Several news organizations reported last week that Michael Jackson would be buried without his brain.  While some made passing reference to the fact that brain removal is quite common with autopsies, most seemed to sensationalize the story as yet another “weird” detail of Jackson’s life.  The media obsessed over the state of his body in life, and it continues to do so after his death. 

But maybe something else is going on here, too.  

Maybe the media is suffering its own kind of CSI Effect - the hunger for scientific details and evidence supposedly an issue with juries in the “CSI” television age.  It is possible that reporters believe their readers desire this kind of intimate detail in order to believe the larger story: the King of Pop is dead. It is also possible that reporters simply need the “proof” themselves – something concrete and physical to prove to themselves that Jackson is, in fact, gone.  Forever.  Not a stunt.  Or maybe they have become numb to such details, after years of watching DNA swabs and blood spatter analyses on prime time.  In the past, reporters might have at least considered the impact on family members to read about their loved one’s brain hardening in a lab.  

When I read these headlines, I could not help but think about my brother.  I knew he had an autopsy, and I knew what that implied in terms of the state of his body when he was buried.  But I had not really questioned whether every part was returned prior to burial, and I was not sure what I thought about the idea of his brain preserved in a hospital laboratory.  I pictured it in one of those briny medical-museum jars and wondered: Would it be possible to access the signals for those fateful days so many years ago, when he was severed from our side of the family and never seen or heard from again?  Where could I sneak in and access the jar?  

And then I wondered why I wanted or needed this at all.   I always knew why he was banished from the family.  I knew what he did.  Never doubted.  

Even still, I want to hold the proof in my hands.