Uncategorized – Page 30

How can one person be so fucking stupid?

Self doubt is crippling and deadly.

One of the recurring issues that I’ve always had to deal with throughout my life is the incredible amount of self doubt and self hatred that I have inside.

“But Bobbie, you’re so smart”.

No, actually I’m not. Never have been. Never will be.

I’ve just managed to float along for most of my life.

Sure I can do things and fix things. So can anybody else.

Absolutely nothing special about what I can do.

People can sniff and smell my failings and inadequacies like a horrific stench that permeates everything around me.

I can weld. So can everyone else.

I can repair electronics. So can everyone else.

I’ve programmed in BASIC, Fortran, Cobol, C++, Python, Java. Again so can everyone else.

I can use Word, Excel, Open Office, Pages, etc. And so can everyone else.

I can use computers. So can everyone else.

I can find information. Big deal, did that change anything? Nope.

I discovered that my father actually legally kidnapped my brother and I.

Did anything come of that?

Nope.

I discovered that my father was actually a bigamist.

Did anything come of that?

Nope.

I discovered that the person who had molested my brother and I had criminal convictions in 1982, 1984, 1985, and 1986 for child molestation.

Did anything come of that?

Nope.

I discovered that Donald Joseph Sullivan was molesting children prior to joining the Canadian Armed Forces. He molested more children once he joined the Canadian Armed Forces.

Did anything come of that?

Nope.

I learnt that my family moved in April of 1983, not because my father wanted to “protect me” from the drugs that Pat and Wayne wanted to give me to make me stop trying to kiss boys. As it turned out it wasn’t Pat and Wayne that had concerns about my apparent homosexuality, that was my father and Captain Terry Totzke. We moved because my father was fleeing Alberta so that I wouldn’t be removed from his care and placed into foster care or residential care which would have exposed the fact that my father didn’t have legal custody of my brother and I.

Did anything come of this?

Nope.

I discovered that my father was known to lie and to bullshit and to kiss ass. To actually see in writing that my father “often told people in positions of authority what he thought the wanted to hear”,”or that Mr. Gill often told conflicting stories from on meeting to the next”,”or that Mr. Gill has a tendency to blame others for his problems and often expects others to solve his problems for him” was a beautiful fucking relief.

But did it change anything?

Nope.

I discovered that I had been diagnosed as suffering from major depression, severe anxiety, was terrified of men, was convinced that my father was going to kill me. I even discovered that I had been anorexic as a child. I also discovered that doctors at the IWK children’s hospital in Halifax, Nova Scotia had severe concerns about my father and my mother.

Did anything come of this?

Nope.

As my father once told me, “Be very fucking careful of sticking your fucking nose where it doesn’t fucking belong as you might not like what you find”.

Well, I stuck my nose where it didn’t fucking belong and just as Richard warned me, I didn’t really like what I found.

Sure, I’m not a fucking insane basket case, but I’ve realized that my life has been one very tragic fucking joke.

Left to suffer from untreated major depression, severe anxiety, and trauma from sexual abuse all because people people with political ambitions decided that it was politically expedient to sweep the full extent of the Captain McRae fiasco under the rug.

Nobody gave a single fucking shit about me my entire life.
Not Richard Gill;
Not Marie Dagenais;
Not Al Dagenais;
Not Susan Zwolle;
Not Captain Terry Totzke;
Not Colonel Dan Munro;
Not Colonel J.D.Boan;
Not Gilles Lamontagne;
Not Jason Kenny;
Not Jody Wilson-Raybould;
Not Harjit Sajjan;
Not Sgt. Robert Jon Hancock;
Not Sgt. Christian Cyr;
Not Glenn Stannard;
Not Robert Howard;
Not the Canadian Armed Forces;
Not the Department of National Defence;
Not the Royal Canadian Mounted Police;
Not the Summerside Police;
The fucking worthless media in this country that killed the idea of investigative journalism years ago.
Not a single fucking one of these fuckers or worthless fucking entities gave a single flying fuck.

