I see dead people, do you?

Lesley, sorry to hear of your friend.

I've worked in hospitals for the last few years, done correctional work, and volunteered with the sheriff's dept. and search & rescue teams...so I've seen quite a few.

I think by far the worst one was a family friend who called and told me her aging husband went out into his shop and she had heard a loud noise, she wanted me to come down and check on him. On arrival to the shop, I found that he had written a note that explained he was worried about their finances...since he was just diagnosed with cancer. He was lying there with an old double-barrel shotgun.

That one still makes me think...

Mother-in-law recently passed, in the hospital. Cancer pretty much had taken over the rest of her organs after surgery to remove a cancerous mass from her colon. She had been in the hospital for a month after the surgery, and they moved her to a pre-hospice room. We visited that night. She was heavily under morphine, so the conversation was very little. She went around 8:00 the next morning.

23 years ago, my 18yo brother took his life with Dads 12 gauge. Mom found him, but didn't look very closely. I did. Hollywood has never come close to depicting what a shotgun blast through the roof of the mouth can do. I won't go into detail.

first one i saw was when i was about 14 or 15, dad and i were driving home from town, when we came upon an accident, and basically the road was shut down. my dad got out to go see what was going on. apparently this old lady that lived in a house just back from the road (speed limit 65, some go faster) had pulled out in front of a ford van. i assume she wasn't wearing a seatbelt because she had been thrown from the car and was laying on the shoulder, the car about 50 feet away in a mangled pile. if you didn't know you might not have found the van, it was 100 feet up an embankment and back in some trees.

i remember my dad coming back and saying, "that lady's dead, i'm not driving you by that" and turned around and went a different way home.

the others that make you think about things were secondhand accounts of others experiences, but still pretty bad. g/fs friend gets rearended in austin, 4 car pileup. 18 wheeler didn't stop in time and pushed a lincoln LS into her and her into another car. she didn't realize until after she took pictures of the scene that all the blood in the car belonged to the girl that was (still) in what was left of the back seat... she ended up having to see a therapist for a bit to get past that one.

the other was some friends on an overland trip out to palo duro canyon, came across a single vehicle motorcycle wreck, guy and his wife had gone off the road and hit a culvert, tossing both of them, the wife farthest and into a fence, she was DRT, the husband was transported and presumably made it. among the wreckage were several unopened cold beers that had come out of the saddle bags when they crashed....

My worst was an accident I came across at about 3am on the Atlantic City Expressway.

I am sure the police ruled it a simple case of the driver falling asleep at the wheel.. but I think I know better.

Coming home from a gig, I came across a few cars on the side of the road with blinkers on and one Hyundai Elantra at an odd angle with the trunk open and E36 M3 strewn across the road. It seemed that the Hyundai had tagged the guardrail and the driver was staggering around.

One of the good smaritans put him into the passenger seat of his car to wait for the cops as I was on my cell (this was before so many people had callphones). As I was on the phone, an Acura MDX somebody managed to avoid noticing all the cars (about a dozen now) sitting in the road with their flashers on and plowed into the mess at 70+mph. It just Narrowly missed me.. but ran straight into the wrecked Hyundai.

At this point, a white car (the hyundai was also white) further up the road that was parked at an odd angle, took off. I personally think it had been a two car accident, but the other car took this oppertunity to scoot.

Running to the driver of the Hyundai, I checked his vitals (good to be CPR trained) and while he did not look bad, (no blood) he was not breathing. I went do compression.. and he had no ribs left to press on.

I can still feel that nasty feeling

Holy crap. You guys have seen some crazy E36 M3. I don't even like going to 'viewings.' That's not a person, it's a corpse, and it's hard to get that out of your head. I'd rather remember people as they looked when they were alive.

I agree with you Poop... I do not go to viewings.

The WORST one I saw in 1963, I think. Car bomb went off, blew the guys legs and lower torso off. Youngstown Mafia hit. Heard the explosion, I got there 5 minutes afterward, . It was very loud. I believe they used 10 sticks of dynamite.

On the viewing thing - yeah, I want to be cremated, but you have to go to a viewing to support the others there. Case in point - my wife's friend from work. His 15-year-old son was just killed in a head-on dirtbike accident. It was an open-coffin funeral. No, I didn't want to see that, but how could I not go?

there is a company here in NJ that can legally bury you at sea. They adhere to all state and federal guidlines for distance out, depth, and weight used to take you and keep you on the bottom.

