Movies and nightmares, past and present

It is October, time for the scary movies to be all over tv. I love scary movies, always have.  When I was a kid of 8 or so, I would watch The Night Gallery. The faces in the beginning frightened me and I would hide my eyes. The stories, however, intrigued me.  My mother and my aunt loved scary movies so I watched many with them. 

I remember my younger cousins and I were supposed to be sleeping in the back of my aunt’s truck when she and my mother went to see The Omen – the original one back in the 1970’s.  I was awake though, and watched the whole thing lying on my stomach, chin propped on my elbows and looking through the slider window of the cab.  Now this is a statement of what I dog lover I am. Even though the dogs in the movie were supposed to be evil, scary Rottweilers, it did not deter me one bit from getting a Rottweiler when I grew up. My mother of course would refer to it as the devil dog because of the movie, but she loved my Kimba as much as we did. Named after Kimba the white lion, one of my favorite cartoons as a kid!

Where am I going with this you ask?? Well…. tonight, I decided to watch a movie that actually DID scare me in jr. high. I saw it with a boy, and there were some scary parts that got me. The boy in return got nail marks where I gripped his arm. LOL.  I wonder now how a 13 yr old girl and 14 yr old boy got into that R rated movie because that was unusual back then.  The movie was Phantasm and the tall man was creepy as could be. He just kept showing up when the door was opened, behind the door when someone shut it, and the little scary things in the robes.  What got me about the little robed creatures was the scene when the young teenager was lying on his bed and he had a crocheted afghan that looked very much like the one that was on my bed at the time.  My best friend and I would talk on the phone at night, tell each other about our days as we went to different schools and lived about 10 miles apart. To amuse herself she would tell me not to look under the bed because those robed creatures were under there! Of course it was not hard for my active imagination to view myself lying there with the nearly same afghan afraid to look under the bed or even down.  To make it worse, I was an only child and home alone a lot. When she got the chance, she would tell me not to turn around because the “Tall Man” would be there if I did. She certainly got her mileage out of creeping me out!

   

When we grew up and were married and living in houses (now in different states) we still talked on the phone at least once a month. The ball was then in MY court because she moved into a house that not only had a basement, but had a boiler and that was where her washer and dryer were – in the basement!!!! So all those years later, to my advantage, I would always tell her Freddie Krueger would be waiting for her when she went to do the laundry!! HAHA  Karma is a bitch sometimes!  We are still good friends but do not talk nearly enough! Now we talk about our adult kids and their families. She would find it amusing, I am sure, to know I am re-watching that movie that once scared me so bad. 

Sadly I have seen such evil in the world when I worked for the coroner that I have now found this movie cheesy, and actually boring. Ironically, I am a little disappointed that once again, I am so battle scarred from the true evil and wrong in the world that it is hard for scary movies to do their job for me.  Now if I were to watch the news, I would be in tears and most likely have nightmares from that.  I miss the innocence of my childhood when I found the news boring and scary movies – scary!  

DAMAGE TO MY SOUL

Lately I have been thinking a lot about how the job affected me in addition to life experiences in general.  I have never handled loss well, but then again I have been losing people I care about since a young age.  I watched my grandfather die from metastatic cancer in my childhood home. I lost a good friend to a savage serial killer in my early teens. It just seems that my husband, our kids and myself have all lost so many people over the years.  Even my kids are no stranger to such loss. Losing many of their friends in car accidents. Losing my mother unexpectedly and my father to suicide by gunshot. It was me who found him. In a sad twist of fate, I worked over 15 suicides in the year before and year after my dad’s suicide and most of them were of course by gunshot. The cases after my dad’s death often caused me flashbacks and made it very difficult for me to get/keep the image of my dad out of my head. It benefited the family members of the suicides to hear my story and that I had been through what they were now experiencing but it did not help me to keep retelling my story. So why did I?  Because in my heart I had to do what was right and if my story and my pain could help these people, then I felt I needed to do it. 

