My Son, Shawheen, died on 8/26/15, just 3 days after his 30th birthday. What a shock! There is no way to describe such pain, such grief…
The police were called as he had locked his door and they wouldn’t let me see him. It was two days later when I viewed his body with his father at the hospital. He looked so serious, so groomed, so cold. He was always very careful with his grooming. I wished I had taken a picture of him then because he looked so different later. The closest thing I have is the picture of him above with the numbers below, taken by the medical examiner on 8/28/15.
Three days later me and my other boys viewed his body at the funeral home. I went in first with my rabbi to bathe the body and say prayers to prepare his body for passing. When I enterned the room that day I stopped. Something felt eerie. I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. It wasn’t the grief. That was there too. It was something different and I paused, just inside the door. After a few minutes I went over to my son and began following the instructions of the rabbi and saying the prayers. I still couldn’t put my finger on what it was.
About a half an hour later when Shawheen’s younger brother came in, he suggested we take pictures. As I took pictures and he did, I began to notice that my son appeared to be so peaceful. His eyes seemed to be turned up just slightly on the sides, particularly the left eye, and his mouth seemed to be almost smiling. I realized what was eerie then. He looked different than he had before. Something had changed. I felt like he was there in spirit telling me he was at peace. I hadn’t started to sense him in my head yet at that point so it was just a feeling.
Later I called the medical examiner. They had done an autopsy and I wanted to know if they had done anything to his head, face, or hair. His hair looks about the same in these two pictures but before when I saw him, his hair was slicked back the way he wore it. The medical examiner insisted they had not done anything to his hair or inside his face. They had washed him. I figured that out when I viewed the pictures they sent me recently as he had had a bloody nose.
I don’t know if you can see what I saw. It has taken me 18 months to deal with the grief of asking the medical examiner for these pictures. There were many others much harder to look at. I don’t know if you will see the difference in these two pictures but I see it. A definately more peaceful, almost buddha-like contentment in the face without the numbers. This was the face I saw at the funeral home. This was the peace that gave me a little bit of peace amidst my grief. If he was happier, in heaven, despite his addictions and negative behaviors, couldn’t I feel some peace for him also?