People who cared, but who couldn’t overcome the systematic bullshit.
Pat M.;
Wayne W;
Aviva D;
Richard Ford;
Mrs. Donskov;
Jonathan Bowles;
Mr. Atkins;
Mr. Richard Brown;
The Casson family;
Bob Becker;
The Toronto Police Service;
Constable Dustin Wilkins;
David Pugliese;
Nora Loreto;
And many others.

2023 can’t come soon enough.

Escitalopram, acne, and white hair.

I’ve been shaving my head since the summer of 1991 when I lived in Edmonton.

That’s just over 30 years now.

I would have been 19 and I was living in my first apartment and I had a lot of time to myself.

Marie, my mother, freaked out when I went to visit her at the acreage.

All Richard would say is that I was obviously insane like my uncle Al.

There were a few reasons why I decided to shave my head.

One of the reasons that I shaved my head was that I really liked how Sinéad O’Connor was able to pull off the look. If you have a round head, you can pull off the bald look easily.

The second reason that I started to shave my head in the summer of 1991 is that I was already sprouting a lot of grey hair. Not just one or two hairs. It was noticeable.

The third is that the top of my head was already thinning out.

In my 20’s I’d occasionally let it grow back in, but it usually came off really quickly as the grey was getting very noticeable.

If you’ve followed along with my blog to date you’ll know that I am taking escitalopram for major depression.

The escitalopram has worked with my depression. But it has had some minor side effects. Nothing serious. But side effects none the less.

One of the side effects that I am getting now is acne. Acne on my face and acne on my head. Nothing serious. But enough that I don’t shave each and every day. In fact I haven’t shaved my face or head for about a week now.

My beard and my hair are pure white. There isn’t a single black hair on my head or on my face. Even my moustache is white.

I’ve never grown a beard before, and I really don’t want a beard, but I want to see what this looks like. I’ve never seen what I look like with all of my facial or head hair white.

I’ve got facial tattooing coming up in February. I’m going to get some portions of my face filled in with black blocking so I should be able to get about 3 months of growth before I have to shave it all off again for the tattoos.

I’ve worked at the hospital since 2005 and no one there has seen me with facial hair, hair on my head, or even eye brows. Yes, I shave my eye brows off, otherwise it looks like I’ve got two very hairy caterpillars sleeping over my eyes.

The only hair on my face that I never trim is my eye lashes. I used to trim my eye lashes when I was younger when I was in school. But that will be for another blog posting.

I’ll probably post a couple more pictures of my facial hair in the upcoming weeks and months. As I’ve said, I’ve never had a beard before. And I probably won’t again. But this be something different.

Interesting.

Okay, today (November 12, 2021) I received an email from the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service Victim Services coordinator.

Turns out that the CFNIS is handing my case over to the civilian police after the edict from the new Minister of National Defence on November 4th, 2021.

This is exactly 10 years to the date that the CFNIS on November 4th, 2011 told me in a telephone call that the CFNIS couldn’t find any evidence to indicate that the person that I had accused of sexually assaulting me and my brother was capable of committing the crimes I had accused him of.

In 2020 the MPCC would lay bare the fact that the CFNIS had actually established that the accusations I had made were founded.

There was one caveat in the email. The civilian police may chose to hand the matter back to the CFNIS.

Regardless, this is a perfect raspberry for all of those that said that military crimes could not be investigated or tried in the military justice system.

The military justice system has never had sole jurisdiction over criminal code matters. What we had though was a chain of command that was more than happy to “wash the laundry” in house and present a complete bullshit façade to the general public that life on base was just like Mayberry.

I wonder how many people who were sexually abused on base as military dependents will be willing to come forward now that they’re no longer in the grips of the CFNIS and the military police.

This case is related to the man in the sauna at the base recreation centre.

In the days after I had been caught being buggered by P.S. but before the house fire at P.S.’s house on June 23, 1980 P.S. had found me in the change room at the base swimming pool.

He escorted me over to the sauna. In the sauna was a man in his mid to late 40’s if not early ’50s. P.S. had somehow promised this man that I would perform oral sex on him. P.S., always had a position of authority over me. P.S. wasn’t afraid to use physical violence to get what he wanted. He was an extremely angry teenager. I didn’t dare refuse. I performed oral sex on the man. I would have been 8 at the time. P.S. was just shy of his 15th birthday at the time. The man stopped me right before he ejaculated. I don’t know why he stopped me before he ejaculated. I’ve got some ideas. Anyways……..

