Spirited Scriveners

A new published essay by Ann F. Beach in Pulse

Our colleague, Ann, has again had one of her essays published. This one is quite affecting. Partly, I think, because of her unaffected style. Mostly because it is touching and with a window into a different world for most of us. Read it. What do you think?

Letter From the Dead

Gross Anatomy class is a rite of passage, and has been so for a few hundred years. Generations of first-year medical students have spent months dissecting cadavers and painstakingly learning the intricacies of human anatomy.

I well remember my first day of class—the overpowering smell of formaldehyde and the unnerving sight of a roomful of twenty-five dead people lying supine, their faces and genitals covered, on metal tables.

Assigned by the alphabet, four students to a cadaver, my peers and I (Fabert, Ferris, Flamm and Fleming—my maiden name) stood gingerly next to our cadaver, careful not to get too close. We shifted uneasily. Touching our cadaver (a woman) for the first time, even with gloves on, was disquieting.

Read the rest at….

https://pulsevoices.org/stories/letter-from-the-dead/

Note that all materials shared on this site and in these posts have the exclusive ownership of their respective authors. No further use or manipulation of this material may occur without the direct documented consent of the individual who created it.