I went to a garden just to the west of Ruraltown. It was more of a field, surrounded by those huge hedges you can’t see or get through. The patrol seemed OK but they had that bewildered look.
It is always strange to see a bewildered look on the face of someone who is in complete control of what is going on.
A man in his fifties has blown his own head off, and is spread out dead on the lawn. The shotgun is beside him. I take a sharp step back and place my boot in the vegetable patch next to the border. I sink up to my ankle in mud. Bloody Beetroot!
The victim’s wife isn’t too good. Sergeant Dan is with her. He comes out when he hears that I’ve arrived. “It’s OK Boss, it’s not sus” he says cheerfully.
“What do we think has happened here?” I ask, trying to sound inclusive. He tells me and I nod. “So there isn’t anyone outstanding then?” I ask. No. We both act like there isn’t a headless body at our feet.
But there is.
This is a suicide, and despite the Sergeant Dan’s assessment, all suicides are suspicious until declared otherwise by a Detective Inspector. At this time of the night we can wait an age for one of those.
At the morning meeting they will criticise the first youngsters to arrive for missing a part of the skull (which will be found later by a CSI). The top man will ask who was in charge and his deputy will say “Gadget, and then the DI”. He will nod and ask for the meeting to move on.
Meanwhile, two of our kids have lost a bit more innocence, a person is dead and another bereaved. They will find the note two days later. The real ones often hide the note.
- He is sorry. He can not go on. -
Sergeant Dan and I shake our heads and look at the floor when we hear.
I point at his still mud stained boot.
“Vegetable patch?” I ask. He nods. “Bloody Beetroot” I say.
I think we can all relate to this one boss!
And you never forget a suicide or who attended, which Sgt, Ins and DI.
I walways say you can spot the real ones. . . you find ‘em dead, not making umpteen calls and texts to all and sundry saying they’re gonna end it all. I have a certain grudging respect for the real ones who get on and do it, and a growing impatience with the call/texters who never intend anything of the sort, but f**k us around for hours while they work through their angst. Still, a few months ago one near here who never intended to got it all wrong. Left a note detailing exactly what he had taken so the ambulance crew would know exactly what they were dealing with. Only probelm is he’d done a similar thing before, so the person he called to pass the message on thought he was crying wolf again and left it far too late to call the ambulance. Dead as a dead thing by the time the paramedics got there, and justice was, in it’s way, served!
It is sometimes said that a ’successful’ suicide is a act of anger, lashing out at someone or something they can’t ‘get back at’ in any other way; I cant start to imagine (thank-goodness) the degree of fury that leads some go down the garden and blow their head off.
Thanks IG for highlighting just how quickly the tragedy of the event; for all concerned,becomes no more than a passing comment in a meeting, its a bit of a reality check.
south coast copper, not sure if it was a blessing or a curse that ‘your guy’ never knew that this time he screwed up; Just a shame about the ‘parting gift’ of the ‘if only’ and ‘I should have realised’ he left his mate.
This is no fun for those who are close to the deceased, close to the scene or those who have stuff to do connected. At times like these feelings are put onto the back burner and you can lose yourself in keeping logs, looking for details or looking after scenes. Someone has to do the unpleasant bits and that’s us. Someone has to deal with the aftermath. Thats down to the families and friends. All cases are sad and unpleasant but not enough become avoidable. The note makers who are sorry are so because they leave people who have questions they cannot get answers to. They cannot face up what they perceive to be their problems or cannot find a way to find an answer to what troubles them. Bloody beetroot will be the last of their problems. To be left with unanswered questions is a hard thing to deal with.
Great post.
The people who really need the help can never shout loud enough; the people who don’t will keep screaming.
First thing you learn about RTA/Cs, also applicable here.
Agreeing with above…. genuinely suicidal people tend not to ring us with their intention
When I’m dealing with dead people and have to do various undignified things- step over them, search them etc, I always find myself apologising to them. Utterly pointless, but I find I can’t help it
I still think that suicide is the ultimate act of selfishness. If they don’t get it right first time, it further screws up screwed up situations, and completely ruins the lives of the people who loved and cared for them.
sergeantsays ~ I think it’s really sweet, you talk to them. Death is so undignified; it’s good that you care for them.
sergeantsays,
thanks for sharing that. i thought i was the only one. i generally send people out of the room & apologise to the dead person for what i have to do then say a little prayer. i just think of them as someones child or parent, you know?
granny
Yeah, I do think that suicides have that bit of being selfish.
