Death: NASA, Real Estate and Flying

Recently I read a story about NASA having to come up some sort of procedure for the possibility of astronauts dying while on their way to Mars. I suppose as ghoulish as this sounds, it is a real concern to have some kind of plan in place in the event that some quantum string of super-duper cosmic radiation comes shooting through the hull of the spacecraft and fries someone into something unrecognizable...all because someone forgot to invent force fields like the ones on Star Trek. Anyway, I guess they aren't going to have a huge refrigerator on board to store the bodies, so out the hatch they will go.

I read another story about a real estate agent who had been showing a house for a couple of weeks. Nothing unusual in that except the owner was upstairs in her bed in the master bedroom and was very, very dead! I don't know what happened exactly but the poor woman had been dead for two weeks. The agent claims she was not able to smell anything foul in the house because of a stuffy nose. That must have been some sinus infection you had going there, sister!

Nor did she apparently think anything about why potential homebuyers were making a quick retreat while in mid-climb up the stairs to the floor of death and breaking their necks to get out of the house. And she didn't wonder just why were they running down the street screaming, "Murder...murder" while flailing their hands in the air in a stark-raving panic.

Someone finally went upstairs while the real estate agent stayed downstairs futzing about. The potential homeowner, a lady, found the body and began screaming.

The only thing the agent could tell authorities was that she couldn't believe she couldn't smell death. I think perhaps she should look into a little nasal decongestant when showing more homes, don't you think?

Another death story that is still keeping me off airplanes concerns the British guy who was flying first-class from India back to Britain. He awoke to find a dead women sitting next to him at 33,000 feet in the air. This poor lady died while in coach class and, not knowing what to do with her lifeless body, the stewardesses hauled her limp and rotting corpse into first class and strapped her into a seat by the British guy.

He said he awoke to find this woman flopping and sliding about the seat and thought perhaps she was sick and in need of help. He rang for the cabin attendants.

Now, I have to stop right here and ask, "Just what did these airline employees think?" Did they hope the guy would sleep the whole time so as not to discover that they had placed a stiff in the seat next to him? Did they think he would wake up and take it like a Brit:

"Oh, she died? These things happen, don't they? I wonder might you bring me a gin and tonic?"

No...no...no!

When the stewardess came to see why he was ringing the " Quick...someone has just died buzzer," he made the logical observation that he thought this woman was ill and was unconscious.

The airline employee responded with such typical British aplomb,

"Oh, no Sir. She isn't sick, she's dead. Could I bring you something?"

Can you begin to wrap your mind around this scene? Is this not something right out of a horror film? The poor schmuck woke up to discover that the cabin crew decided that the best course of action was to place a dead lady (the cause of death unknown), in a sitting position beside him while he was sawing logs. All they could say was,

"Oh, no. She's not sick. She's dead."

When the poor British chap protested that maybe she died of some sort of communicable disease, which would have been my first comment, all they could do was stare at him blankly for a few moments and then had the gall to say,

"Get over it."

I would have come unglued and would have found a seat elsewhere even if it meant I had to sit on a toilet to get as far away from the dead body as I could.

Now, get this-he was not allowed to leave his seat.

He had to complete his journey to England with this dead woman flopping (the guy said the body flopped) all over the seat next to him.

The airline would not refund his ticket or even give him some more frequent flyer miles to compensate him for this trip right out of a horror movie.

But, they did offer to bring him something to drink.