What I am going to say next will not make sense to some people, but losing my dogs over the years has been extremely traumatic to me as well.  I have been there for each death, but one. I held them until they were gone so they did not have to go alone.  The one I did not attend, my husband and oldest daughter did. I just couldn’t handle it at the time. Since that time, it has not gotten any easier.  I came to depend on my dogs for emotional support. I have issues trusting people, because people let you down, they tell your secrets, they ridicule you when they do not understand you and dogs do not do any of those things.  They just love you and appreciate every minute of attention you give back.  When my Bailey began having seizures, and the medications stopped working, we knew we did not have a choice.  Nothing could stop the seizures that day and when it was time to put her to sleep, I lay nose to nose with her. I sobbed uncontrollably for some time after that and wondered if I could love another dog. As I written about her before, next came my boy Bishop and now my baby girl Tessa. I admit I get extremely anxious when I am away from my dogs. As I type this now, Tessa is snuggled up to my side and snoring loudly.  A sound I find comforting, just as I find my husband’s snoring comforting too. Earlier, I saw a dog video on Facebook about a dog and it made me cry and my boy Bishop heard me, came and put his paw on me and licked my tears. Dogs know. And they just want to make it better.

I have never dealt with loss well and I realize now the job did a number on me because I feel like all the kids and loved ones I had worked on and investigated became a part of me and at the same time took a piece of me. I now live in fear. Every minute of every day I fear someone I love will be taken from me. It creates an incredible anxiety, one I can’t put into words right now but it makes me panic, sometimes it makes it hard to breathe, I need to know my loved ones are ok. Sometimes in my anxiety I start physically/emotionally reliving the trauma of my past losses. I can’t remember where I put my car keys or what I went to the market for but I can remember clearly the moments of losing my loved ones. Sometimes in my nightmares I relive the moments. There have been times when I watch a really scary movie or read a book before bed hoping to dream about anything else, but it has always been this way. Nightmares every night. Some are as simple as just having a bad day but almost always there are the ones where I lose people. Watching the news before bed just makes it worse. I have tried journaling my nightmares but it is so hard to put them into words.  It is not for lack of a large vocabulary, it is just that the words do not do justice to the feelings and even when I write the feelings they do not seem to go with the actions, but in my head they did.  Some have suggested I have some traumatic head noise from the job. Yeah, I would think so. I can’t put into words what it does to the soul to do an autopsy on a child, or worse a baby.  As a mother it was just awful to have to literally cut up someone’s baby.  Then also to see what people do to each other. There is a sickness sweeping this nation, this world, where people are hurting each other, hurting children, elderly, animals and even themselves for no purpose and I do not understand. I know that if I had to fight someone for my life or theirs, I could do it. I could do it for someone I love too, but it is not something I would chose to do, the other person would have to leave me no choice but to fight to survive. Now I have to rebuild my trust in people but I don’t know how long or what that will take considering what I have seen and experienced. 

UPDATE ON MY FUR BABY

08/02/2016

Update on my baby girl Tessa.  After a couple weeks of antibiotics and liver supplements, her liver enzyme count is down in the normal range.  Unfortunately, we have been unable to determine what caused the event or find a way to have her tested to find out. We hope it was something out of the ordinary and random, and not one of the many types of critters she chases on a regular basis. She has shown no fear of bees and tried to get one moving slow on the ground just days after the event, but I caught her and got rid of the bee before she could snack on it.

I was trying to get a nice shot of her cute face but she turned into a one eyed selfie!! 

She has regained her strength and most of her energy.  She just wants to be outside watching for lizards and birds to come into the area she has access to.  We are allowing her more and more outside time unsupervised but none at night as that is when the spiders are out and more of the odd bugs. She is so happy all the time and I am doing my best to protect her without stifling her natural instincts or play drive. 

Here she is resting on the blanket she took over from me... she was wearing a thunder shirt when I took it because there were big scary trucks paving our street that day!! FYI Thunder shirts do help!! The shirt belonged to our Maggie who was afraid of loud noises and especially thunder, and now we know it helps Tessa when needed!!! 

EXPERIENCING FEAR AND HEARTACHE AS A FUR MOM

June 1, 2016… middle of the night

Trying to write a little something on my older laptop because I did not want to have to disconnect the external hard drive and the thumb drives from my shiny new laptop so I could write in my recliner instead of sit at my writing desk…. So it only took about 45 minutes to get to this point because my old laptop runs Vista. Yes I know that is soooo old. Just like my iPhone 4 but I just ordered a new phone and later today, after a nap known as bedtime, I will be switching that over. Rambling, something I do so well and oh too much! I have the tv on and one of my favorite movies “IT” running as some background noise. It is amazing how many things I think to write about when I am driving, doing dishes, waiting for the new dog to potty, but I will be dang if I can think of something worthy to write about when I actually sit down to write. My main problem is that I over think everything.

