Catrina

The following essay of mine won Honorable Mention in a writing contest sponsored by Writers Digest. It is about my first death scene investigation as an Army Pathologist, doing my rotation at the ME office in San Antonio.

CATRINA

September, 1991, San Antonio, Texas.

It was a familiar story: an elderly widow in a retirement community whose mail was stacking up, and who hadn’t been seen for three days. I was on my medical examiner rotation in the final months of pathology residency and was accompanying staff from the ME’s office to observe death scene investigations. Death was no stranger to me, but before it had always come freshly gowned from the wards or Emergency Room. This time I was to see death au naturel.

The super’s knock at her door was answered by silence, and I took a deep breath as he let us in. The sweet smell of decay hit us as we entered, the odor declaring we were at the right address. I was grateful the apartment was air-conditioned. We found her in the bedroom propped up against the headboard. Her gray face was mottled and there was a small, blood-ringed hole through her frilly, pink nightgown over the left breast. The .38 revolver lying beside her told us all we needed to know to complete our investigation, or so I thought.

Then I noticed her hair was recently permed, with every blue hair in place. Looking closer I saw her lipstick and makeup were also perfect. At first I thought she just wanted to look good for her funeral when I saw her face was turned to the left, and followed her gaze.

Facing her was a small vanity with a faded, colorized portrait of a young man, proud in his airman’s uniform. The photograph was posed so that it would have been the last thing she saw. I imagined her making herself up as she prepared for her final date. I wondered if she talked to the photograph as she applied her cosmetics, recounting the first time they met.

In Mexico, Death is often portrayed as a skeletal woman dressed elegantly and elaborately made up, named Catrina. As I absorbed the scene before me, I felt as if I had met my own version of The Lady.

In forensic medicine, we make various determinations on the death certificate: listing the cause of death, mechanism of death, and manner of death. In this case, under mechanism of death I described the damaged chambers of her heart. Manner of death I ascribed to Suicide. Under cause of death however, I had to lie and say gunshot wound to the chest, when I really knew it was something else.

It was loneliness.