Neither in the 12 years as county coroner nor during his decade as deputy coroner has Howard seen anything like it. Howard was absolutely certain Williams was dead.
âPlease donât sue me. I totally did my job correctly and didnât screw up,â said the coroner. âAutomatic heart defibrillator! Thatâs the ticket! Donât sue me.â
This is one example of how âcoronerâ is not synonymous with âmedical examiner.â A coroner doesnât have to have any kind of degree or special training at all. Often theyâre just some schmuck who gets paid to show up at scene and proffer an opinion on whether a person is dead.
Associated Press quoted Mr Williams from his hospital bed as saying: âBraaiiinssssâŚâ
People just âcome back to lifeâ somtimes. Itâs bizarre, astoundingly uncommon, and we donât understand how it happens, but itâs been documented time and again.
The problem, really, is that determining âdeathâ is pretty hard. Lack of pulse? Not breathing? Apparent rigor mortis? Lack of brain function? All pretty good indicators, but you can still be alive with any one or all of them. Even cell death can be a false flag - your system can literally start going to pieces, then justâŚstop⌠for some reason, turn around, and recover.
An anecdote, if I may.
My father is a trained medical professional, and once when I was young one of our dogs brought in a opossum, wet with slobber, stiff as a board, smelling of decay, eyes glossy and lightless. We of course knew their famous fake death trick, but my dad was hoping quite strongly that it was still alive when he first started to examine it, since it wasnât really torn up. But he quickly became absolutely convinced the thing was dead as a doornail, the body cold, no pulse, no responses of any kind, even some ants milling about on it - dead quite a while, meaning the dog had merely found it.
He stood up from examining it, looked out across the yard, decided on a place to bury it, turned around and walked fifteen feet into the garage, grabbed a shovel, and came back to find the animal just flat out gone.
My point is, if a perfectly healthy animal can produce all the detectable symptoms of death on purpose well enough to fool even trained medical professionals with decades of experience, whatâs to stop the body of a less than healthy human from accidentally exhibiting those same detectable symptoms in the course of illness or injury?
Flashback to the 80âs:
Dennis Miller:
The easiest job in the world has to be coroner. Surgery⌠on dead people. Câmon, whatâs the worst that could happen? If EVERYTHING goes wrong, maybe you get a pulse. âHoney, I gained one on the table today.â
First it was pencils going amok in the Ticonderoga district.
And now youâre saying the coronerâs name is⌠Dexter?
Let me get this straight. Your dog brings a dead opossum home. Your dad takes it, drops it on the ground and walks off. The opossum disappears. And the best explanation for this is that it got up and ran away? Yeah, the dog couldnât possibly have anything to do with itâŚ
Is it possible that he is undead? I suggest using holy water to make sure (just a little since the undead have rights too!).
The dogs had been brought inside by me and my siblings at our fatherâs request. I had meant to mention that and forgot, beg pardon.
And no, my father didnât just drop it on the ground, he examined it to determine if it was alive under suspicion that it was merely âplaying opposumâ. I did, in fact, mention that. 
If Holy Water really worked, Benedict wouldnât have had to resign. 
I hope they donât charge to the poor guy for his funeral. Maybe he should have just gone ahead and done the whole visitation thing to see how who all showed up, plus he could have had some nice flowers to brighten up the place.
And now that heâs dead whatâre they gonna do about his Social Security and retirement funds⌠you can bet thatâs gonna be a real pain to straighten out.
Or any other, including potentially flighted, scavenging animalâŚ
He was clearly only mostly dead
Hence the expression playing (o)possum.
âŚyes, Iâm aware. 
extrawordsrequired
I wonder if you could sell them to people planning to ship heroin through Singapore?
Reminds me of an old Catskills and borscht-belt routine about why old Jews donât take naps.