I’ve got some ideas as to who this man may have been. If he is who I think he might have been, this man would have been a Major in the Canadian Forces.

This man has charges related to the sexual abuse of other children on different Canadian Forces Bases, and he was on Canadian Forces Base Namao during the Captain McRae matter in June and July of 1980.

The Minister of National Defence, the Chief of Defence Staff, the Vice Chief of Defence Staff, and the Provost Marshal would have their obvious reasons for not being able to find enough evidence against the person I had accused. But will the civilian police have any better luck seeing as how the civilian police would have to go through the military to get pertinent records and documents.

And there’s still the issue presented by the two historical flaws in the pre-1998 National Defence Act, namely the Summary Investigation flaw, and the 3-year-time-bar.

Only time will tell.

The burning and mind numbing silence.

One of the issues that really causes me a lot of grief and consternation is the complete and absolute lack of interest from the media and from groups that should be interested in how the Canadian Armed Forces dealt with child sexual abuse on the bases in Canada.

There have only been two reporters that have shown any level of interest in my matter and those two reporters are David Pugliese and Nora Loreto.

Even veterans groups that support members of the Canadian Armed Forces want nothing to do with my matter.

Now, you might be saying to yourself “but Bobbie, how common could child sexual abuse have been on the bases?”.

Well, what are the odds that I would have been involved with the following:

A captain of the regular forces who admitted to molesting numerous children during his years of service and who would go on to have more convictions for molesting children after he had been booted out of the military.
An altar boy who would go on to have numerous charges and convictions for sexual crimes committed against children.
A random stranger in the sauna of a military recreation centre who was keen to receive oral sex from an 8 year old.
A major of the regular forces who himself would be investigated years later for sexually abusing a young boy on Canadian Forces Base Borden in 1974 and who would go on to pay a cash settlement with the family of a young 16 year old boy that he had improper sexual relations with.
A member of the Canadian Corps of Commissionaires who was a hebephile and no doubt had access to children on various military bases during his career in the Canadian Armed Forces.

The Military Police Complaints Commission confirmed that my babysitter, P.S., was charged and convicted in 1982 for molesting a young boy in a town just north of CFB Petawawa in Ontario. In 1984 P.S. was charged and convicted for molesting a boy in Manitoba. And then in 1985 he was charged and convicted for molesting a 9 year old boy on Canadian Forces Base Edmonton after his family had been posted back there. He was also convicted of molesting a 13 year old news paper boy in the city of Edmonton after the Canadian Forces booted him out of his family’s military housing unit on the base. How many other children did P.S. molest on Canadian Forces Base Petawawa, in Ontario as well as the unnamed base in Manitoba, as well as Canadian Forces Base Edmonton. How many children did P.S. molest in the surrounding communities and was able to escape justice because his father got transferred to different bases?

When I obtained the court martial records for captain McRae it contained a copy of his ecclesiastical trial conducted by the Catholic church. Captain McRae admitted to having molested numerous boys over the years. Captain McRae joined the Canadian Armed Forces in 1973. He was investigated for having committed “acts of homosexuality” shortly there after while he was stationed at the Royal Military College. The RMC is in Kingston, Ontario and is on Canadian Forces Base Kingston. Captain McRae was then transferred to Canadian Forces Base Portage La Prairie in Manitoba. After CFB Portage La Prairie he was transferred to Canadian Forces Station Holberg on Vancouver Island in British Columbia. After CFS Holberg he was transferred to Canadian Forces Base Namao. In May and June of 1980 the military police and the CFSIU would discover that he had molested over 25 children on the base.

This begs the question. How many children on the bases and in the communities around the bases did P.S. and Captain McRae molest?