I am wearing a pair of shorts that have a big hole in the thigh. My husband can’t understand why I won’t throw them out. But you see, that hole was put there by my previous dog Bailey. She was a rescue pit mix, who came with a damaged paw which happened sometime before she had been found on the streets. We adopted her from a rescue shelter. She was a sweetheart and so loving. She came to me at a time when I really needed some emotional support. She slept with me and would get in the recliner with me and such. She had this thing about chewing up my clothes and my stuff.  No one else’s, just mine. She would take my stuff and put it on her bed. She was such a funny little girl. So sweet and such a stinker when I would try to make the bed. She would roll around on the bed making it almost impossible to put the clean sheets on, then when I got some of the bedding on she would lay down and refuse to move even if I covered her with the other bedding.  We paid $25.00 in fees at the shelter when we got her but built a $1200.00 fence to protect her! She was worth every penny!

When I would come home from work she would somehow know exactly what I needed emotionally. Play, snuggle, or lick my tears as my emotions of the day overwhelmed me. She loved going for car rides and meeting people.  I have a photo of her sticking her face out the driver side window at a drive thru because she was sure the girl was talking to HER! We did not know what to expect the first time she was around small kids, but she impressed us all with her gentleness!

She suddenly developed seizures and medication helped for a few weeks but then she just started seizing over and over and we took her into the animal ER and they could not stop them.  I lay nose to nose on floor with her as the life left her.  I stared straight into her eyes and let her know she was not alone.  It broke my heart. She was not even 3 years old.

July 02, 2016    afternoon

Oddly enough I wrote the last post about a month ago, and yet here I am wearing those shorts again.  I cannot part with them.  The shirt I am wearing looks like it was attacked by hungry moths however the holes are from my boy pup nibbling on my shirt.  That is what he does when he is feeling needy. He snuggles up against my side and nibbles my shirt or shorts. Needless to say that is why I don’t wear my good clothes just lounging around the house.

When I lost my pup Bailey, I did not know how I could ever open my heart to another new dog. But then our Shepherd who was now without a canine companion was so sad she didn’t want to eat or play, so we knew we needed to get another dog.  We again went to the shelter, and found our boy Bishop who was the last of his litter left behind.  Poor little guy had been taken away from his mom, watched all his siblings go away and had been fixed. He looked so sad and scared and I understood. 

We brought him home and he began to heal our hearts. He was also a pit mix and had a similar personality to our Bailey.  He loved to get in our laps (while he was still little) and sleep between us, and has to have his blanket. Poor little guy had managed to get kennel cough so bad in the couple of days he was at the shelter that it took 2 months and almost a thousand dollars to get him, our shepherd and my daughter’s dog who is hear a lot, to get better. He thought all car rides led to a shelter or vet and did NOT want to get into the car for rides.  Not too long after we got him, I was taken out of the field because of my physical pain and limitations. Bishop and I became so bonded being home together….

When we got Bishop, we knew our shepherd was getting older and having several health problems. We knew our time with her was growing shorter, but having a puppy around gave her a reason to get up and around more – she knew she needed to teach the new guy the ropes. It didn’t take long at all to realize Bishop had so much energy, more than our Maggie could possibly match and we knew the right thing to do was to get him a companion more his speed. We rescued Tessa, having been told she was a lab/pit mix, but we knew from looking at her she had no pit in her.  Not that we would care if she did, but it was obvious that she didn’t.  She had this big floppy ears and we did not know if she would grow into them. She was thin and we could see her ribs. It was heartbreaking! We were told the litter she belonged to was all just abandoned there at the shelter and she and her tiny sister were the last of the them. They had been there over a month. We chose her by her personality. She really wanted to see us and was so friendly.  With her appetite we knew it wouldn’t be long before she put some weight on.  And spunky she was! She drove our poor old Maggie a bit crazy but even at 15lbs she was ready to go and play with Bishop. She was not intimidated by the fact she was so little. It wasn’t long before they were best buddies and running and playing and having a great time. Maggie was happy to supervise from the sidelines aka the couch, however just having them around lifted Maggie’s spirits and ours. Bishop had moved from our bed to one of the recliners in our room shortly before we got Tessa.  She instantly took to sleeping in our bed and has ever since.  Her spot was between my husband and me, spooned up against my back with her little puppy nose on my neck. It turns out her little puppy breath on my neck is a great remedy for my anxiety.

