snow white

Will posted a story about an embarrassing clothing situation when he was a kid, which reminded me of this :

 

This is one of those weird stories that I don't know exactly how to preface. When I have told it before I could say "speaking of weird... you remember [insert her name], right? Well check this out..." Since you have the equisite pleasure of not knowing this Odd Girl it's hard to begin the story. So I am just going to jump right in. Sorry if it's jostling for the rest of you...

 

Odd Girl's young nephew was diagnosed with cancer. He was only a year and a half when he was diagnosed and barely over two when he died. During this time, he lived with Odd Girl and her mother (his grandmother) which was a very strange situation, to be sure. Without spending 3 hours on the backstory, let's just say "trust me" that these people are weird. Anyway, the young boy was taken care of in the house, where he eventually died. He apparently died in the early morning some time, while watching Snow White on the couch. The whole family was around him, with the exception of his mother, Odd Girl's sister. The family called her to come over, and when she came, she found her baby dead. Stricken with grief, she laid next to him on the couch for hours. As a family, they decided that they should watch Snow White again, since it was the last thing that he had seen. While one re-wound the video tape, the other gathered him in a blanket. They sat and watched the movie, stroking his hair and petting his soft cheek. Then someone had a better idea.

 

Odd Girl ran to the local mall, in search of the Disney Store. There she purchased the Snow White costume : dress, slippers, wig, headband and headed home. At home, they dressed the boy, now several hours dead and cold in the Snow White outfit and watched the movie again, hoping that somehow like the prince in the movie, their kisses would revive him. They spent another few quiet hours with him, dressed as Snow White, before they called the coroner to take him away. While they waited for the coroner's team, they posed the boy on the couch, arms crossed over the chest and took pictures. They took more than a roll of film of the boy, laying there in red and yellow crinoline and a black wig.

 

When the coroner's office arrived to officially declare the boy dead and remove the body, the team moved gently, ever the professional. They asked the family to move to the kitchen while they performed their examination and prepare the little girl for transport. Odd Girl's sister lost control and began screaming about how it was her son and "how dare you" and generally panicking and crying. The family tried to console her, while the poor EMT apologized, saying that he assumed that there was a mistake on the dispatch record when he saw the child in the dress and wig.

 

Of course, this became even more traumatic for both parties when the cororner's office had to ask how many hours the child had been dead before they were called and the exact conditions of his death. It made for a messy situation for both sides when he had to gently extract the story of why they would dress the boy as a girl and take photographs and then explain why it would be difficult to return the dress to them completely undamaged, as full rigor mortis had now taken effect.