I am great at dealing with death if I don't know the deceased

Recently I have written a few articles about the passing of my father. It was unexpected and a shock, but it has also knocked me around more than I had anticipated. I think those around me were also a bit surprised with how hard I’ve taken it. Partially because I’m good at masking my feelings, but also because I was a police officer for many years and dealt with death and tragedy daily.

I enjoyed attending autopsies because I found it interesting to learn about the inner workings of the human body. I gained an appreciation for just how poorly designed our bodies were. I’m not even talking about how poorly designed MY body is, but human beings in general. I mean who puts our thinking part in an eggshell atop a wobbly stick, all of which can break without too much effort at all?

I lost track of the number of death notifications I delivered. I am probably not the most empathetic individual on the face of the Earth, but I could still say “Your son has died” in a manner that didn’t come off as callous. I have even had people thank me for my compassion. So, with all that death and mayhem I seemed pretty with it.

I decided to do a little bit of reflecting on my past, digging back through my memories, and came across three deaths that impacted me heavily. I don’t know whether I’ve resolved them, but as has been part of my therapy I thought maybe I’d better commit them to paper.

Corina

I was in my last year of high school. Corina was incredibly popular but equally unaffected by how well-liked she was. She was good-looking, funny, and artistic, primarily as a dancer, but also as a singer. Everyone got along with Corina. We had caught the bus together when she used to live up near my parents’ house, but a few years later she moved to a house quite close to our school.

She’d been doing something artistic and needed a sheriff’s badge, so I had loaned her one that I owned, I think an uncle had brought it back from a trip to Tombstone. She needed it over the weekend and said that she would return it to me on Monday. On Monday morning as I got ready for school, I noticed the spot in my room where the badge would normally sit and thought “I’d better make sure I get that back from Corina”. I got to school about 45 minutes before class started. Not long before the bell another friend arrived, she was in tears, she told us that Corina has suffered a massive asthma attack and had died.

This was the first up-close experience I had with death. One of my grandfathers died when I was about two years old and the other died when I was about 13. It was sad, but it had not been a direct impact on my life. This was different.

That Monday was a combination of me and my friend crying a lot, as well as our maths teacher trying to distract us with mathematics. I’ll give you the tip now, a class of grieving students is not going to take in any mathematics. The school was woefully underprepared to deal with it. There were no counselors, but because it was a Catholic school there was plenty of praying.

My parents were equally unsure of what to do or say. We had never had a very close relationship to that point, and they just didn’t discuss it. I would spend a lot of time in my room and would only come out for meals. I think they came from an era where you didn’t talk about your feelings, and they didn’t know how to do anything different.

Corina’s parents arranged a viewing of the body. I agreed to go and have spent the rest of my life wishing that I hadn’t. It looked nothing like her and the whole place just smelled of death. The funeral was another impact I had not anticipated, it was cremation, and watching the coffin descend into the furnace was something that haunted me and gave me nightmares for years.

In the months that followed there wasn’t any real follow-up and just a general expectation that life should now return to normal. Of course, it didn’t, I just learned that hiding my emotions rather than addressing them was the healthiest way to go about things. There were times I wanted to talk to Dad but was afraid that he’d think I was a sook, so didn’t. I remember sitting in my room one day, sad and playing my harmonica (I acknowledge probably badly), and Dad yelled at me for making a racket. I don’t imagine he realized that I was still coming to terms with the death of my friend, at the time I just put it down to him being grumpy. But I think we both could have probably communicated better.

As I write this story, I realize today marks 33 years since Corina died, I still feel tears welling up in my eyes as I type.

Tanya

Throughout my teens and early 20s, I had zero confidence when it came to women. I needed them to say to me “Hey, I’m interested in you” before I would think that I had a chance with them. That is exactly what happened with Tanya. Well kind of.

She was the cousin of a good mate of mine, a couple of years younger than me. She was studying teaching at university, and we hit it off. I liked her, she was gorgeous and funny and great to hang around. As usual, I rated myself zero chance, until my mate came to me and had “the talk” about how his cousin liked me, but I had to treat her right or he’d bash me.

A few days after this conversation I was due to go out with a few people including my mate and his cousin. It was the end of the university year, and I was about to start three months of work experience at an airport four hours away. A bunch of us went out, but I managed to find some time alone with Tanya. We talked, and as luck would have it, she would be working over the university break near where I would be working. This was the best coincidence ever.

We shared a kiss that night, and we didn’t take it any further. It wasn’t that I was worried about her cousin, I just didn’t want us to rush things because I genuinely liked her and knew that we’d get the chance to spend lots more time together over the next three months. I went home, and I was on cloud nine.