Around the time of Lynne Harper’s murder in 1959, sergeant Alexander Kalichuk had been found driving around the back roads around Royal Canadian Air Force base Clinton. He was offering new panties to young girls. When the police caught up with him and asked him what he was doing he said he bought the box of girls panties as a birthday present for a friend’s daughter, but that the party had been cancelled and he didn’t want the panties to go to waste. How many kids did Kalichuk molest, rape, or murder before he more than likely raped and killed Lynne Harper? We’ll never know and the Canadian Armed Forces are fine with that. Don’t forget, the military offers the perfect hiding place for people like P.S., or Captain McRae, or Sgt. Alexander Kalichuk. New children delivered to the base every posting season. The kids you’ve molested get posted off the base eventually and go to another base. You get transferred to another base before you get caught. The kids you’re molesting, especially the boys, are dead terrified of being seen as weak, gay, or queer. And back in the “good ol’ days” there were no police databases that could be used by local police departments to track similar crimes that may have occurred in different geographical areas throughout Canada.

So yeah, it becomes so very tiring and so very maddening to see the Canadian media and veterans groups and military sexual assault survivor groups show absolutely no interest or no concern for the children that lived on Canadian Forces Bases.

It’s almost like the media and the veterans groups and the military sexual assault survivor groups are saying to me and the other like me that our lives are meaningless and that we are disposable.

If you want to know what it feels like to be human garbage, just ask, I can let you know.

For 42 years I’ve dealt with severe sexual trauma, the fallout of being dealt with by military social worker Captain Terry Totzke, being caught between Captain Totzke and my civilian social workers, despised by my own father for having “fucked with his military career” and for “allowing” the babysitter, P.S., to abuse my younger brother.

So yeah.

That’s why I’m tired.

And that’s why I’m numb.

And that’s one of the reasons that I really want to go to sleep.

November 6th 2021

Well, fall is obviously starting to set in.

The rain is more frequent

The leaves are dropping off the trees

The sun goes down much earlier in the day

The sun comes up much later in the morning

Another year about to end

Another year closer to the end

The grey and cloudy skies just seem to suck the energy right out of me

But I guess in the natural world we’d be slowing down and getting ready for the winter months

Kinda hard to believe that even though things are slowing down that the Earth is still zipping through the universe at 23,400 kilometres per hour.

Anyways….. gonna go out for a walk.

Dying.

“If you want to die, how can you be afraid of dying?”

As I’ve said, I don’t fear death.

Once you are dead you are free of the senses, you do not feel pain, you no longer exist.

It’s the dying part that scares me. It always has.

And I don’t mean in the sense of heaven or hell or gods or the such.

What I fear is the pain or the terror that would fill my last minutes, or hours, or even days.

I actually don’t like being inside automobiles due to my father’s penchant for aggressive driving and drunk driving. I don’t relish the idea of dying in an automobile collision. There was a pile-up on the Q.E.W. in Southern Ontario back in the ’90s. A young girl got trapped inside one of the cars and slowly burned to death. That is not a death that I would wish on anyone.

Yeah, I understand that dying by my own hand would only last for so long, but I’ve never been a big fan of panic and terror.

It’s fairly obvious that I’ve never bled to death before, but the idea of slicing an artery and bleeding out doesn’t appeal to me due to the shock and panic that would set in as the volume of blood in my body decreased. The nausea that would come with the shock would be very unpleasant.

Asphyxiation would be the same thing

Asphyxiation, choking, etc…… no thank you.

You hear about the successful cases. What you never hear about are the unsuccessful cases which often lead to permanent brain damage.

Drugs? Yeah, no. There’s just something about ingesting copious amounts of drugs that doesn’t appeal to me. Maybe it’s the vomiting and the retching. Maybe it’s that you actually stand a good chance of inhaling your own vomit and dying a very prolonged and painful death.

Unless you manage to get things right your last moments on Earth will be filled with pain and misery. Sure, eventually everything will be over. But as I said I don’t want to tack on more suffering to the suffering that I’ve already endured.

And I can tell you one thing, you never want to die in a hospital hooked up to a ventilator in the ICU in a drug induced coma. That’s probably the worst way to go that I can think of.

Dying is not an easy thing to do. It’s honestly not as easy as you’d think it would be. It’s definitely not as easy nor as romantic as it’s made out to be in the movies or literature. One part of the brain wants to die while another part of the brain wants to survive.

This is why I am really intrigued with Medical Assistance in Dying.