** I fell asleep before I could finish this entry…. 

July 15, 2016

As fate would have it, a week later my darling Tessa, just over a year old came in from about 20 minutes outside late one night and kept licking her paw. I couldn’t see anything wrong with her paw and she went down the hall, I assumed to climb in bed with my sleeping husband – as she usually does at night. I happened to go into the bedroom a few minutes later and found her laying on a towel that was on the floor (from a spill) and she had vomited her dinner and pooped. I called to my husband because she would not get up and seemed a little out of it.  He said she was wobbly when he tried to get her to stand up. I went outside to see if there was a snake (we have had 2 previous dog v snake episodes) but I couldn’t find anything.  We called our regular vet, who was in an emergency surgery on someone else’s loving pet so we had to drive to the emergency animal hospital a bit further away.  Although Tessa was lethargic and “out of it” during the ride, when I finally broke and started to sob “don’t leave me” as I was trying to pet her and steady her as she was standing next to my seat, she still had the dedication to turn her head to me and try to lick my tears.  When we told of her symptoms upon arrival, the doc said it sounded like anaphylactic shock. Further examination and labs confirmed it.  Her liver enzymes were almost 1100 when less than 150 is the normal.  She was given several medications and admitted for IV fluids and observation overnight.  I was devastated to leave her.  I couldn’t even go into to see her because I knew my sobbing would upset her more.  My husband, ever my strength, went in and said she was standing and wagging her tail.  He took her one of her favorite blankets. I sobbed all the way home. It felt like I was reliving what we went through with my Bailey.  When we got home, her companion Bishop was very confused as to where his mate was. None of us really slept. We went back to the emergency vet at 6 am. Tessa was weak but happy to see us and ready to go home.  We had taken Bishop with us so he wouldn’t be left home alone and he was so happy to see her.

She is slowly acting more like herself but she does not have near the energy.  That is most likely due to the fact today’s vet recheck and labs show that her liver enzymes are still over 800.  Of course that is down from the near 1100 they were during the event but again less than 150 is the desired/normal number.  She has been placed on some medications to help her recover and hopefully bring her liver count down.  We have been keeping the dog door closed and monitoring all outside ventures.  Of course as she gains her strength back, she is going right back to chasing anything that moves.  She had caught a bird last week. It must have been flying low because she caught by the leg, somehow killed it then looked at me when I found her and acted like she did not know what to do with it! She has trapped and a killed kangaroo rat, gopher, the bird, and a lizard. I obviously can keep her inside under watchful eye forever but I will do my best to watch her well while her liver recovers and her numbers get back to normal.  We also we prescribed a “ready to go” syringe of epinephrine, which I have taped to the cupboard door next to the emergency vet info. Doc wants new labs in 2 weeks. She is bouncing back pretty well and without complaint.  She would seem normal to the unknowing observer, but to us we know she is a lot less active than her normal self.

Fatigue has set in and I must post before I fall asleep on my laptop again!! 

