The Basement of Sorrows

It was some time in the first quarter of 2006.  I was in Field Training.  Thinking of the neighborhood I was in and the time of day, I think if must have been 3rd cycle.  I was 35 years old, single, no kids.  I think background is important for context in what I may or may not have thought about at the time.

The call was of a suicide.

When in Field Training, we ride with a training officer, and we go to most calls with another training officer and trainee.  This is after 7 months in the academy, so we have heard all about the horrors of the streets but are new to actually experiencing them.

We arrive to the call.  The reporting party is a younger middle-aged woman.  She seemed older to me but I always think I am so much younger than I really am.  She was probably around 40.  She was well-dressed and I know that she was sad but she had her wits about her.  She told us HE was downstairs.

As we walked through the townhouse, I noticed it was tidy, clean, and quiet.

We make our way downstairs and, however we got there or whatever the surrounding details were, I don't recall.

I remember there was what appeared to be a human body lying on the basement floor.  It didn't really seem real because the head was wrapped with some kind of white material.  The face was not visible at all.

The body was on its back, fully clothed.  The head was lying next to a floor drain like you find in any basement.  There was a rifle somewhere nearby, maybe between his legs.  I don't remember.

What struck me about this was, this subject had wrapped his head with something and placed himself near the floor drain so that he wouldn't make a mess.  And he, in fact, had not made much of a mess at all.

The woman said he was her son.  I believe he was in his late teens or early twenties.  The way I recall his bedroom, way upstairs, which we had to search for a suicide note, was very dark paint on the walls, but tidy.  In reality, my mind might have painted those walls as the feeling of sorrow was thick.

Anyway, we waited down in the basement for the "coroner" (actually a death investigator from the coroner's office, not the actual Coroner).  Then we rookies had to load the body into the body bag.  This is very standard practice ritual of initiation in policing.  It is a test to see if we have the stomach for the job.  Really, the "coroner" calls whomever assists them and they carry the bodies out.

[So far, in writing this, I am remembering a hanging suicide and the natural death of a very obese man.  I can write about those separately.]

I honestly don't even remember moving the body, just remember I knew I was going to have to do it without flinching and I am pretty sure I did.

I think of that mom fairly often.  I felt so sorry for her.  Whatever her son's pain was, he had shattered her world.  She had provided him with a nice home, a nice life.  Materially, what could he have wanted more?  I mean, they weren't rich but she had provided a stable environment.  So many kids don't get that.  I think about how she felt the next time she passed his bedroom door.  The next time she had to go in the basement.  Did she stay in that home or did she have to leave?  Did she hold her life together or fall apart?

I don't remember what I said to her.  I remember I felt so very sorry for her.

And after the body was removed from the house, we went on to the next call.