If the protocol is adhered to and if the proper doses are followed one shouldn’t be aware in the slightest that they have stopped breathing and that their heart has stopped beating. There’s no choking. There’s no gaging. There should be no violent convulsions or spasms. Just a complete loss of consciousness and then nothing.

Sure, the anxiety may be something to contend with in the months, and weeks, and days, and then hours leading up to one’s demise under M.A.i.D.. But I think with the proper mindset that one should be able to make it right to the end without too much of a problem.

I think that one of the things that terrifies most people about death is the lack of control of the where and when. Death typically comes randomly. It follows no schedule. It generally doesn’t take into consideration what your plans are or if your affairs are in order. You could be at work, you could be on the subway, you could be out for a bicycle ride. You death can be quick, or it can be lingering. You could slowly die on the cold pavement while gawkers stare at you. And I think this is what frightens most people about death, the general lack of control around the circumstances of one’s demise.

The gender bias of sexual assault

I’ve often wondered if the fact that I am male has a had an impact on how my abuse at the hands of P.S. and Captain McRae has been viewed by the authorities.

Society expects girls and women to be the victims of sexual assault.

Society also expects that boys and men will be the perpetrators of sexual assault.

Things get really turned upside down when boys or men are the victims of sexual assault.

And things really get turned upside down when males are the victims of other males.

When I was receiving my counselling from Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Terry Totzke the area of concern wasn’t so much that I had been sexually abused but was that I had been caught having sex with another boy.

In the aftermath of being caught in P.S.’s bedroom I had often wondered if I would have gotten in trouble if I had been a girl instead of a boy. Even at age 8 I understood the gender bias that existed.

When I used to swap clothes with Megan on CFB Griesbach, it wasn’t so much that I wanted to be a girl. It’s just that I couldn’t understand why boys couldn’t wear dresses. I’d like to think that I was ahead of the curve with understanding that artificial society enforced gender roles were harmful and toxic. But more than likely it was just that I couldn’t understand why it was wrong for boys to wear dresses. And still no one has been able to explain this to me.

I remember girls on base who got touched by same age boys during episodes of “doctor”. The father of the girl would often unleash a can of whoop-ass on the boy who touched his daughter. The father of the boy would often give his son an “understanding wink” as if to say “good job son!”. The daughter never received any type of admonishment for the game of doctor as there was no way possible that the girl could have instigated it. But again, that’s just one of society’s biases, “girls are weak and can only be victims, boys are strong and can only be perpetrators”.

While living on CFB Griesbach I had developed feelings for a boy my age. He lived two doors down from me in PMQ #68. Nothing sexual at all. But we did kiss one day. His father was furious. Mine was even more so telling me that if he ever heard reports from another parent on base that I had kissed their son that he would “break my fucking neck” and that I would never have to worry about kissing another boy again.

Now, I realize that male-on-male child sexual abuse also existed out in the civilian world and that in the civilian world the victims of male-on-male child sexual abuse weren’t treated all that fairly. I still have a copy of an actual educational film from the ’60s called “Boys Beware” in which a teenage boy is groomed by a hebephile and coerced into sex. The hebephile is arrested and the boy is sentenced to juvenile detention. But there was possibly something else at play in the Canadian Armed Forces.

In 2014 when the French magazine L’actualité published its bombshell stories about sexual assault in the Canadian Armed Forces, one of the stories it ran was about male-on-male sexual assault. The writer of the article was told that male-on-male sexual assault in the military was all about control, humiliation, and punishment, and not about sexual gratification.

Is this why male-on-male sexual abuse was not taken all that serious in the Canadian Armed Forces? Obviously the victim must have done something wrong and deserved to be sexually abused, right? Don’t forget, the men sexually abusing other members of the Canadian Forces often had children at home. If these men participated in the sexual humiliation of other male members, how likely were they to take the sexual abuse of their sons as a serious offence. If these men participated in the sexual humiliation of other members, how likely were they to abuse their own children as a form of punishment or to exert control over an out of control child?

Let’s say that a soldier of the Canadian Forces had an out of control teenage boy at home, and if this member of the Canadian Forces had been involved with episodes of male-on-male sexual abuse in the military as a form of humiliation or punishment, would it be feasible that this member might also make use of male-on-male sexual abuse in an attempt to reign his son in and bring his son under control?

