From the moment tyrone timms pulled up outside his father's Arizona home on Veterans Day 2019, he knew something was wrong. John Gause, a Vietnam War veteran, hadn't picked up the phone. The blinds were drawn. Mailers littered the porch. When Timms cracked the door, the scent was overpowering. A body was lying in the hallway-his father's, now unrecognizable due to decomposition.
Gause's remains were turned over to the Maricopa Medical Examiner for autopsy. The results indicated he died of natural causes, roughly four days before Timms found him. Their investigation complete, the medical examiner released Gause's body to a local funeral home. In a tiny planning room at Thompson Funeral Chapel, Timms and his family asked for the seemingly impossible: Could they have an open-casket service?
That's how Timms met Monica Torres, a Phoenix-based embalmer, funeral director, and reconstruction specialist. Torres, a 5-foot-2 Latina in her 40s, stands out in her colorful dresses and partially shaved head in a field still dominated by older white male funeral home owners in three-piece suits. When funeral homes have a tough case, it's Torres who picks up the call.
Torres is a visionary in the end-of-life industry and a specialist in traumatic deaths: miscarriages and murders, car crashes and suicides. Over the last decade, Torres has launched what she calls her "dark arts" into an internationally recognized brand with more than 27,000 Instagram followers who know her as "Cold Hands." By day, Torres leads continuing education classes for embalmers around the world. By night, she drives from one funeral home to another with her wheeled embalming kit, restoring bodies in the perfect quiet.
Bu hikaye Popular Mechanics US dergisinin March - April 2023 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Giriş Yap
Bu hikaye Popular Mechanics US dergisinin March - April 2023 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Giriş Yap
ONE OF THE 'GREATEST THREATS' TO THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST ISN'T WHAT YOU THINK.
EXPERTS ARE PREPARING THE REGION AGAINST THE THREAT OF DANGEROUS VOLCANIC MUDFLOWS, KNOWN AS LAHARS, WHICH COULD INUNDATE THE COMMUNITIES SURROUNDING MT. RAINIER IN AS LITTLE AS 30 MINUTES.
THE WORLD'S TOUGHEST ROW
They rowed 3,000 miles across the Atlantic, battling unpredictable weather, chaotic seas, and finicky equipment. But what they discovered gave them profound new insights into the power of the ocean.
HOW TO DIY OFF-GRID SOLAR
SPEND THE TIME UP FRONT AND PLAN IT CAREFULLY TO AVOID DISAPPOINTMENT
Are We on the Verge of an ARMS RACE in SPACE?
RUMORS OF A RUSSIAN SPACE NUKE, ALONG WITH OTHER SATELLITE-TARGETING WEAPONS, HAVE MADE GEOPOLITICAL TENSIONS EXTEND INTO ORBIT.
Fresh Fingerprints on an Ancient Statue
A CLAY FIGURINE HAS SPENT MILLENNIA incomplete, waiting at the bottom of a lake for its long-dead craftsman to finish the Iron Age-era statuette.
Quantum Entanglement in Our Brains
IT HAS LONG BEEN ARGUED THAT THE human brain is similar to a computer. But in reality, that's selling the brain pretty short.
The Tools of Copernicus
WAY BACK IN 1508, WITH ONLY LIMited tools at his disposal, Nicolaus Copernicus developed a celestial model of a heliocentric planetary system, which he described in hist landmark work De revolutionibus orbium coelestium. It was a complete overhaul of our conception of the universe-one that, unfortunately, earned him the ire of the Catholic church for decades after his death-and forever changed the way we look at the stars.
Building a Sixth-Generation Bomber Raptor
THE GLOBAL COMBAT AIR Programme (GCAP)-a project by the U.K., Italy, and Japan to develop a sixth-generation stealth fighter-has been busy at the drawing board reshaping its vision of the future of air warfare. And judging by the new concept model unveiled at this year's Farnborough air show, that future has big triangular wings.
The Electroweak Force of the Early Universe
TODAY, THE UNIVERSE AS WE KNOW IT IS governed by four fundamental forces: the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, electromagnetism, and gravity.
This Ancient Fossil With a Brain and Guts
WE KNOW WHAT FOSSILS LOOK like. For example, typical dinosaur fossils are bones turned to stone and preserved from the passage of time, located, if we're particularly lucky, in large collections that can be reassembled to represent the beast they used to prop up in their entirety.
