I had a suicide family this past week. Parents of a twenty-something that had hung himself came in to make arrangements for his funeral. It's always strange, making those kinds of arrangements, as I always want to ask questions about things that I have no business asking. I never do, but i always want to. His parents were nice, and the arrangements were done quickly. I sent a driver to pick up the body from the medical examiner's office and he came back with personal property as well, a wallet and a coupla pieces of jewelry. Inside the wallet was a fast-food receipt, and according to the death certificate the boy had been to eat shortly before his hour of death. It made me wonder: did he know that was his last meal?
His parents were fairly numb in the funeral home, probably in shock. Did he know what they would go through? Had he even talked to them recently? There are quite a few things that I'm fairly certain will always be strange to me in this line of work, things that I will never quite get used to. I don't really mind the thought of taking your own life, but there is something about a parent having to go through the funeral of their own child that just always makes me... I don't really know, but it just seems like the worst kind of pain possible. And, maybe I'm way off, I've been fairly sheltered at least where pain is concerned (both emotional and physical), but it seems like that would be the worst.
Monday, September 7, 2009
Last week
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
Yes... and suicide would make it doubly bad.
I am not a parent but I would hazard a guess that you are spot on on this one. I can't imagine the pain a parent feels losing a child. Children are just are not supposed to die before the parent.
I wanted to say something about this, but didn't know what. So, I clicked away. And clicked back. That fast food receipt is haunting me. Why eat before killing yourself? Was it his favorite meal? Was he sitting there, trying to think of something to live for or just contemplating what it would be like to die? Death is full of mystery.
tcg- that's EXACTLY how I feel. I just can't figure it out, and I am not sure what it is that I am so interested with. I keep thinking, "maybe he was drunk when he did it" or, "maybe he was murdered" or a million other things that make his suicide make sense, but I keep coming back to nothing.
It appears that this is the beginning of a great mystery. Who is to say that the fast food receipt is for a meal that he ate? Maybe he took someone else for a meal and that set a series of events in motion? Or... maybe someone slipped some hallucinogen into his 'happy meal' and that set it off?
BTW the magic verification word is chilit. Is that some kind of message?
Post a Comment