This is one of those rare stories that’s both creepy and
heartbreaking at the same time. Tian Xueming lost both his children in
just one decade, and decided to store his son’s remains in an ice chest
inside the house for the last six years, so he could see and talk to him
whenever the massive loss became to hard to cope with. Their son
remains in the ice chest in their home to this day and they have no intention of burying him.
60-year old Tian Xueming, a carpenter from Huangling Village,
China’s Chongqing province, got married in 1979, and took his wife to
live in a modest home made of mud. At the time they were living with six
other relatives, so to provide better living conditions
for his family, Tian went to work in the city. In 1982 they had a
daughter, and in 1987, his wife Yang Hongying gave birth to a beautiful
baby boy. In order to spend more time with his family, Tian decided to
quit his job and return to his
native village as a stay-at-home dad. He describes those days as the
happiest of his entire life. Only the new-found happiness didn’t last
long…
It was a hot day when they lost their daughter, Yingying. The
15-year-old had gone to town to buy some vegetables, but when she
returned half and hour later she looked pale and tired.
An hour later, they found her collapsed in the yard, barely breathing.
By the time the doctor arrived, it was too late for Yingying. Just when
time was starting to heal the wounds left by this terrible loss,
disaster struck again. Nine years after Yingying had passed away, their
son, Qinyuan, was diagnosed with leukemia in the final stage. In March
of 2006 he received a phone call and was told his son had had a fever
for almost a month. He and his wife were by Qinyuan’s bedside in the
hospital, praying he would somehow miraculously survive. He died in
July, 2006, aged 18.
Qinyuan’s loss tore the Tian’s world apart and they just
didn’t know what to do to cope with the unbearable pain. They decided to
conceal the circumstances of their son’s death, and somehow keep him
around. ”I told his mother that we should not bury him, but rather keep
our son around us. She agreed,” Xueming told Chinese media, and that
night they emptied the icebox, dressed his body and placed him inside.
They kept their son’s burial place a secret for six years, during which
time they would pull up chairs
around the ice box, lift the lid and talk to him as if he had never left
them. Tian says he and his wife know it wasn’t the most normal thing to
do, but it was the only way to deal with the pain.
He knows both his relatives and his neighbors mean well when
they press him to bury Qinyuan’s body, but he just cannot bring himself
to do it. ”I know I was wrong. My decision has had a bad influence on my
neighbors’ lives as well, but I have lost both of my children! No one
could ever understand my suffering,” Tian Xueming said as he gazed at
the freezer in the corner of his house. ”Anyway, I can see my son whenever I miss him.”
Crawling
with maggots, this unusual wooden model shows a decomposing corpse
exposed by an open coffin. Little is known about the model. It is
thought to be a memento mori. These objects are reminders of death and
the shortness of life. Memento mori come in different shapes and sizes.
Up until the 1500s, death was often represented by a skeleton leading a
living victim to their fate. A skull became a more common representation
of death after this date. What makes this piece even more creepy is that its origin is unknown.
Memento mori (a Latin phrase for “remember your mortality”)
are objects that were usually carried or worn by a person as a reminder
of one’s mortality. What’s particularly interesting about them is that
they were very common objects for hundreds of years. They served the
purpose of reminding the owner of mortality and the shortness of life.
Prior to the 15th century, the objects would usually be in the shape of a
full skeleton or a combination of a skeleton and a healthy body. Early
in 16th century, the trend evolved into the image of a skull or half
skull, half face. The ones above served a practical purpose in that they
contains a pocket watch.
At the beginning of the 19th century, the trend of having
memento mori objects went out of fashion. This was around the same time
that families ceased having viewings of deceased loved ones in the home
and used mortuaries instead. The concept of caring for a family member’s
body until burial was no longer the cultural norm. As a society we have distanced ourselves from the concept of death both mentally and physically. Considering death is as natural to life as birth, this is not necessarily a positive trend.
Quartering was the third part of an execution method
known as hanging, drawing and quartering, and most commonly applied to
those convicted of high treason in England. First the condemned was half hanged,
usually from a gibbet. However, the neck was not broken, but they were
left hanging so as to almost choke. it was important that the condemned
was left alive at this point for the following stage of execution.
Next, they were taken down and laid out, and had their abdomen cut open and their entrails pulled out in front of them. The entrails were often burnt at this point. Somewhere about now the condemned usually died. Finally,
the corpse was cut into four parts, and those parts sent to different
points of the kingdom to be displayed over city gates.
Usually one
portion was sent their county of origin. Note, because high treason was a
conviction imposed by Act of Attainder, it almost inevitably applied
only to nobles. Commoners involved in rebellion would normally be cut
down on the spot of battle, or summarily executed shortly after
capture. Also, note that there were some creative variations on the
theme.
When Hugh Le Despenser the Younger was executed, he was
hanged from a ladder. This enabled the executioners to perform an
additional humiliation. His genitals were cut from him and stuffed in
his mouth. Queen Isabella reportedly insisted on this because he was
also convicted of sodomising the king.
Want to enjoy the ride of your life along with the last ride of
your life? That’s what Julijonas Urbonas envisions with his Euthanasia
Coaster. The three-minute ride involves a long, slow, climb — nearly a
third of a mile long — that lifts one up to a height of more than 1,600
feet, followed by a massive fall and seven strategically sized and
placed loops.
The final descent and series of loops take all of one
minute. But the gravitational force — 10 Gs — from the spinning loops at
223 miles per hour in that single minute is lethal.
That’s because Euthanasia Coaster isn’t simply meant to be about
death. Urbonas sees it as both an intellectual and artful departure
from the world, one that isn’t about the paperwork and medical issues of
the current euthanasia system. The few places where voluntary
euthanasia is legal include: Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands,
Switzerland, and the U.S. states of Oregon and Washington.
“There is no special ritual, nor is death given special
meaning except that of the legal procedures and psychological
preparation. It is like death is divorced from our cultural life…”
Urbonas writes. “…But if it is already legal, why not to make it more
meaningful?”
How do you turn a roller coaster ride into a “meaningful”
death? Urbonas has built in a long, slow trek to the top before the
first fall. In fact, of the three-minute ride, two minutes are devoted
to the climb. Urbonas writes: “…The rider has a few minutes to
contemplate his decision and his life in retrospect. He would find
enough time to adapt to the height and get through a series of imaginary
fatal falls, while realizing that the objects on the ground are getting
smaller…The slightest movement of the car would trigger intense
heart-beating and goosebumps and most importantly it would test your
decision. Therefore the very top of the tower is an ideal place to give
the very last word.”