THERE IS NO ESCAPING DEATH

Apparently there is something about me that keeps death ever present in my life.  Not only in my personal relationships of losing people but being near or knowing someone who dies, often tragically.   Those factors weighed heavily in my ending up in forensic death investigation.  I feel as if I am always waiting for the proverbial shoe to drop…. When am I going to lose another friend or loved one?  In the last couple of months I lost an uncle whom was around most of my life, even in adult hood and I had been visiting him in the end.  In the same time frame 2 dear friends lost parents of whom I knew and had at some point in my life been someone I was interactive with and influential to me.  The sudden influx of loss has caused me to be even more reflective that usual. On a more optimistic note, the several losses of late have been situations in which each person, for different health reasons, had no quality of life left and could no longer enjoy even the company of visitors.  Of course I can’t say there is anything optimistic for those left behind to make arrangements, not to mention grieve.   Next week I will be helping (to the best of my limited ability) to sort through my uncle’s possessions.  I am not expecting anything of monetary value but I look forward to seeing what craft materials I can make use of that belonged to my aunt, who passed several years ago.  Having been gardening lately, as well as my little memorial garden where my mom and dad stay in their custom ordered granite block urns made for outdoors, I am hoping I can find something I can add to the garden as a decoration or hang on the fence to add as a memory of my uncle.  My wonderful husband built me a beautiful bench from a piece of support beam left over from the house we built my father when he came to live with us.  I am able to sit on the bench and face the garden or sit the other direction and look out at the cluster of pine trees and apple trees toward the front of our house.  Both are peaceful options.  My coworkers, family and friends had generously provided me with multiple rose bushes for the garden as my mother loved roses.  Unfortunately we discovered the little section of the yard is shaded for most of the day by the neighbor’s huge trees.  The bushes were hanging in there pretty well until a hungry gopher decided to make his home in the garden and go figure – the bushes did not do so well after losing their roots!  I am now in the process of researching some shade loving flowers and plants that are not toxic to my leaf loving pups.  I am thinking maybe some plats that attract butterflies and humming birds then put another hummingbird feeder closer to the garden.  The humming birds have finally been feeding from the one I put out front that we can see from our deck.

Somebody reading may be asking by this point, what does all this have to do with my website and my work in death investigation – well to put it simply it is things like gardening and putting out hummingbird feeders that are a few of the many hobbies, projects, and activities that help me heal from all that I have seen and experienced as well as helping keep me a bit sane.  Okay, I confess the level of my sanity is subjective! I used to say being crazy was a job requirement because a normal sane person would voluntarily go into a house full of cockroaches and a dead body, or do an autopsy on someone so decomposed you are scooping maggots by the handful so you can get to the flesh to cut. Not to mention the part about having to go to neighborhoods that are quite dangerous and yet you have to go there in the middle of the night so you can knock on the door of an unknown house and tell someone their loved one is dead and hope you get that far before they try to fight you because they hate all cops and won’t listen to what you are trying to say.  I once got tired of such a game with a parole who denied knowing the decedent or admitting he was who I was looking for so I said “well if somehow you come across anyone who does know Mrs. X, please tell her family that she is dead. I tossed my business card at him and walked (backwards) towards my unit.  The big scary man then started to cry and decide to play nice.  Not the way I prefer to tell someone such bad news but I can only play games for so long before I have to move on.  Notifications are awful.  Having to tell someone their loved one is never coming home.  Having to take a deceased infant from a mother’s arms….  See if you aren’t messed up in the head before you take on this job, what you see, what you do, and what it does to your mind WILL mess you up.  

People, who have worked jobs like mine, as well as writers, tend to think differently.  For instance tonight while watching a show about different areas of the US, they showed Yellowstone Park and its bubbling mud pits and hot water pools.  Apparently the water in some of those pools, although beautiful, is super hot and very acidic – and of course I turned to my husband and said what a great place to dump a body.   I find myself thinking that as I pass ravines and clumps of trees too.  It’s the leftover of the job and the creativity of a writer…. Or am I on the way to psychopath?

06/06/16

So to finish this post up let me just say the day after I wrote the previous about death being such a part of my life – my daughter’s bird died, as well as my friend’s grandmother that I have known for years and adored her as she is, I mean was, such a lovely women and an example to all who knew her.

As for my parents’ memorial garden. I have redone it. In containers as that has been working well in my herb and veggie garden AND it will keep the gophers from destroying it! I spent almost 2 hours as the local Home Depot trying to find nice shade loving plants that were also NON toxic to dogs! I found several that will provide a variety a color and be easy to maintain.  I also added some soft light solar lights since I already had strung tiny “fairy” lights along the top of the wooden fence.  I got some pretty but appropriate decorations and also hung one of my favorite lighthouse wind chimes. I can now feel good about the garden again.

That shall be it for now!!

Karen Sue

A LITTLE DARK HUMOR aka A FUNNY STORY

So a little lighter of a tale…. One day back when I was an autopsy technician I was working on a severely decomposed body performing a process called “degloving” in which I was using a scalpel to removed the top layer of skin on the thumbs and index fingers of the decedent and placing them over my own in the hopes I could get a decent print to run through the state ID system to identify the person.  There is something about the odor of a decomposed body in which it spreads all through the area you are working in.  I was quite use to the smell and barely registered it. 