The next afternoon, my mate rang. His first words to me were “I’ve got some bad news”, he was a well-known prankster, so I made a few jokes, then he followed up with “Tanya died this morning”. I could tell by his tone that this wasn’t a prank. She had been driving home to her parent's house a few hours away with a friend when her car crossed onto the wrong side of the road and collided with an oncoming vehicle. Killing Tanya instantly.

Part of me apportioned blame to myself. Had I kept her out too late? Should I have let her go home earlier? Maybe I should have offered to drive.

There was nothing rational about my thought process, but I still went through it anyway.

Then I was shocked when my friend asked me on behalf of Tanya’s mother to be a pallbearer. Apparently, Tanya had told her all about me, how much she liked me, and her mother was keen for me to play a part in the funeral.

I have met girlfriends’ parents before, but never at their funerals. I think that her Mum just liked knowing that Tanya had positive experiences whilst she was at university a few hours away. I also think she wanted to meet me for herself to picture how things might have been if she hadn’t died.

It was difficult on me, but I can’t imagine how hard it had been on her Mum. She and Tanya were obviously very close, and this death hit her hard.

Again, I filed this one away. It was not something I could talk about with new girlfriends, we weren’t even really dating, but the potential was certainly there. It’s just hard to find the correct ways to describe it.

Brendan

The first time I met Brenda he yelled at me. In fact, for most of the first seven months, I knew him, Brendan yelled at me. He was my physical skills sergeant at the police academy. He was a funny guy, who in his early police career had gotten into a lot of trouble, so to avoid any more “occurrences” they transferred him to the academy. There he only had to go to the gym, run with his dog and have training classes with recruits for a total of about 8 hours a week. It was hands down the safest possible job within the police force.

He was super fit, all the women drooled over him. Our intake got to know him because he lived on campus, so if we had Friday night drinks, he would often join us. Then he would encourage us to head into town, and that’s when the drunken all-nighters would come back to bite us. Monday morning we’d be hungover, and then Brendan would be making us run laps for fun until we threw up.

We stayed friends during my policing career. When I resigned, I caught up with him one more time, we talked about how hopeless we both were in our relationships. I found out he’d gotten back with his ex-girlfriend, Sonya, and was trying to make it work this time. Then when I heard she was pregnant I was excited to know how he’d go as a father.

Other ex-policing friends had taken work in the Middle East, training Iraqi police. I was surprised to learn that Brendan had taken a job over there after another of my friends had decided to give it away, at the behest of his wife. News traveled around that Brendan’s girlfriend had given birth to a son, this child was the product of two incredibly good-looking people and would no doubt inherit their genes.

It was a few weeks after the news of his son’s birth that I got a call late at night from another colleague still in the police force. An email had gone out notifying that Brendan had been killed in Iraq. Over the next few days, the story came together, the details truly heartbreaking.

Firstly, Brendan had not told his girlfriend that he was working in Iraq. He had told her he was delivering training in Abu Dhabi. Given she was pregnant, he didn’t want her to worry that anything would happen to him in a war zone. When Sonya found out it devastated her even more and created a rift that is still yet to heal between her and Brendan’s brother, for taking part in keeping this secret.

Brendan was able to come home for his son’s birth but was only home for a couple of days before he had to return to Iraq. He was on his way back for his usual swing of time off, two months. The vehicle he was in hit a roadside bomb, miraculously Brendan was unharmed. He managed to exit the vehicle and run to the other vehicle in the convoy. When he did, it was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade, killing him.

Because Brendan had resigned and was working as a contractor to the Iraqi Police, he was not afforded a police funeral with full honors. That didn’t stop almost every cop that knew him from rocking up to his funeral. The cathedral was packed, there were no empty seats, just a sea of blue.

Sonya was overcome with grief and couldn’t bring herself to talk at the funeral, instead, her words were read by her brother. The emotion for everyone was intense. I remember looking around, as the piper began to play Amazing Grace. In unison, almost every person in that church put their sunglasses on to hide their tears.

The day after the funeral I had to book a flight, I remember breaking down in tears to the woman from the airline. It was another death that I never dealt with properly. Fifteen years later I still have dreams about Brendan, they start out happy but end up with me reliving his death again.

I have watched Brendan’s son grow to be a handsome young man, the spitting image of his dad. He has had an army of people willing to step in to help him and Sonya.

For anyone needing help to deal with grief, there is help available. If talking with the ones you love doesn’t get you there, then please seek professional help.