It is the single most morbid thing I have ever done in my entire, but I wanted to know what his body might look like. Would he be an unrecognizable mess? Or a skeleton? Or would there be nothing left at this point? Just an expensive box occupying a hole in the ground.

You never see it.
The final place you live.

It turns out there is no official consensus.

It can takes decades for a body to decay, as there are many factors that affect the rate of decomposition, such as how well the person was embalmed, what type of casket and vault they were placed in, humidity, heat, cold, soil type, water level, depth of burial, the availability of oxygen, accessible by insects or scavengers, body size and weight, clothing, the surface on which a body rests – all determine how fast a fresh body will skeletonize or mummify. A basic guide for the effect of environment on decomposition is given as ‘Casper’s Law’ which determined that where there is free access of air a body decomposes twice as fast than if immersed in water and eight times faster than if buried in earth. People who have been dead for decades could still look fine whilst others of the same era are completely decomposed. There are just too many factors that affect the rate of decomposition to give a definitive answer. ”
Source

Oh.

I saw pictures. Two bodies. (Not “people”–bodies.)
I didn’t mean to, but they were there and I clicked on them. As bacteria eat you from the inside out, the gases they create push your intestines and tongue out. Your skin turns black.
They were horrible; I wish I’d never seen them.

****

I sat in a park today and I ate gelato from my favourite place in Sydney, Australia and I wondered what he would think of me being here. But it’s been 13 years and I don’t remember him all that well anymore.

I thought, “No one here knew him…and I am forgetting.”
It felt…weird.
Sometimes I wonder if I have survivor’s guilt even though I wasn’t there.

So it goes.

Everything ends.