That particular day there were several maintenance men working in the autopsy suite. It was connected to the room in which I was working, by sliding doors.  At one point the several men walked out into the room where I was.  They had their shirts pulled up over their mouths and noses, thinking that would actually block the smell. One asked me “doesn’t that smell bother you??” to which I replied by stepping closer to the remains and taking a big breath IN, then stating “nope”!!  I know this was a tad unprofessional but what happened next made it very worth it!

One of the guys gagged and started to run towards the slider leading outside to the parking lot; however I had the sensor turned off because every bird that flies by opens the door if it is left on.  I knew he was going to be stuck and I did not want to clean up his vomit so I also ran to the slider.  I pushed it to slide open with my left hand, and he looked over to me and seem to focus on the fact I was holding up my right hand to in order to not lose the decedent’s finger tips I was wearing over my own. His face contorted and he hurried outside and of course vomited into the bushes. 

He never came back to do any maintenance work again. 

OOPS sorry about that…. 

ALL CONSUMING GRIEF

ORIGINALLY POSTED 03/31/10

Little did I know when I originally posted this that my father's grief and depression were about to really start getting worse... to the eventual point of suicide - and me finding him. But that will be a post for another time... 

The world of death investigation can be very interesting and yet so heartbreaking. Ironically what I get asked the most is how do I deal with all of the blood, guts, other body fluids, decomposition, maggots and all their little insect friends - and I always reply the same... "That's the easy part"... it's the GRIEF. The all consuming grief that comes with the job. That's the part they don't glam on tv. As death investigators we get called weird, gross, strange and an host of other things because we keep a mental distance from what we do and therefore seem unaffected by it. But, in reality, we mentally consume it all. We KNOW we are working on a person; someone's loved one, someone who had a life and probably did some great things or maybe someone who died tragically and never had a chance. That knowledge reminds us that each day we wake up is a gift, and each day our loved ones wake up is an even bigger gift.

I was an autopsy tech before becoming an investigator. I've done autopsies. On kids. As a mother I can't put into words what it does to the mind to have literally cut up a kid. It's does something to the heart and mind that can never be erased or fixed. Some days I work so hard to mentally distance myself from the job that I wonder if I can come back enough to communicate properly with the "normal" world.

Knocking on doors to announce to someone their loved one is never coming home is an awful task. Because they are instantly grieved and the line between being compassionate and keeping a mental distance = that line is very blurred because EACH time my own grief comes to mind. In the last 6 years I've lost my mother, my grandmother, my godmother and several other friends and family and when I am comforting and speaking with someone who's grieving - grieving because I have just told them the bad news, then I feel my own grief. And sometimes it is persistent. Last night I went to the gym, checked my email and went to bed. It all seemed so simple and yet my mind decided to relive my mother's death and have an all night memorial service for all those I've lost in the last 10 years. All night, even after waking up, shaking it off and going back to sleep, I resumed the memorial. In a way it was nice to remember good times with these loved ones, but that hurts even more when I wake up. And so today, I vent this out, looking for relief because in a few short hours I'll be back on the job... adding to the grief.

DAMAGES AND EFFECTS OF THE JOB

ORIGINALLY POSTED DECEMBER 2013

DAMAGES AND EFFECTS OF THE JOB 

I have been having trouble sleeping lately… which isn’t unusual for this time of year.  It’s the conflicting emotions of holiday joy alternating with overwhelming sadness each time I tell someone their loved one won’t be coming home again. I find that when the death gets overwhelming I tend to get a little overprotective of those I care about and I tend to reflect too much on my own mortality. Having lost both of my parents in tragic ways, I fear for my own health as I have issues of my own and I want nothing more than to be able to live long and spend it with the love of my life – enjoying life – together. And watching my children enjoy their lives. I don’t need riches but we have worked hard and hope to live comfortably.

I have to be up in 4 hours, which is about the most sleep I have had in days. Although I don’t think I will be getting even 4 hours today. Does it matter – I will likely have the crazy nightmares I have been experiencing lately anyway.

