I Saw Dead People

Recalling the story of the homeless man who died sleeping in the dumpster led me to remember the first time I saw dead bodies. It was probably in 1974.

The victims were a man and a woman who had been shot, then dumped down an embankment alongside a county road. They were there for two or three days before being discovered.

I eventually got so used to seeing dead people I didn't think much of it anymore. Two other instances stick in my memory now. One was a young woman who died while trapped in a wrecked car. She died as the camera was rolling, zoomed in on her face. In watching the film later, we realized she had died only because she had stopped blinking her eyes.

The other instance was another accident in which four young men were killed when their car was involved in a wreck and burned. They were probably dead before the fire spread, but there was no way of knowing at the scene.

There were many others, more than I can remember. People who were shot. People who died of drug overdoses. One man who was crushed by a vehicle that fell off a jack. A child who was hit by a van from which she'd just gotten out.

And, finally, I was at my father's bedside when he died of pancreatic cancer.

What I saw, of course, was nothing compared to what firefighters and police officers see. Nurses who performed triage at the scene of Murrah Building bombing saw more dead and dying in one morning than I saw in 25 years of my career.

When Prince Siddartha began to explore outside the shelter of his palace, he saw a corpse and had his first realization of the impermanence of life.

I can't tell you how seeing so much death affected me, but I assume it did in some way. I wonder how I would look at the world today if I had been more distanced from death and tragedy all those years.