Where’s Dad?

This is the story of yet another unintended consequence of the Covid pandemic.

My father passed away of dementia in February 2019 at the age of 93.  While we were sad to lose him we were happy that he was released from this life.  We had a memorial service for him in July of 2019, my mother moved away from Cape Cod where she and my father had been living, and my four siblings and I started to close that chapter in our lives.

My father’s end of life wishes, documented years ago, were to donate his body to medical research and then when they were done with him, he wished to be cremated and his ashes spread at locations important to him.

On the day of his death, within a couple of hours after he passed away, he was brought up to a Boston area medical school/hospital presumably so that he would be available for use by medical students. My mother was told that they would keep the body for about 15 months and then he would be cremated, and his remains returned to her.  Of course, that 15 month timeframe put the potential release of my father’s remains right smack into the early days of Covid when all schools were shut, or employing remote teaching only, and hospitals were overwhelmed with keeping ill people alive and not concerned with keeping track of medical school cadavers.

We have neither seen nor heard anything about my father’s remains since!  He’s lost somewhere in the bowels of the medical school. 

We know that my father would find this situation amusing and my mother and all five of her children certainly think it’s funny. One of the benefits of trying to keep track of an elderly person who is already dead is that there is no need to worry about them; they’re already dead!  I asked my mother recently if there were any updates on this situation; her response: “I was just thinking about that.  Still waiting. I guess I’d better check back with them.”  It’s obviously not top of mind for her.  She’s 91; at some point she’s going to end up there too.  At least they’ll be together.

I live near the medical school/hospital where he is located and I keep envisioning wandering over there, knocking on the door and having the following conversation:

Staff:  Can I help you?

Me: I’m looking for my Father.

Staff: Which ward is he admitted to or what floor is he on?

Me: The dead ward; probably in the basement.

While we hope to get him back so that we can honor the completion of his end of life wishes, no one in my family is upset about not being able to find  Dad; we think it’s a funny story.  He wasn’t going to be buried in a cemetery so there was no plot of land, casket and headstone waiting for him and we had already accepted that there was never the option of a permanent place to visit him.  Maybe they’ll find him some day and wonder who this person was who has been sitting in the cadaver basement for years.  I’m sure that the disruption to the normal medical school class flow due to Covid is what caused this.

He chose to make a contribution to medical school training and we hope that the knowledge gained by the students who were working on his body will help all of us in the future!  He lives on in the treasured memories we hold of him that reside in our hearts and minds. 

If we find him I’ll let you know!