My Dead Roommate*

Yes, he's really dead.

Ever see a dead guy before?  Didn't think so.  Go ahead, take a good look.  Not pretty, is it?
Betcha wanna know how it came to pass that I have a picture of the dude, dontcha?  Listen to this:  I was in Beth Israel the first week of January.  My roommate the first night I was there was a man named Mr. Warm.  I kid you not.  Mr. Samuel Warm.  That's him on the left.  Mr. Warm was 99 years old.  Mr. Warm was not a happy camper.  And he was quite feisty.  He had a private aide sitting with him all night.  He yelled and kvetched and pushed her away all night.  Every time she came near him he yelled, "go away, kurva**!"  She finally took the hint and left him alone.  I try to be a good person.  A compassionate person.  But Mr. Warm was driving me crazy.  I wasn't in such great shape myself, what with being in Beth Israel and all.  Sleeping in hospitals is iffy at best, and quite frankly I just wanted him to shut up.  I felt guilty about it but truth be told, that's what I wanted.  In the morning he was still carrying on.  He was speaking Yiddish and my Yiddish is fairly good, but I had no idea what he was talking about.  So I asked a nurse if they could possibly change my room, and she said they'd work on it.  About 9:00 AM there was suddenly a bunch of people in white coats gathered around Mr. Warm's bed.  First they drew the curtain.  Then they told me to get lost for a while.  Oooooookay.  I went to the patients' lounge.  I was davening *** when a nurse walked by.
Did Mr. Warm settle down yet?
Um, yes.
Is he okay?
I'm not allowed to discuss it.
Are they gonna change my room?
Not necessary anymore; Mr. Warm will be leaving.
I found that odd.  Couldn't be that he was all better.  So, hmmm.  What else could it be?  Put on the ol' thinking cap, Rocky.  YIKES!  Mr. Warm was no longer...warm!  Or breathing for that matter!  Good thing I'm not a detective.  I felt badly for him but he was, after all, 99 years old.  Then something really creepy happened: they left him in my room until 2:30.  I had a dead roommate for five and a half hours.  They covered his body, but not his face.  Class operation Beth Israel, right?  If they had brought him lunch, I would have been really upset.  Unless they had lasagna that day, in which case I would have asked for his portion.   So being the macabre lunatic that I am, I realized that this might be my only opportunity to ever photograph a dead guy.  So I did.  Got a problem with that?  Okay, here's where I get all philosophical and religious and stuff.  When I got over the icky feeling of having a roommate who had already checked out, I started pondering.  I'm a good ponderer.  I pondered what his life might have been like.  Was he a holocaust survivor?  Was he a nice man who gave lollipops to kids in shul or a grumpy old coot...even when he wasn't so old?  I realized that I'd never know.  All my knowledge about Mr. Warm was what I could glean from his last few hours on earth.  Not a fair sampling at all.  Was he rich, poor, righteous, evil, honest, gentle?  And whom was he really hollering at?  Was it the aide and the doctors and the nurses and me, or was there someone else there in the room with him, someone only he could see...was he calling the Angel of Death a kurva??  Looking at that husk of a face for five and a half hours convinced me that none of it mattered anymore.  They were gonna put him in a plain wooden box without even change for a buck and send him off to meet his Maker.  There's an awesome beauty and symmetry to that.  He takes nothing with him, and yet he takes everything that really matters.  His baggage goes him.  Good luck, Mr. Warm...I hope you were a nice guy.

* This post is (very) loosely based on a mass email that I sent out on January 13th, 2010.
** Kurva is Yiddish slang for...um...a Lady of the Evening, if you will.  Or even if you won't.
*** Davening=praying.