Oddly, when Maclean’s ran the English versions of the L’Actulaite stories they dropped the entire article about male-on-male sexual assault. Is French society that much more advanced that it can handle topics like male-on-male sexual abuse? Are the Anglophones of such delicate sensibilities that Maclean’s was worried about causing their English readers to faint, and swoon, and need PTSD counselling?

How cold is it…….

So, I spent some time today verifying the Dixell temperature monitors that I’m installing in the Pharmacy department .

This project came about after I had upgraded all of the walk-in coolers and freezers in the dietary kitchens. The old system was mechanical thermostats, time clocks for defrost cycles, and simple mechanic thermostats for monitoring for high temperatures. Needless to say there were a lot of false alarms and evaporator freeze ups.

When I saw how easy it was to install the Dixell controllers, network them, and program them I knew that I had a viable solution for the clinical and pharmacy departments to upgrade their monitoring.

Guess I’ll have to see where this goes.

I have a sneaking suspicion that other health authorities and other hospitals may have questions that I may need to answer.

A Lack of Interests

I’ve always been kind of an odd duckling at work. “Not one of the boys” as they often say.

I don’t really talk about sportsball. I don’t talk about TV. I don’t talk about Hollywood stars, or movies.

I really don’t have many interests to be honest.

But then again Richard wasn’t known for instilling a love of hobbies or activities in my brother or I.

Anything my father did take an interest in he quickly lost interest in.

He had a camera with all of the doodads and gizmos. Never really took an interest in it other than snapping a few pictures on the television of a hockey game.

He had a private pilot’s licence. And except for when we lived on Canadian Forces Base Shearwater, he never went flying again.

He owned a motorcycle, but rarely rode on it. It was usually hauled out of the garage and ridden just for the sake of keeping the fuel from going bad.

Broomball? Yeah he’d play broomball, but not very often.

Was it his depression or his PTSD that kept him from taking up interests?

And when he did take up interests it was almost like he was being forced to take them on, like he was pushing himself to find an interest that he liked because if he found the interest that he liked then he’d stick with it. But he never did find the proverbial interest. He’d try something new, get fed up, and move on to something else.

I didn’t develop any hobbies as a child. It wasn’t like my father had ever encouraged my brother or I to take on any hobbies. And even if we had developed hobbies, who was going to pay for them? Surely not him.

Richard built a few model airplanes, but that was it.

He didn’t really have any favourite bands or musicians.

The only thing that he really liked was hockey. He seemed to love the Toronto Maple Leafs. But he’d get so angry and upset when he’d watch them on TV. For the entire 7 years that we lived in Toronto I don’t think he ever attended a hockey game at Maple Leaf Gardens. I know that he sure as hell didn’t ever take my brother or I to a hockey game. Even when we lived in Edmonton during the early ’80s when the Oilers and Gretzky were owning the NHL we never once went to a hockey game at the Northlands Coliseum.

Things we never did together as a family……

Camping
Skating
Bowling
Bicycle riding
Watching hockey games
Watching football games
Watching baseball games
Fishing
Going to amusement parks
Going to museums
Going to movies
School plays
Cadet nights
Cadet award ceremonies
Working on cars
Working on electronics
Working on computers
Going to parks
Going to the beach

Mr. Gill does not feel a family support worker would benefit kids as he claims to take them out rollerskating and to cubs.

Yeah, I can promise you that he never took us rollerskating or to cubs. I was in beavers on CFB Namao, and that was it.

Even just sitting down and trying to watch TV with Richard was an exercise in futility. You had to “shut your damn mouth and watch the TV”. You didn’t ever ask him to explain a TV show to you. That could invoke a rage almost as bad as if you asked him how hockey worked or why that guy got a penalty or why that puck was offside.

It was a lonely and boring childhood.

So yeah, I think this is why I never developed any hobbies.

Death

Everybody does it, and it’s only natural, so why are we so afraid of it?

I have no fear of death.

Dying? Sure.

Death? No.

