Yesterday I Came Across a Decomposed Body on the Beach

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I Like It!

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While I was out for my work on Mae Ramphung Beach yesterday, I came across a decomposed human body. There are always plenty of dead things to see when the tide goes out here in Rayong (last week I saw a huge dead turtle), and at first I thought it might be a dead shark. I was walking barefoot in the sea as usual, and I was right on top of it before realizing that it was human. It came as such an unexpected shock that I just kept on walking. I tried to convince myself that it wasn’t really human, and that my eyes had been playing tricks on me. I walked for about another kilometer before finally turning around to check.

When I got back to the same spot, I had a closer look, and there was no denying that it was human remains. The body was a white color, and it was only really identifiable by the legs and feet – a large amount of the flesh had been eaten away. I’m no expert, but it looked as if it had been in the water for a long time. It was an incredibly sad thing to see, and it just felt so wrong to see a body in that state of deterioration. I couldn’t tell if it was a man or woman, or even if it was an adult or a teenager.

There were another couple of westerners on the beach, and they had also come across the body. One of them had already told a Thai beach vendor, so there didn’t seem to be much more for us to do. I think it is always best to leave it to the locals to contact the police in this sort of situation – I didn’t have my mobile phone with me anyway. It really felt like I should do something, but I didn’t know what I could do – it wasn’t like my nursing skills were going to be of much value. I left the beach feeling guilty.

Upset at the Sight of Death

I’m a bit surprised at how much seeing that dead body has upset me. I felt fine talking to people on the beach, and it didn’t really hit me until I got home. I saw lots of people die while working as a nurse. I’ve even prepared corpses for the mortuary by myself during the middle of the night-shift. I should be used to this type of stuff. I feel fine now, but last night I couldn’t stop thinking about it – I didn’t sleep very well at all. Maybe it was just the idea of a body being washed up like junk onto the shore like that. I know on an intellectual level that once we die our body is just decaying meat, but it is hard to be intellectual when faced with this reality.

I wasn’t sure about writing this blog post. It might be considered in bad taste. When I got home from the beach yesterday, I thought about mentioning my encounter on Facebook, but it seemed like a disrespectful thing to do. I don’t want to trivialize a human’s death so that I can have something interesting to say. The purpose of this blog though, has always been to honestly share my thoughts and feelings, and this is what I’m thinking about today. I always feel better for getting this type of stuff off my chest.