He looked good.

One of the responsibilities of my CPE program is that I go to the viewing for any of my residents who die. In the past, when I have gone to see people in a funeral home, the most common question that I was asked afterwards was, "How did he/she look?" This always struck me as a strange question. I always wanted to answer, "dead." This time however, it was different. The deceased, we will call him Henry, looked significantly different than when I had last seen him. When I visited him in the nursing home he was very frail looking. He had a perpetual grimace on his face, and breathing was clearly difficult for him. Most, if not all of the color had drained from face. When I saw him at the home, Henry had been made up, and looked to be at rest. He looked, well, good.