Pompeii Rant

I first read about Pompeii when I was (I believe?) in fifth grade. We had a short nonfiction story about it in one of our literature books. As a fifth grader, I couldn't comprehend the situation to the extent that I do now, but I do remember being quite chilled by the whole thing, as I imagined myself in those people's places. You always want to be the hero and the last person standing at the end of the movie. You want to be the person who gets out alive, hopefully with some friends so that you could keep on living.

What's not attractive to a ten year-old is the possibility of you suffocating to death by way of ash and debris as you cling to your family--or maybe you're alone--and wonder what is happening and why God did this to you.

At least, that's what I thought when I was in fifth grade. The word Pompeii became something of a nightmare for me after that. I would have dreams where I suffocated to death as gray fell like snow all around me, getting into my eyes and ears and mouth...

So I was a little nervous about going to Pompeii, just because that impression and those dreams (my own perception of what it would be like to suffocate) haunted part of my childhood. And it's a whole new level of being taken aback when those ashy bodies you've branded into your mind from the pages of your childhood textbook come back to you. The ancient world was scary, man.

But then again, so is ours.

I noticed the discomfort of some people around me. I think that one of the most important things this trip did, traveling to a world both foreign, modern, and ancient all at the same time, was make all of us question our humanity and our beliefs. People showed great respect for the dead on the trip in my opinion, but they did it in different ways. Getting used to those different ways was also part of the trip. A lot of us didn't know each other, and a lot of us came from different backgrounds. It's very, very easy to judge people when it comes to that. I noticed some people judging when deciding whether or not they wanted to take pictures of the bodies. Even Rosario brought up the issue when she was talking about the two different ways they made the body casts. One was made with plaster and one was made with gelatin. The gelatin bodies were too detailed, and people made those stop because it was too sad.

I mean, even these bodies are sad. They're crouching on the floor, holding each other for comfort. This is the kind of thing you see in modern art, when people try to make the faceless and expressionless people just convey an action. Because there's no face or name or anything, it's like they're one of everyone. It could be you.

We dealt with this same thing in the churches, seeing incorruptible bodies. It was hard for people--first, the notion that a person couldn't decompose after she died was kind of a hard idea in itself--truth or conspiracy? But then came the question of how you were supposed to respect something like that. Was it okay for someone to put a body like that on display for everyone to see?

It's a fair question. No one asked these people. When the people on Pompeii woke up, they didn't know that it was the morning so many of them would die. They didn't consider the prospect of themselves being buried under ash and lava. They didn't consider that their bodies would remain preserved in the position they died in for so many years, that they would remain preserved by the very thing that killed them, until people found them years later. They didn't know.

The word "consent" shows up a lot these days. These people didn't sign contracts, nothing.

Think about that for a second while I tell you another story.

When my father died, my mom took my sister and me to his grave on all the important dates: Christmas, Thanksgiving, St. Patrick's Day (we're Irish--what do you think we were going to do?). I hated going. Absolutely hated it. I would wait until the last second, until my mom was screaming at me to get into the car. We'd buy flowers at Wal-Mart, and I'd barely speak, barely offer an opinion on the flowers we were getting. When we got to the grave, I'd get out, put the flowers down and get away as fast as I could.

I don't get angry often. I get sad. I get happy. I get embarrassed. But I don't stay angry very long. Anger makes me exhausted. So do grudges. I don't know how people do them. I held one for the longest time, and it absolutely affected me all the time. Finally, I sat down and wondered why I felt that way every time I went to visit the grave. What I felt was anger, and I didn't understand.

There is no life inside a dead body.

I know that it's the most obvious statement in the world, but it means something totally different when you see it. What was buried in the grave forty-five minutes away from my house is not my father. It's a shell of him, and it's the shell full of life that I remember every time I think of him. As far as I was concerned, my father wasn't at his grave. It's a box and a concrete marker. And we put flowers in front of that. It was frustrating to me that an action so many people perform didn't mean that much, at least in my eyes. It was hard for me to think that we still needed to cling to something so material when my father was not material at all.

But it's a human thing to do, yes?

The incorruptible bodies and the casts in Pompeii are shells of people. The people aren't there anymore. And I don't know if they would have wanted their bodies on display. I ask myself if I would want my body on display, and I don't know. I feel self-conscious about my body. Would I be able to pick out what I wore? Or anything about my display? Probably not. You can't ask these people questions. We can't ever fully know them. They're not physically with us anymore.

But each one of those shells, each one was a person. Each one had a preference for whether or not he or she wanted his or her body on display. Each one had a favorite color and a favorite food and an opinion on who they were and what the world was. That is striking. And it's overwhelming. And it's unsettling.

But how you deal with that is going to be unique to you. I took pictures of the casts and not the incorruptibles. Maybe because I wanted to remember the feeling I had when I saw them. Maybe it's because I wanted the feeling but not the face that went with the feeling.

My mom took a picture of my grandfather's body inside his casket at the funeral. I asked her why she did that when no one else did, and she said that it was because it was still a memory, even though it wasn't a good one. Maybe that's the best explanation of what I'm trying to say here. I still think that the question is something you have to ask yourself. Death is still part of life, as much as we try to ignore it.