For obvious reasons I’ve had a lot of opportunities in my life to contemplate death. When I was about 5 years old on CFB Summerside, one of my friends was killed in a tobogganing incident. When I asked Richard if everyone dies he looked at me and said yes, everyone including me would die one day.

In my dysfunctional household the thought of dying and death was always seen as viable escape from Richard or his mother.

Death is one of the phases of life. Rich, poor, young, old, there is no escaping death. Death IS the great leveller.

From the time a human being is born until the time a human being dies the body is experiencing the physical world. Even when we sleep the brain is processing information from our environment. Once we die though, the brain no longer exists. There is nothing left to process information. A dead brain cannot sense. A dead brain cannot feel. A dead brain cannot fear.

I think the main reason that humans are afraid of death is that death is something that the human brain simply cannot comprehend.

Just as the human brain cannot comprehend the existence of time before its birth, the human brain cannot comprehend no longer existing. Ask yourself this, what do you envision happening after you die?

Can you comprehend the size of the universe? Can you comprehend the universe continuously expanding in all directions? Here’s one to ponder, what’s at the edge of the universe and what’s on the other side? If the universe has no edge, does the universe just go on forever? Nothing lasts forever, including nothing. Everything has an end, including nothing.

Can you comprehend that the universe is over 14,000,000,000 years old and that for the vast majority of that time life as we know it did not exist. Or how about the fact that in 5,000,000,000 years the Sun will become a red giant and will have become so large that it will have engulfed the Earth and destroyed it. Can you comprehend that in 10, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000 years the universe is expected to undergo heat death meaning that there will no longer be any detectable energy in the universe.

The human brain is happy dealing with topics that it can reason with and experience. Music? The human brain is great with rhythm and melody and pitch and scale.

Language? The human brain can learn multiple languages as it can experience the use of language in everyday use.

Combining materials mined from the Earth into computer chips and high capacity batteries? The human brain has the ability to learn and to apply knowledge learnt from previous experiments towards new creations.

How are these advances possible? It is the passing of knowledge from one human to another. The only knowledge that the human brain isn’t able to pass to another human is what happens after death.

I believe that the inability of our brain to understand death is one of the driving reasons behind the existence of religion. The human brain needs to know that it came from somewhere and that it has some place to go after the body dies.

The human brain is extremely curious and inquisitive. The human brain doesn’t like it when it can’t figure something out. It has to have answers. So it creates gods and nymphs and fairies and prophets and witches and warlocks and other mythical creatures. Does the Earth reside on the back of a giant tortoise that swims through the universe? Is the Earth flat? Did Noah create an ark that housed all of the animals in the world including the Kangaroos that hopped on over from Australia or the penguins that swam up from the Antarctic?

Religion and gods served a purpose. They explained things that early humans couldn’t have explained. The drought that caused a massive crop failure? You didn’t pray hard enough, or you prayed to the wrong god. The flood that wiped out a village? Again, you must have done something to upset the appropriate god. Need to justify you war and subjugation of a neighbouring village? God wanted you to do that, the others were heathens worshipping the wrong god.

I realized quite a while ago that human knowledge doesn’t die. The body dies. The brain dies. But the knowledge contained within the brain lives on by passing from one human to the next. Human beings didn’t just learn to speak one day. This feat took hundreds of thousands of years for us to develop. Humans didn’t just start building ships out of steel. The ability for forge steel and make alloys took thousands of years. Same thing for any piece of technology in use these days.

The human brain is programmed to view death in a negative manner. Death is attributed with diseases, and illnesses, and violence. Even when a person passes away peacefully in their sleep, those who find the corpse tend to respond to the corpse with fear.

It’s no doubt that our general fear of death and dead bodies has been somewhat beneficial over the years. Exposure to a rotting corpse exposes the living to all sorts of unpleasant possibilities. Humans know that it is generally a good idea to get rid of a corpse as soon as possible to avoid any diseases that the corpse may harbour. Burying corpses also seems to be a great idea that also prevents the spreading of diseases. Don’t forget, refrigeration wasn’t a thing until rather recently.

When a body dies it goes through various stages before decomposition renders the body to a skeleton.

