Mortem BBC Sounds
Out of the Ordinary` Radio 4
Carla Valentine admits her career choice is “a bit left of field” but says your calling is your calling and she has found hers.
She’s a mortician.
She whisks us into her world – with a script that is pure poetry.
Blood from a damaged artery “like raindrops on a windscreen”; the first time she touched a dead body: “like dipping a toe into incredibly cold water”.
In each of these stories, the victim is fictional but the science and scientists are real.
The mortuary is an icy place.
Expect too, rather chilling sound effects. Was that a buzz saw or an electric lift?
It’s a slow burn and some listeners might find the detail disturbing. Did you know that once you remove someone’s brain, you can’t put it back into the skull cavity again as it might leak out through their ears?
The individual cases are intriguing and you’ll find yourself easily hooked.
The programme, Out of the Ordinary, dealt with the period prior to death and the idea of “terminal lucidity”.
The Victorians called it “lightning before death” and pondered whether it might be the individual’s immortal soul shining through a break in the clouds?
It is when someone who has been paralysed for years, suddenly sits up shortly before dying or someone who has never spoken before, speaks.
It seems to contradict what is current knowledge about brain functioning.
There were stories from families and health practitioners about patients with severe dementia who had not spoken for years suddenly waking up and starting to sing or call for a priest.
One woman spoke movingly of her mother who had had a brain tumour and whose communication was very limited… just the odd word.
But in the hospice, she woke up and sang.
“We joined in and held her hand. It was a magical moment that myself and my dad had.
“We hadn’t had that connection for a while. It was beautiful.”
