Death Maps Life in Los Angeles
MAY 10, 2011 TAGS:
Ben Ehrenreich's National Magazine Award-winning feature for Los Angeles Magazine begins with a chilling, but oddly calming image.
Even here in Los Angeles, in the glow of so much newness, she [death] takes 60,000 of us each year. That’s 164 each day. Imagine them all lying side by side, napping forever without a snore. The sun goes down and rises again, and 164 more are sleeping beside them, resting cheeks on shoulders, ears on arms. One day you will join their still parade.
The title of Ehrenreich's piece is "The End", but a more fitting description of his effort might be "the beginning:" you have a long journey to take through the City of Angels even after you've died. L.A. County's system of coroners, medical examiners, grave diggers, embalmers et al. presents an archipelago of bureaucracy and industry. Ehrenreich charts the course your body might take, meeting some intriguing personalities along the way (coroner Ed Winter: “We’re frigging always busy,”) and unexpected challenges (Lt. David Smith, head of notification and identification: "Part of the issue I’m dealing with here,” he tells me in the elevator, “is extremely overweight bodies that have to be cremated.”)
The article's central theme is that "death maps life:" the weigh stations on the highway of death (sorry, mixed metaphor) recapitulate the challenges of the living world. Life and Death, no matter how hard you try to separate them, exist in tandem.
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photograph by Frank Ockenfel
Even here in Los Angeles, in the glow of so much newness, she [death] takes 60,000 of us each year. That’s 164 each day. Imagine them all lying side by side, napping forever without a snore. The sun goes down and rises again, and 164 more are sleeping beside them, resting cheeks on shoulders, ears on arms. One day you will join their still parade.
The title of Ehrenreich's piece is "The End", but a more fitting description of his effort might be "the beginning:" you have a long journey to take through the City of Angels even after you've died. L.A. County's system of coroners, medical examiners, grave diggers, embalmers et al. presents an archipelago of bureaucracy and industry. Ehrenreich charts the course your body might take, meeting some intriguing personalities along the way (coroner Ed Winter: “We’re frigging always busy,”) and unexpected challenges (Lt. David Smith, head of notification and identification: "Part of the issue I’m dealing with here,” he tells me in the elevator, “is extremely overweight bodies that have to be cremated.”)
The article's central theme is that "death maps life:" the weigh stations on the highway of death (sorry, mixed metaphor) recapitulate the challenges of the living world. Life and Death, no matter how hard you try to separate them, exist in tandem.
photograph by Frank Ockenfel
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