Recycling at it's best. I can come back as a can of tuna

you can do as I, and go ... you don't have to look

10-9-2005

Riding with a group of friends (sportbikes). Experienced Road Racer of the group (and leading) makes a mistake, ends up on the ground sliding across the double yellows in the next corner.

He and his bike were hit by a Ford Ranger, flipped the truck on it's side and off the road.

Friend #2, hits his bike and goes flying down the road. Hit hard enough that headstock around where the forks attach actually broke. Major concussion and torn ligaments/tendons in his foot.

Friend #3, hits Friend #2 while he is sliding across the road, and is subsequently ends up in the ditch with a shattered wrist.

I (4th in line) end up washing the front out in all the gas/antifreeze/oil now on the road and my bike slides into Friend #2 who is knocked out on the side of the road. (Slight concussion, banged up shoulder, bruised ribs)

I was the first person who got up to Jason after he had been hit and it was obvious he was already gone. I hate how well I remember that day.

Just ye olde anatomy lab for me...and a bad bike wreck after turn 4 at Daytona

Cripes--what a miserable thread. You folks have seen some gnarly stuff.

I've seen the wreckage of some bad accidents, but never the bodies. I've never seen a dead body "in the wild". Only at funerals.

Lost my Dad in '01 (sudden, natural causes)--that was the roughest.

mad_machine wrote: I agree with you Poop... I do not go to viewings.

Worst I ever saw..old Corner Worker buddy of mine committed suicide (gunshot to the head). His family paid the (EDIT: removed insulting term for morticians) to reconstruct his head for an open casket viewing. I didn't know (or even imagine) that they'd do such a thing..I was young/stupid/curious enough at the time to eventually wonder up there and see what was left of my friend. Mistake.

At least he looked so little like himself that it didn't ruin his memory for me forever...

Let's just say that my atheism ain't the only reason I want to be immediately cremated, OK? Even without a gunshot, I don't want my survivors to remember me like that. You and Poop are right. Remember the life, not the death.

And yeah...this is a freaky thread..but it feels good to get some of this "out of my system". Seems that many of us have something like this buried inside, thanks to Doc Boost for the excuse to let it out. Love ya, bro..I haven't even told my therapist half of this E36 M3.

Yeah, sorry guys. Believe it or not, I didn't even thing about the depressing road this would go down. See, I I only knew one of the people I've seen dead (the one I'd rather not talk about, it was my son) so there's a little detachment. And, the first happened at a young age so it really did seem very normal to my up 'till about 10 years ago.

In reply to DrBoost:

I can't think of anything worse in life than losing a child. You must be a strong man.

Thankfully the only one I saw that I knew was my grandfather, he went in his sleep from cancer.

I've seen a few others, an almost annual squid or his girlfriend.

A taxi driver get hit on the Cross Bronx Expressway by a speeding maxima, he spun and hit a pole with the drivers door. He came out the window and left the contents of his melon on the pole. The Maxima didn't even slow down. Hopefully the kids in the back were too young to realize what if anything they may have seen before we put them in another car.

A couple pedestrian accidents, an elderly man who expired on a crosstown bus.

And the ones I see in my sleep sometimes, the gelatinous remains that were in the street when I went to bring some stuff to my brother's Guard unit the the night of 9/11

Otto Maddox wrote: In reply to DrBoost: I can't think of anything worse in life than losing a child. You must be a strong man.

Thanks. I don't know if it's strength or not. I've never been so low in my life nor will I ever be again. 10 years, 12 steps, 3 kids and a good wife later and I'm moving on.

speaking of cremation....did anyone see the show "Strange Addictions" on recently where the wife was addicted to eating the ashes of her dead husband.....WTF?

In reply to DrBoost:

Incredible. I cannot imagine what life would be like following an event like that with one of my sons.

"Y'all wanna see a dead body?"

DrBoost wrote:

Otto Maddox wrote: In reply to DrBoost: I can't think of anything worse in life than losing a child. You must be a strong man.

Thanks. I don't know if it's strength or not. I've never been so low in my life nor will I ever be again. 10 years, 12 steps, 3 kids and a good wife later and I'm moving on.

Oh, it's strength. Not the pretty kind that people brag about, but the quiet, important kind. I can't imagine would it would be like to lose my child.

And don't apologize about the thread.

I'll second that. Major kudos and hugs to you.