Tonight, while driving home on rt 80, I saw a Hearse zip past me... it had to be going 70/80mph... but that's pretty normal on route 80- despite the recent "crackdown" on speeding, drivers on NJ highways still have the mindset that 70mph is the minimum, myself included. It was just really odd to see a Hearse zooming down the highway at 9pm. I'm trying to imagine the circumstance for that: undertaker's son trying to meet curfew? emergency trip for embalming fluid? It just seemed odd.
Seeing that Hearse made me think of this documentary that I saw the other day: A Certain Kind of Death. Basically, the film takes a look at what happens to people after they die [people that do not have any "next of kin"]. The film was interesting in that the Coroner's Office does everything it can to try to track down someone related to the decedent [new vocab word!]. All of the decedent's bank accounts, property, etc are stored safely. If no next of kin is found, the body is cremated and the ashes are stored at a facility. After 3 years, if the ashes are not claimed, they are buried at a local park. This whole process just strikes me as fascinating-- truly making sure that everyone who leaves this world is put to rest in a respectful way.
This then got me thinking about animals that die on the highway. This sounds so bizarre but for about 3 weeks, I noticed the same dead deer on rt 46. I'm an observant person, maybe a little too observant sometimes. It's quite contradictory--- how quick we are to care for "our" dead, but how long of a time we sometimes wait to care for perished animals...And most likely, it is a driver who killed that deer in the first place.
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