As someone else mentioned, it can be an act of just utter rage with a view to getting back at someone who has wronged them. No thought at all of the consequences for others left behind. Not nice for the emergency services who turn up to them either. Very tragic at times – for all concerned.
Going to one of these ’sudden puddins’ I find is one of those things that the bosses forget about all too quickly. I know I don’t forget about em.
I treat the body with respect out of respect for those left behind, not respect for the person in front of me and their selfish act. It’s a desperately final way of proving, by their grief, that somebody *DID* love and care about you. And I know I probably sounded callous in my previous post, but it’s more a symptom of my anger at these acts than not caring, honest!
South Coast Copper ~ I didn’t think you sounded callous. I think you were very restrained.
I know there are a lot of people out there who are in genuine need and aren’t getting the right support. Unfortunately, there are also those who use it as emotional blackmail. My neighbour committed suicide on Boxing Day, leaving his estranged wife and 5 small children to cope with his mess. For them, there will never be a Christmas without grief/anger/trauma.
Once again an excellent blog post – your use of language and tone to show how, while somewhere deep down it’s ’sad’, at the end of the day it’s just another person who you never knew that is dead.
And you pick up and keep going.
She is cold and dead on the end of a dressing gown cord that was once white and fluffy and is now a bit matted and “never washed palest grey”.
It is tied off to some ladders wedged into the stairwell.
There’s my mate outside. He’s just getting fresh air to help recover from the dry heaves. He got here first.
He had to push her out of the way to get upthe narrow stairs to get her crying baby from the cot . Then he had push back past her carrying the baby out, holding it under his jacket, blocking out the world. Who knows what infants remember?
CSI and me, we cut her down and carry her to the living room. No note. A mobile phone on the stairs with 6 or 7 missed calls and texts.
We don’t know why. Never will.
For me, if that doesnt prove that suicide is the ultimate act of selfishness and weakness, then nothing will. Whatever the problem, you’ve got to take responsibility for dealing with it – especially if you have a dependant. Another example of the victim status of society.
I can move on from pills / shootings etc reasonably quickly dependent on the level of interaction with those left behind, but hangings are the worst by a mile. Not sure why that would be.
Some of these comments are unbelievable. Where’s your compassion?
You criticise these people for being selfish because they didn’t consider the feelings of those left behind, and yet you fail to consider the feelings of those who attempt such an irrational act. You have soundness of mind and although unwilling, you are at least capable of considering the feelings of these ones, whereas people who are suffering from depression are incapable of thinking logically.
Depression isn’t weakness, and it isn’t “the blues”. Depression alters a persons thinking so drastically that when the person is well again they can see for themselves how illogical their thinking was. For me personally, depression makes me hate the whole world and everyone in it, and I believe that the whole planet should be blown up and everyone killed. I suppose that makes me selfish? Yet once I have medication I can see how ridiculous that thought is – although comments like the above make me wonder.
I do agree though, that some people are manipulative and use suicide threats to control people. That’s selfish.
I totally agree with Mr Mans Wife, But also think of people who suffer from Schizophrenia who hear voices telling them to kill their self, does it make them weak, and should they pull themselves together? The fact is its a illness as much as cancer but do you tell people with other illnesses to pull their socks up and sort it out? no didnt think so!
I came here after reading a post at Mr Mans Wife’s blog. I totally agree with her comment.
Having read through the comment chain I have to admit that I was once one of “those” people that thought suicide was a sign of weakness/cowardness with that person not being able to face up to the problems in their life. They should perhaps pull themselves together and just “get on with it”.
Then I started having thoughts like that. Thinking the whole world was against me. Not wanting to get out of bed for fear of everything going wrong against me. I was having sudden mood swing – one minute I was like a person that had just won the lottery and the next I was like someone who had just found out that their parents were dead (probably bad analogies but it’s the best I can think of). I’d burst into tears at the slightest of things (like there not being any milk at the supermarket, which as you can imaging for a bloke in his mid 30’s is not what is considered as normal) because to me at the time it was the worst thing in the world and it was happening to me.
Luckily a close friend recognised the signs of what was wrong with me and I went to see the Doctor. Yes, I was diagnosed with depression.
