Death, a policeman's perspective.

Death in the western world is still a taboo subject for many in spite of the increase in suicide.

It's not often that I read about it in a blog though and even less often would I be tempted to share it but this posting from the blog "A proper cup of tea" did make me stop and think.

Have a read...

Death

I have a rather grim sense of humour which is handy because so does everyone else in the police. It's good job too really, because if you didn't you'd crack up. In most other lines of work if someone were to announce that they'd come across a bloke with a burn on his face following an attack on him with red hot iron, you'd expect an outpouring of horror and concern. Announce it to the rest of your shift during a morning briefing at the nick however and you get the following response from your boss:

"Attacked with a red hot iron you say? Clearly that's a pressing issue."

"Well it could be. Personally I just think he was letting off steam."

And so it goes on, and everybody groans as the puns grow worse. It's not that people don't care or that they're insensitive, it's just that once you get used to going into houses that are carpeted with human and animal excrement, having to strip-search heroin addicts who haven't washed or changed their clothes for 3 months, or going to serious car accidents and then telling people that their nearest and dearest has just died, you kind of become a little bit indifferent to it all. If you actually stopped to think about how each and every assault, burglary or car accident really affected the lives of those involved, you'd break down and cry and never go to work again. The black humour becomes a defence mechanism and you don't bat an eyelid when the radio operator asks you to go to woods to look for a suicide victim who's been reported to be hanging around and scaring the local kids.

Nowhere is the ability to remain good natured and emotionally detached from your job more important than in dealing with death. I used to think that when you went to tell somone that one of their loved ones had died they'd be terribly British about it and nod politely, sit down, have a cup of tea and then mutter something like "Mustn't grumble. Next door had his leg bitten off by a crocodile last week. Terribly sore."

But the British stiff upper lip is rather more wobbly than you might imagine. You think that bereaved people wailing, screaming and hitting themselves over the head is something that only happens in far away countries but it happens in modern England too all the time, and being surrounded by a screaming, crying family from whose grief you are utterly and completely detached is a strange experience.

Even stranger is the way in which people die. I'd like to think that when I die it'll be nice and peaceful in bed surrounded by my family, although statistically I am far more likely to die of a heart attack while straining too hard on the toilet. I wish I was joking but toilet deaths are extremely common. Recently I went to a death where an 80 year old woman had died on the toilet and then sat there for a week before she was discovered. Then the time before that was another elderly lady who had been dead in bed for three days and laid there totally undisturbed by her slightly confused husband, who remarked that he thought she had been unusually quiet recently but that he didn't like to trouble her when she was resting.

Some people who have never had to tidy up the domestic (and literal) mess that a dead body brings can have a rather unhealthy fascination with the subject, but as far as death goes my advice would be to have as little to do with it as possible.