Maybe I should have headed this “bummer words” but this blog is about what’s real in my life and my experiences in death investigation. This is the part they don’t show on TV. The toll it really takes. The people who call me at work, in the middle of the night, because they can’t sleep either and they want to talk to me because I took care of their loved one. People ask me to do special things for their loved ones and I do what I can to accommodate their wishes.  I have gone in and said good night or read written notes to their loved ones.  They ask and it means so much that I feel there is no good reason why I shouldn’t do it and make them feel better.

I guess what I go through sometimes is almost like survivors guilt. How can I be so happy and enjoy my family and the holiday season when I have just told someone the horrible heartbreaking news of their loved one’s death yet how can I waste a valuable opportunity because I know very well my opportunities may be limited and end soon because death does not discriminate. It can come for anyone at any time, it doesn’t matter where you are or what you have done to try and prevent it.  It happens.

So I say enjoy life, take advantage of it, don’t waste it and don’t focus on the wrong things, don’t think it has to be perfect to be good… even the little things are special so treasure them! 

A LITTLE DARK AND TWISTY MAKES AN APPEARANCE...

ORIGINALLY POSTED  04/18/2014 

a little dark and twisty makes an appearance….

It is a good thing no one can see or hear what really goes through my mind sometimes.  On one hand I am a death investigator – I am one of the good guys right? But as an aspiring writer and mystery fan I often find myself taking notes while watching TV of ways to kill people or dispose of remain., Or as I drive by remote areas, ravines, and bodies of water I often find myself thinking “that would be a good place to dump a body”… don’t get me wrong I am still one of the good guys and have NO intention of really killing anyone – but the writer in me is always thinking and plotting and sometimes it is quite the conflict in my head – which sometimes unfortunately makes me laugh out loud! Of course I can’t answer what made me laugh was the thought of where to dump a body when I am at work so I just sound crazy in my cubicle!  I once commented to a friend, “since you can’t (shouldn’t) kill them for real, and you can’t kill them with kindness – kill them on paper – it’s very therapeutic and a great creative writing exercise” LOL! Of course it may be good to destroy the evidence! Makes me wonder how many of the tortured victims in my favorite mystery novels were modeled after someone’s adversary? We all know many a story’s hero is modeled after a real person – why not the victim?

Hmmm for those of you NOT good at reading between the lines, yes, I tend to get a bit irritated at some of my coworkers... if you could see how I interact with them and the kindness I show you might suggest I go into acting instead of writing. I am a firm believer of keeping your friends close and your enemies closer! One of my coworkers is one of those people who is too dangerous as an enemy. The kind of person who keeps notes on what people do or say and especially people’s mistakes or anything inappropriate they say or do to her. She also loves to go through people’s papers and any drawer unlocked. I can’t count the times I have worked on a file that is past due then left on my desk overnight only to coincidentally suddenly receive an email from supervision about the status of that file.  Either she is going through my desk once again or there is a hidden camera at my desk. When I complete my first murder mystery guess who will likely be the first to die... although that might end up being too anticlimactic....

In a promo for the show Criminal Minds they say the only thing scarier than the mind serial killer is the people hunting them – that sounds about right! Perhaps the same can be said about "those who write" about them too!!!! 

WELCOME!! I have decided to share what I call my journey into the abyss of my thoughts

Welcome! I have decided to share what I call my journey into the abyss of my thoughts – which as implied do run deep after my years as a death investigator… there will be personal notes as well because I just can’t resist talking about my emotional support pups, as well as some of the personal tragedy that has helped twist and scar my mind.  My journey was not easy and was in fact, very emotionally difficult.  Prepare yourself for some emotional side notes mixed in with the facts of the job. With this blog as well as my website http://dyingtowrite.com I hope to educate anyone with questions, and provide a factual journey for writers researching a scene or character in their work.  If you are a writer please be sure to visit my website noted above!! I will not try to write your characters or scenes, but strive to help YOU make them as realistic as you choose!  If you are someone hoping for help to understand an autopsy report or a loved one’s death, use the “contact me” or my email Karen@dyingtowrite.com and I will do my best to assist you! 

Again, this is my “personal blog”. For death scene facts and descriptions, click this link http://dyingtowrite.com

To start out I am going to repost some previous entries written while I was deep in my work because they show the depth of what I was dealing with at that time as well as gives insight to ME.  

READY? Here we go….