Suddenly I was one of those people that I had previously thought were so weak.
That was 8 months ago and the medicine is working as well as the help group I go along to. I can now recognise the early warning signs and see the Doctor to change my medication so hopefully I will never have “those” thoughts again.
I guess what I am trying to say is until YOU have been there, you will never know what is going on in that persons head to make them take their own life. At times for me, it did seem like the only way out. Of course, I’m glad now I didn’t as I have the rest of my life to look forward to.
In response, I would point out that I recognise depression as an illness and am not from the school of the “pull yourself together man”. The Old Man had it, went off one night with the intention of ending it all. Went to see a priest instead and got medication. Recognised the signs and dealt with it. I think I periodically get mildly depressed and a couple of weeks of St Johns Wort seems to sort me out. So I have some understanding.
If you assume I am without compassion, then you are mistaken. There is no point in feeling sorry for the dead. They’ve made their decision. Whatever pain they were in, is now over. Whether its irrational thoughts, depression, voices, schizophrenia or whatever made them do it, their act inflicts awful pain on others and I think thats unforgiveable. I think its unforgiveable because like many cops, I’ve had to go and tell loved ones that their father / brother / mother is dead, and then I’ve had to watch them fall apart. They are the people to whom I show compassion. Not the dead. Brutal maybe, but honest.
How could you hang yourself whilst your baby was in a cot upstairs? Jesus Christ. There may have been a million things that drove her to do that, but any sympathy for her is negated by her decision to hang herself whilst her baby was in a cot upstairs.
The point I’m trying to make is that these people do not think logically. Most times they actually believe they’re doing everyone else a favour. Even that woman probably thought she was doing the best thing for her baby, or if she was suffering from severe post natal depression she may have thought the baby wasn’t even hers, or that it was evil in some way. We can obviously see the outcome of her decision, but she can’t; she can’t think that far ahead.
All I get to deal with is the body and those left behind. All I know about this person is that by their decision to take their own life, whether logical or not, they have ended their life and destroyed other lives. You deal with the living. You cant get into the whys? You havent got time to consider what was going through the deceased’s mind. Its impersonal. Its a deployment.
My police experiences are all I can comment on. No offence meant.
It seems that even those of us who aren’t connected with the deceased still have emotions over it.
Selfish, desperate, depressed, attention-seeking; we all have an opinion on it. It is interesting to note the ‘job’ of those who posted and how they seem to influence the opinion.
For a copper who might never know why it happened; you have to just deal with the circumstance as you see it* – which essentially seems to be establish the fact and sort out the relatives.
For the family – guilt, anger, ‘if only’ and a lifelong memory
For the generally interested and loosely connected – depends on the connection I’d guess.
For the mental professional – I remember the first guy I nursed on special 1:1. He’d taken a major overdose. I was a first year student nurse. He lived 3 more days – and I, being naiive (and the fact no one bothered to warn me that this might happen) didn’t even realise he was dying. I just thought the hiccups and the acid reflux was a minor discomfort he’d get over as he recovered. He’d told me he did it because of a relationship gone bad.
3 days more he lasted.
I had my two days off and returned to work.
I remember turning up for shift that Sunday and just noticing he wasn’t there any more. After an hour I had to ask – “Where’s John?” – “Oh he’s dead, sometime yesterday”
The staff just seemed to move on and deal with the next one. I had just (sorta) borne testament to the distressed ending of someone’s life and no one gave a rats frick what I might now be going thru. I don’t blame the dead man. He never intended me any harm. I chose to be in that position where I might come across the odd suicidal person.
I like the posts of those who apologise to the deceased – I did it to my Grandad after he died of cancer after being with him through his death. It wasn’t for my Grandad that I apoliogised – it was for me, to remind myself this was once a human who meant something and not, as he was now, just a corpse.
How we interpret or deal with suicide is, as much as it is with life, a personal thing and, unless you’re a necrophiliac, don’t ever let anyone tell you you’re wrong. You’ll change your mind when you believe differently.
For me; suicide is not a preferred option – but it represents the best choice to the person at that time. I am scared to know what the other choices might have been.
*Suicide, IMO, is a resolution of internalised anger & despair. How different or similar are the feelings relating to a murderer (externalised anger & despair) when the perpetrator can still tell you why they did it – but the deceased can bear no witness – especially when we can accept there are times where fatal injury is justified or necessary?