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. 

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

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!