Pallor Mortis is the first stage after death. This is where the blood recedes from the skin. Lips turn blue and the skin loses its pinkish hue. The resulting change in colour is especially noticeable in people with white skin.
Algor Mortis is the second stage of death. This is where the body, due to the lack of oxygen required to power the cells, starts to cool down as the cells in the body start to die.
Rigor Mortis is the next stage of death. As the body is no longer able to manufacture ATP the muscles in the body are no longer able to relax. They start to become rigid and inflexible. Further, as ADP is release into the muscle fibres, the muscle fibres contract and are unable to relax as the body no longer has the ability to reabsorb the ADP and cannot create new ATP. The muscles only relax after the muscle tissue has started to decompose.
Livor mortis comes next. That’s where the blood and other body fluids are drawn by gravity to the lowest parts of the body. If you die lying down your back will take a on very deep purple bruised complexion. If you were to die sitting up, your legs would become dark purple and swollen.
Finally, putrefaction sets in. This is where the internal organs, the muscles, fat, and skin start to break down and liquify. Bacteria will start to consume the corpse from the inside while insects and small animals will start to consume the corpse from the outside.

At the completion of the five stages you’re typically left with a skeleton.

I find it really sad that I can’t really give my skeleton away. Not even just parts of it. There’s a few people I know of that would love to have my skull. And I have no doubt that they would enjoy it.

Thankfully a person is dead by the time rigour mortis sets in. Can you imagine what a full-body Charlie Horse would feel like. Rigour mortis is a very power force. It can break bones. I’ve seen pictures from early 20th century medical text books that demonstrated the strength of rigour mortis. One picture had a corpse with a saw horse under the neck and a saw horse under the ankles and the body only had a slight bow in the midsection. Another picture had the head of the corpse resting on a chair and the ankles resting on another chair and again the body was so stiff that it barely flexed in the middle.

What do I intend to do with my body?

I’d actually love to have my body placed on a body farm. That’s probably the closets to a natural decomposition one can have these days. Body farms are basically training grounds for law enforcement, pathologists, and coroners to observe and learn how a body decomposes under various circumstances when exposed to the elements. They can dress the corpse up, or leave the corpse naked and exposed, or wrap the corpse up in plastic bags. All to simulate the various conditions that a deceased could expect to be found in. This is to allow police and pathologists and coroners to hone their skills and to learn how to read a corpse in order to figure out how the corpse died and how long the corpse was dead before it was discovered.

There’s actually only one body farm in Canada, and that’s in Quebec.

The next option for my corpse would be to have it go to a medical school. I’ve watched numerous autopsy videos and it always amazes me how much can be learnt from the body be examining the viscera of a body. The human body is often called “The Soft Machine” and what an intricate and intriguing machine the human body is. If medical students can learn something from my corpse, all the better. I honestly believe that everyone should have the opportunity to view at least one autopsy I their life.

In either scenario I’d love for my brain to be sent to one of the various research facilities in Canada that deal with neurological disorders. Even though I’d be dead, and my brain would be completely non-functional, researchers can still tell a lot about a brain and the mental illnesses it suffered from while it was alive. Even though I’d be dead at that point and I wouldn’t benefit from any research carried out on my brain, if researching my brain provided clues to treatments for others suffering from what I’ve suffered from, then it would be worth it.

I really don’t want my corpse to be pumped full of chemicals. I’ve never understood the present day need for embalming. We have modern refrigeration that will slow down the decomposition rate of a corpse while funeral arrangements are being made, so no, no embalming for me. Fancy satin lined coffins, talking headstones, and cement vaults? For what? I don’t get it.

Cremation? What a waste. All that fuel being consumed and all of that pollution being released. Not good.

Alkaline hydrolysis looks fairly interesting. Not sure if it’s legal in BC yet. It is legal in Saskatchewan, Ontario, and Quebec. The process is fairly simple. Water is heated to 177 Celsius. Lye is added to the water. The water is circulated in a stainless steel chamber in which the body has been placed. It takes about 6 hours for the body to completely break down to the point that the only thing left is a bleached and brittle skeleton.

Anyways……. enough about death……

I the next post I will talk about why I’m scared of dying, but not of death.

Or maybe I’ll talk about hobbies or my lack thereof.