it comes down to New York coroners and medical examiners just having a different way of tabulating these deaths. The Philadelphia count included anyone who died of a heat stroke, a heart attack related to the heat, or any other heat related illness. New York apparently took the temperature of the bodies at the time that they were found and used that to determine who died as a result of the heat wave.

This is problematic because if a coronor did not get to a body in a timely fashion, perhaps that body temperature began to drop. And largely this is problematic because funding wise cities who don’t accurately cite the severity of the problems within that city won’t be helped as much as they could be.