Friday, October 13, 2006

I identified his body at the morgue.

The Loss of a Son to Oxycontin


I identified his body at the morgue read and reread the reports, I spoke to the Medical Examiner, the policeman who was at his apartment, the maintenance man who found him after his girlfriend ran screaming out of the apartment. I sat on the sofa where they found him sitting up with his head on his arm like he had drifted off to sleep watching TV.

I wanted to feel and know and understand everything he had gone through those last few hours of his sweet, precious life. I wanted to be "inside his body", I wanted to change places with him. Or at least be with him, part of him, take away his pain, look after him as he leaves this earth......


But I am uncomfortable with TV shows showing autopsies, even the News, how they disrespect families by showing covered bodies being taken from murder scenes, reporters asking questions of grieving family members as they are sobbing....The public is so insensitive and as a whole the world has been desensitized.


I feel hypersensitive now. I think of all the sadness in each obituary I read, every ambulance I hear, every sad news story, every young soldier that dies.....

No comments: