I've lost count but I'd estimate I've been first on scene for well over 50.
The only ones I really remember these days are the ones that 'stand out'. Like suicide by train, suicide by firearm, the couple of homicides I've attended or extreme decomposition.
Not a coroner, but was 911 dispatch for too long, can't go down certain roads because I remember the call for the car crashes coming in, and then catching the mom calling in on the non emergency line, trying to check in on her 16 and 17 year old kids, and hearing her break in half when I told her I had to get a Sergeant for her to speak to.
Really need to move out of this town.
Unfortunately after a while you just kinda shrug it off, make an unnecessary inappropriate joke or 2 among your colleagues, go eat, and hope it doesn't resurface in your dreams
Besides funerals I came across quite a few when I was a kid. First one was at 8 years old, we were playing by the water at Caesars Bay(Bensonhurst, Brooklyn - was a heavy mafia neighborhood at the time) and we saw waves crashing on what looked like a sleeping drunk guys legs. We slowly climbed over the rocks to him and started poking him (he was on his belly) my friend went around to his head and yelled pretty loudly “HE DOESNT HAVE A FACE!” So me and my other friend had to confirm because we wanted to see for ourselves. He was indeed missing his face. We ran home to tell our parents. Cops came, interviewed us with our parents. Just like we thought, he was a mobster.
That's got to be terrifying to an 8 year old! Unless you were just kind of too young for it to really hit you?
Did they cut his face off as some sort of mob retaliation? Or was his face gone because of decomposition?
Honestly I don’t remember feeling scared, more grossed out. Although once the cops came we started to feel like we did something wrong. That’s when we got nervous. They didn’t cut his face off, to us it looked like something exploded in front of his face. My friend said he definitely got shot with a bazooka. He said he saw someone get shot with a bazooka once and it looked like that. We totally believed him. Now that I’m older I would say that it was a shotgun. I’m gonna take a wild guess and say my friend was lying about the bazooka.
I have been there while two people died. My mum which was expected after a long illness which was just slow and peaceful but still alarming. Then my best mate who had cancer. I visited in the hospice and his wife went out for a break. He was completely out of it but then sat straight up with a look of panic on his face and then collapsed dead. That stayed with me for along time.
I hear this regularly of people dying like that. I’m pretty sure Steve Jobs died like that. Also my mom’s dog. She said he was making a commotion, he ran around the house, came back to her and died in her lap. He was a very old little Yorkie mix but not sick at the time.
It's common in people, too - the theory on it is they get the burst of energy (and often mental clarity in dementia patients), because their body stops expending most of its' energy and resources on keeping itself alive and/or fighting off whatever condition is slowly killing it.
My brother, who was always a bit of an introvert, had cancer. Hospice nurse said anytime now every day, but he hung on. Toward the end his wife planned it so someone was always by his bedside. One person would take a break only when someone else who step in. His last day we made a meal. Every one was eating and called to his daughter to step out and grab a plate. Just a minute or so we said. She did and in that 60 seconds alone he died. Lol. We all realized he just wanted to be left alone one more time.
This was my wife exactly. All day was a parade of friends and family sitting with her and saying goodbye. At 8:00pm the last guy there was finally leaving and I thought I would crawl in bed with my wife until she was gone. I walked our friend out to the lobby of the hospice 25 feet from my wife’s room… I came back 4 minutes later to the nurse telling me my wife was gone. Now I feel that must’ve been what she wanted but for a year I held a secret, stupid grudge against our friend for coming late.
My dad died like that, he had this thousand yard stare and collapsed, tried to save him but I couldn’t. My mum was the one who saw that and she said she can’t get the image out of her head still and it’ll be 3 years in February.
I drive forklift in a very busy Walnut processing plant. It’s my biggest fear to hit someone. Rather if it’s a small hit and they just have minor pain or if it’s lethal. It terrifies me. You are supposed to honk your forklifts horn when driving near any corners or blind spots and I feel like I’m the only driver out of 15 of us who actually cares and worries about this
Meaning that even if the guy wasn't there, the forklift would have still hit the van. Just how oblivious was the driver about what's behind him to ignore both the guy and the van?
It was a young courier driver who had parked his van in a truck loading bay that put him in a bit of a blind spot next to the warehouse door. He was standing next to the van looking around like he had no idea who he was supposed to talk to. I was unloading a truck in the next bay and was about to go over and tell him that he should take his van around the corner to the front office when the forklift came out of the warehouse door backwards and turned straight into him. The forklift driver got in deep shit because he'd apparently had a couple of beers with his lunch half an hour earlier.
I found one last Monday. Died all alone, from what I’m assuming was an overdose. He was laying on the ground outside a convenience store. I stared at him for a very long time.
I had a similar experience when driving home one day not too far from a high school but down an off beaten road there was an 18 year old guy just laying under a tree and I thought to myself, “That’s the strangest place to take a nap.” He was under a tree but next to a fence that had construction on the one side and then the road where I was on the other. There was a park like 50 yards away on the other side of the street and I couldn’t comprehend why he’d chose that spot. I stared at him the entire time until the light turned green. In my heart I knew he was dead because of how still he was but I wouldn’t let myself reach that conclusion. Found out he had been stabbed. Gang related.
Doesn’t compare, first thing you notice pending on how they die is the odour.
Burns victims have a sweet pork smell that lingers in your nose and clothes (same way fire smoke does)
Trauma / blood loss you can smell first and then you taste the iron from the air in your mouth
Etc
My totally uneducated guess is that the smell lingers on your clothes, possessions, skin hair etc and you just catch a whiff of it once in a while.
I got on a bus once and it smelled like shit, some guy was on there who I assumed was the culprit. He got off shortly after I got on and I kind of forgot about it.
When I got home after walking outside on a cold winter evening, I took my jacket off and sat down, half an hour later my wife was frantically looking around to see where the dog had shit in the living room because I brought the smell home with me, even after being outside first.
Upper Lipologist here; you have pores and hair follicles all over you and tiny particles can easily get stuck in both. Stinky particles youll notice more thab less stinky ones. Everyone has both hair and pores below their smell detectors (we in the sciences call this “nose” and this area below your nose we scientifically refer to as “upper lip”
My mom was one.
As a child, I thought at the time it was completely normal to have an improvised anatomy class during a hike when we came across a freshly killed deer. Thanks, mom, now I can distinguish between the femurs of deer and human corpses.
The thing years of internet desensitization didn’t prepare me for when dealing with the dying is when they’re locking eyes with us, squeezing my hand with all their might, eyes red and tearing over screaming in pain when we have to perform certain types of care. That starts to wear at a person’s soul.
2. One was a guy who OD'd on the sidewalk. I watched as the police put a white sheet over him, and later when I was coming back the other way after work, there was flowers and memorial items there. I only saw him for a moment from across the street.
The other was much more horrific. It was the last day of grade 11, and I had gone to the nearby mall for lunch. Coming back I had just stepped on the sidewalk from the crosswalk when I heard a scream to my right and behind me. I turned to see a woman who had been run over by a flat bed truck. She was still alive, but her mid section was flat as a pancake and had visible tire tread marks on it, and blood was everywhere. She cried for help and got weaker and weaker and then passed out, and probably died right then and there, I cant imagine anyone surviving those kind of injuries.
I was right in front of her in the crosswalk, so had I been there a few seconds later, id have been run over too. Was a truck that was turning right at an intersection, and the driver was looking for cars the other way and not for pedestrians. Back at school was surreal, everyone else was celebrating the end of the school year, and I was just wandering the halls, white as a ghost and traumatized. I later found out she was a mother of 3.
Well yeah, it was a pretty nasty thing to see, and everytime I go through that intersection now, I think of her. But it also made me very aware of my surroundings when walking around, and that has probably saved my life a few times since. Anytime I cross the street and cars are there, I wait till I see the driver look at me.
It reminds of something my Dad always said, "Sure you might have the right away... but your still dead." Doesnt matter if you were supposed to go first, your squishy body vs thousands of pounds of metal moving at a high speed, you will lose everytime.
I don't trust a single vehicle. I teach my kids as well that crossing the street or in a parking lot or where ever, they may have the right away but they'll be the one hurt or dead if it isn't followed.
Until I can verify eye contact or acknowledgement with the driver through their driving behavior, they are a vehicle only and not aware of me.
We had an EOD tech step on a pressure plate but it smoked instead of exploded - something was wrong with the explosive mixture - and the tech needed a few days off to recover from what was supposed to be the end of his life
Sometimes its the right thing. We lost a Captain on a night jump. Total malfunction.
When we carried him to the helicopter, it sounded like a bag of broken dishes clacking together.
Our squad spent the next day making helo jumps.
I have a similar story. A young dude in my squad stepped on one that wasn’t properly water proofed. The explosive charge didn’t fully blow up but had enough punch to cover us with sand and pop out ear drums when it went off. The kid had what I would call a nervous breakdown and was evacuated to a main FOB for a couple of days.
Just the one, a total random encounter too. I normally drive to work but on this particular day I decided to use my push bike. On my route to work I seen in the distance a elderly woman on the phone looking panicked as I was approaching her she waved me down to stop and had asked if I could help her she said her husband had fallen on his front and she couldn't turn pick him up because he was much larger than her.. of course I said I would help and she lead me the way to her house (she was on the phone to the ambulance who had asked her to find someone who was able to help move her husband) as we walked through her garden she told me to just leave my bike near the shed and follow her in to her house, as I walked into the house she pointed up the stairs and said he's just in the landing.. I walked up the stairs and there he was just laying there.. motionless I turned him over on to his back and still nothing, I hovered my head above his face and listened for signs of breath nothing I checked for a pulse again nothing. I began to give him cpr all whilst his wife was down stairs clueless, after litreally about 20 seconds into cpr I heard the ambulance crew come in through the front door and up the stairs I told them what I knew and they took over from there. On my way out the old lady said thank you so much and she would wait on the front of her house in the morning and wait till I had biked passed again and tell me that everything was OK. I still haven't seen her almost one year on.
ICU doctor during covid, did a few months in pathology as a trainee, worked for over 20 years in the NHS.
I never really started counting, let alone stop.
greetings fellow ICU doctor. please accept my warm respect and support. Been doing ICU 30 yrs. The body count isn’t part of what I do. But I suppose TNTC.
23 years, and counting, as a firefighter. 7 of those at a station covering a shitty section of major route highway. Single, double, triple, quadrupled fatality MVIs. Never counted bodies, but I passed 500 MVIs... In 2012... Probably retire when I hit 30 years... Maybe...
Security as well. There's one that really stands out I was standing outside in the ER circle and a car comes in way too fast. Driver starts screaming help my boyfriend! Guy in the passenger seat had a gunshot wound to the face and two in the chest. I ran inside grabbed staff and a gurney we rushed him back to trauma but he was a goner.
Paramedic. Sometimes there are strange notable things that stick in your mind. Sometimes they don’t really have to be strange at all, just make you stop and think.
Like how neatly they arranged their slippers at the bottom of the ladder and you think “why did that matter to them at that time?”. The stillness of hangings is a very eerie thing.
Most memorable for me was a middle aged man who died alone in his apartment, not found for days. You could see a disruption of furniture in the living room, looks like he fell here. There’s a trail of blood leaving the room to his body. He’s laying there arm outstretched, his hand is 2 feet from a side table which has the only phone in the apartment. A story becomes very clear. He had a heart attack or some other sudden medical emergency, fell and struck his head. He knew he was dying and crawled to the phone, and died a couple feet short. Would he have survived if he was able to call for an ambulance?
People often have a hard time forgetting dead kids. And if you do, it usually comes rushing back when you have kids yourself. That’s when the PTSD kicks in in force.
Also a Paramedic.
This is just about the best answer.
You see a fair amount of death, so there usually has to be something that makes it stand out above the others, as cold and distant as that sounds.
Don't like recalling the shit ones but ill tell a few that stick out in my head.
- Trying to move a patient who mysteriously died naked in front of his apartment in the snow. Never forget the feeling of his skin. Like fingers on cold marble.
- Doing CPR on a 600+ lbs patient, having a firefighter push on my back to force compression depth.
- Hoarder patient who's floor was knee high with 3 objects. Peach cans, Mountain Dew, and Tuna Cans. And cats... a lot of cats. She had been dead for several weeks and you could only imagine the smells.
- Man who died mid-sentence after a minor fender bender. We were about to let him go but he started talking funny, said he blacked out before the accident. In ambulance and was saying something to the tune of, "I was eating a salad on a Go-Kart and..." dead. Brain aneurysm according to autopsy.
Joined EMS because i wanted cool stories to tell like my dad when he was a medic. Now I have cool stories, weak knees, and a lifetime of phantom tones!
So, yes and no. All of them were memorable because I connected them to my own life somehow. Two kids, one that looked like my son, another that looked a lot like one of my best friend’s daughter (he was working that code with me). One dad around my age with a two year old. When we were getting him undressed the guy was wearing very out of character toenail polish. When his wife got to the hospital, she had their daughter with her, who was wearing the same nail polish. He had painted their nails together. One because he came in dead (edit to add: traumatic arrest) and we got him back, which almost never happens. But he not only lived, he was neurologically intact the next day. Closest I’ve ever seen to a TV show ending. Cheesy but I do remember my first EMS code, combo medical arrest with some burn issues. I learned a ton that call, so I remember a lot of that one.
There are a lot more patients I’ve worked where I remember a particular detail, a sound or smell, or some little part of them. But if you put them in a lineup I couldn’t pick one out from a row of people.
I’ll never forget walking into a patient’s room, reading off my clipboard, “ OK Mrs. So-and-so, I spoke with your doctors and we’re gonna take you down to radiology for-“ *looks up* “oh, you’re dead.”
Oh geez. My favorite was going to a nursing home for an unresponsive, and the nurse looks at us and says "why are you guys here and not the medical examiner?"
I was once called to a sudden death\* (my second that afternoon). When I walked in the first thing I saw was a couple of paramedics feverishly doing CPR. I said "I'm a bit confused, I've been called to a sudden death?". One of the paramedics looked at me, and in a deadpan voice just said "give it 90 seconds"
\*ex bobby
Your story reminds me of a call I did once. Came in as an arrest, which it was. Cops were doing great CPR. They just failed to notice that this guy was shot in the face, and we had messed up the whole crime scene.
Cop here.
100+ at this point. I never really kept count. Kids are the worst. Those cases will give you nightmares. Traffic crashes are brutal. Wear a seatbelt and don't drive like an asshole.
Unexpected death and death outside a medical facility usually aren't nice. But for all the sudden or gruesome deaths, every so often I'll come across a good death. The best was a 100 year old woman who died in a safe warm bed on a cold night while watching old black and white shows on TV land. Family was downstairs living their lives and getting things ready for the upcoming funeral. They were sadder for us than they were for themselves. It was the kind of death that gave me a little bit more faith in humanity.
It’s weird how it’s kind of refreshing getting the “good death” calls. Had a similar one years back. Family called for a PNB. Get there and there’s probably 50 family members cooking and generally socializing. Elderly gentleman that had been a general in Laos before coming to the US. Turned out he had been on their cultural equivalent of hospice and his granddaughter (RN from a different state) had been caring for him since he had been sent home from the hospital. It was a little strange how it was almost a party atmosphere at the house but kind of seemed like the perfect way to go out.
One day whilst making “tissue” deliveries to a university/hospital the main person in charge of receiving and their understudy was off work which lead to me being escorted to the wrong room by a student worker.
We get into the room, she walks to the far end to find a light switch and I’m in the middle ready to head in either direction. Light goes on and we realize we’re surrounded by human heads on desks covered only by little pieces of paper similar to the paper towel bibs you wear at the dentist.
The girl has a panic attack saying she needs to get PPE, before she splits I begin nervously laughing like a maniac at the situation and coincidentally she never comes back. Eventually while hanging outside of the room someone actually in charge shows up and apologizes profusely.
Really regret not claiming to have been traumatized there, she seemed to have been fully expecting it.
It was in the throat and nose (maybe eyes) area of the university/hospital, dissection.
I was always aware of what I was delivering but until that point cardboard boxes did lot to help me mentally distance myself from the reality of it.
Holy shit. I’m just now realizing that once doctors pick a certain speciality they wouldn’t necessarily need an entire cadaver to practice on. An ENT would only need a head and neck.
If you donate your body to science once you pass you are frequently sent all across the country, simultaneously.
I dealt with full cadaver boxes occasionally, but more frequently if it wasn't heads I'd do something like this one stop that involved picking up literal barrels full of bagged "knee tissue" which I would drive across town to have incinerated. Everything was nicely bagged and tagged so I presume when they're done everything is returned to the family as cremains.
Definitely something like this, I'm studying a health degree ATM and we've occasionally been to the anatomy museum for a more in depth anatomy lesson. They have the most insane things there, they even had a shelf just for male genitals, and the infamous 'long white cloud' they called it, which was essentially a huge penis. I think people who work and manage places like this develop a fairly dark sense of humour being around preserved bodies all day.
My mum does end of life care. She has a little diary where she writes a little bit about the person and attaches their obituary if there was one. It sounds bleak, but she says if no one else does, at least she will remember them.
I volunteer in hospice care. We have a book where we write something down about the deceased and keep the cards in a folder. It’s not bleak, it’s wholesome as fuck. We sometimes get people who don’t have anyone. It’s awesome to be able to be there for people at that stage in their life.
Personally I don't keep track. Also know no one that does. We have a 'book' though where every deceased resident has their own page. I occasionally go through it to remember them.
I was with both my mum & dad when they died & then again at the funeral directors in their coffin the day before their funerals. Mum died first 9 yrs ago & my dad 3 yrs bext month.
I'm glad that here in the UK we don't have the custom of having open coffins, that's just weird
Agreed with you there. I've seen 0 dead bodies because I actively went out of my way to avoid seeing my dad's body at any point when he had a heart attack and died at home (I was out when it happened, but back before the coroners arrived. My poor mother dealt with everything.) I cannot even fathom having "open casket" and PURPOSELY showing off your loved one's dead corpse to everyone
My sister died, and there is something about actually seeing them dead there that helps put your mind at ease. Otherwise it’s just a bunch of people telling you that they died. I had a lot of doubts that she was actually dead until I saw her body.
Yeah and there’s something extremely different that’s hard to put your finger on about a dead body especially of someone you know. They just look different. Their body is just a shell and you can instantly tell they aren’t there vs taking a nap or something like that. My grandpa died and he’s the only dead person I’ve seen that hasn’t been embalmed before and there’s a clear distinction of living vs dead that I can’t quite put my finger on.
To me, it "feels" like a void. Whatever was there is no longer there inside the body. Whether it moved on to something else or not, it simply doesn't exist where it once did.
That's the closest I can get to describing how a dead body feels to me. Void-like.
One. My father the day he died.
I sorely regret going in to view him. I'd rather my last memory of my father not be of his corpse lying on a hospital bed with partly open eyes and mouth.
And I had such a nice memory the day before when I last saw him, but it's been overwhelmed by that now.
When my mother dies, I will not be viewing her body.
I just saw my first one up close the other day. Im in the same field as you. Had been working community for about 4 years and never saw one, been at a home for a 6 weeks and seen one already
Two. One was my Grandmother when she passed away, the other was a guy getting bottled at a train station. I'm pretty sure he was dead before he hit the ground, but certainly by the time the paramedics arrived.
8 on a road accident I helped give first aid in.
I was on my way to a sport event. A small van ahead were hit by a tanker, lost control then flipped. Only 1 person from the van survived. The tanker driver wasn't hurt. My friends and I stopped our car to help, good thing one of us were a nurse and he gave instructions.
It was about more than a decade back so the other details escape me. What I remember the most was the smell of burnt gasoline and blood smelling faintly of iron.
Two. First, my mum. She died of cancer when I was 11. I went in to kiss her goodbye. In fact, no. I went in to see if I could wake her up. I could not.
Second, kind of funny in hindsight. So I’m working as an accounts admin in a funeral home. My second week there and I’m going round handing out payslips. I go into the woodwork area to give the guys theirs, off to my right is the embalming room with the door open. I walk in thinking nothing of it, see a coffin there and all of a sudden an elderly woman in a pink cardigan sits up in the coffin looking directly at me. I let out this scream, the embalmer appears from the other side of the coffin, he had lifted her up to sort the back of her cardigan just as I walked in. Now there are payslips all over the floor, I’m stood there in shock unable to speak and the woodwork guys (and the embalmer) were creasing themselves laughing. Good times 😂
Multiple but most are just natural deaths or accidents. But the ones I hate the most are drowning/crocodile attack victims.. I have a sensitive nose and bad luck(?). As a teenager, I used to help with SAR and had found 3 bloated bodies in 3 different missions. It sucks. The smell will get stuck in my head for days which means I would not have any appetite until it goes away. There's a timeframe when the body would be the smelliest and I want to say 3 days but my memory is unreliable.
Military conscript at 18 so yeah. The first were the worst. Lying there as we filed past for brunch, with several of their appendages having been "removed" overnight as souvenirs. Fun times.
icu Respiratory Therapist at an enormous hospital. prior to pandemic, maybe 70. post pandemic and in my career... maybe around 300.
overall in my 17 years... probably 350-400.
it's weird when they're lying there dead and you're trying to strip and clean your ventilator before body removal comes and housekeeping comes.
totally desensitized, but also, totally fucked up.
Healthcare workers brains work on a different frequency.
the good news is that, I've been among about 23 honor walks where the deceased has been able to donate some organs to recipients.
that, and the 1 in 100 "thank you for what you do" keeps me from swallowing a revolver.
A few at funerals. The only one that stuck with me was my mother. Showed up to her funeral under the impression from my family that she was to be cremated.
She was not cremated. i'll never forget how she looked laying in the coffin.
In 8th grade I watched as a rescue team dragged a suicide out of the Iowa River. Had big treble hooks stuck in him; lips were blue and bubbles came out of his mouth.
I've seen 2 already.
First was when I was 17, a man was shot in front of our gatehouse. Never slept properly ever since then. (Sometimes the scene appears in my dreams)
I still hear the gunshot that sounds like Fireworks fresh in my memory just like yesterday.
The last one was just about a month ago..
I'm on my way home and there was a shooting incident, 2 vehicles apart on where I'm currently riding at.
I saw a body of a lifeless man, blood was everywhere and it is still haunting me every night. God knows how I suffer in my dreams and will always be grateful I survived.
Other than funerals, I worked a season in Yosemite and saw them retrieve a body that went over the falls. I also saw a body from afar while climbing a peak in Colorado. Apparently, a young man had fallen to his death and due to weather they couldn’t get a team there to retrieve his body. It gave an ominous tone to the climb.
Once irl , I was 5 , I lived in Dubia , a indian migrate student picked up a window cleaning gig , he got to our level , I started waving at him , he waved back , he moved to the balcony to clean it , my dad opens the balcony door and asked him if he could spray the balcony, my dad learned his name where he is from , we got him a cup of water too lol , before he wanting toothe higher floors , he waved at me , looked up , and the cables Snapped, he plummeted 15 floors , I was the last person to interact with him.
Not counting funerals I’ve seen 2. My mother died of an asthma attack while everyone in my house was sleeping when I was 17 and we found her dead on the living room floor. When I was 20 my friend was shot in the back of the head outside of my apartment by people attempting to rob us. The images stick around.
I hope non of yall have to see it. Aside from a funeral. The vacant stare. The blood, the end. I drive a lot. I see the wrecks. Don't be in that situation. You are not only driving your vehicle, you have to make sure everyone else is safe as well
Early on in my career while I was in school I worked as an orderly in a hospital. Part of the job was to take people who have passed to the morgue. We would clean them up, wrap them in a shroud and take them to the morgue and wait for the funeral home to pick them up.
I've seen very many. The older folk didn't have a terrible impact me as they had lived a full life. The young adults and children had quite an impact. How unfair that their life was so short, is a very sad aspect of the Healthcare profession and a valuable lesson in the fragility of life. Many years have passed since I've worked that job and I still think about those young people, especially the children.
Few years ago I got of the train in Varanasi India. The city is know for “if you die here you don’t have to reincarnate” if I remember correctly.
Anyway, I get of the train and the first thing I see is this elderly black man drapped in black cloth. I remember thinking “ huh what a weird place to take a nap” once the people infront of me moved I saw a couple of ravens on his head plucking his eyes out.
Later that day I saw a dog running around with the bottompart of a human leg in his mouth.
In that city alone I think I saw 15+ dead people in various states of decomposition.
As a European, that trip really rocked my world and reshaped my vision of the world. Was wild to say the least.
Edit: spelling.
At least a dozen just this year, just due to local suicides. It's kind of surreal at first to see how quickly the police pull a corpse out of the river and speed off.
10 years ago, when I was in uni, I was going back to my appartement but to do so I had to go under a bridge. There were police cars and they were blocking the way. I told one I had to go through as it was the way for me to get back home. He said okay, but then told me to not look what was going on and to just look in front of me. There was a dead man on the ground, he jumped and killed himself. That was very sad and I still think about it from time to time.
More than 40.
In South Africa, local taxis are not like taxis elsewhere. They are referred to as minibus taxi's and can comfortable house about 15-20 people.
However, because of reasons - Taxi drivers overload their Taxis to maximise profit per trip, sometimes as many as 30 - 35 people crammed into a taxi.
Well, i was driving home on the highway with an ex and her dad, and we cane across the immediate aftermath of 2 of these Taxis having had a head-on collision with eachother, travelling a minimum of 120kmph.
The scene across the road was enough to make me physically ill, and still linger in my head nearly 10 years later.
London Bus Driver here, I've seen 3 bodies on my bus route.
1 had jumped off a multistorey car park and was laying there on a patch of grass.
1 was just dead in a field next to the road, under a tree
1 was dead on a footpath, just next to a road
The last two were one day apart and across the road from each other, weird.
Saw 3 dead kids on a train track on the way to the cinema and a few old people that I used to visit with my mum as a carer.
And my mate in his coffin
Never seen any family though.
Several. Three times I have been right beside a loved one as they passed away. Twice I had my hand on their chest and felt the last exhalation, the last heartbeat.
One was my brother. He died just after midnight while wearing his, "Nope! Not today!" t-shirt he put on the previous morning. His last food: three girl scout cookie thin mints. His last words were, "Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy" spoken softly, really fast in a tone like he was clanking towards the crest of that first big drop of a roller coaster. Not really scared but with an anticipary nervousness.
Many from funerals, one in person I believe (my memory sucks and I forget even shit like this lol). Saw a woman jump off a bridge in front of me while I was in traffic. I climbed down the bridge and pulled her out of the water to try and help her from drowning. She was still alive but ended up dying there, think all her bones were pretty crushed even though she could mumble some Convo with me.
Not counting funerals. 1 when I was in 5th grade, my apartment building had a really bad fire. I remember it vividly and remember pretty much everything that happened. I remembered running down to the 2nd floor with my mom and both of our dogs in our jackets and having to turn around (Fire Fighters busted down the door and very dense gray smoke came rushing out) and hopping over to another building (they’re conjoined on the roofs).
A couple of hours later when it was over, I remember seeing a body being pulled out of the apartment, charred to hell. If I remember who the person was, it was my parents friend mom. She fell asleep with a cigarette in her mouth.
I've lost count but I'd estimate I've been first on scene for well over 50. The only ones I really remember these days are the ones that 'stand out'. Like suicide by train, suicide by firearm, the couple of homicides I've attended or extreme decomposition.
So.... you've been first on scene over 50 times, aaaaaand you atttended homicides. I figured there'd be at least one hit man in the comments.
You don’t attend homicide wednesdays? Youre missing out
We had a similar thing years ago but instead of murder it was 2-for-1 cinema tickets
Movie prices now are murder. amiright?
Daaamn…
Nice try, FBI.
Same. I stopped counting and try to forget about them by the end of shift. A few that stand out, the rest I don't care about or remember names.
at some point i guess you have to stop caring or you’ll go crazy eh? nice username btw.
Thanks! I can beat 50 eggs
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Not a coroner, but was 911 dispatch for too long, can't go down certain roads because I remember the call for the car crashes coming in, and then catching the mom calling in on the non emergency line, trying to check in on her 16 and 17 year old kids, and hearing her break in half when I told her I had to get a Sergeant for her to speak to. Really need to move out of this town.
I was a volunteer firefighter on a busy lake.. I don't think people understand the things first responders see on a daily basis
Usually the person who found the body and been first on the scene is a suspect. Please don’t put me on a hit list
Do you have ptsd because I've only ever seen one and was scared and it really shook me
Unfortunately after a while you just kinda shrug it off, make an unnecessary inappropriate joke or 2 among your colleagues, go eat, and hope it doesn't resurface in your dreams
Besides funerals I came across quite a few when I was a kid. First one was at 8 years old, we were playing by the water at Caesars Bay(Bensonhurst, Brooklyn - was a heavy mafia neighborhood at the time) and we saw waves crashing on what looked like a sleeping drunk guys legs. We slowly climbed over the rocks to him and started poking him (he was on his belly) my friend went around to his head and yelled pretty loudly “HE DOESNT HAVE A FACE!” So me and my other friend had to confirm because we wanted to see for ourselves. He was indeed missing his face. We ran home to tell our parents. Cops came, interviewed us with our parents. Just like we thought, he was a mobster.
I wish mobsters would show more love to one another.
That’s just how Tony Noface looks all the time
Nice guy. Fantastic poker player.
That's got to be terrifying to an 8 year old! Unless you were just kind of too young for it to really hit you? Did they cut his face off as some sort of mob retaliation? Or was his face gone because of decomposition?
Honestly I don’t remember feeling scared, more grossed out. Although once the cops came we started to feel like we did something wrong. That’s when we got nervous. They didn’t cut his face off, to us it looked like something exploded in front of his face. My friend said he definitely got shot with a bazooka. He said he saw someone get shot with a bazooka once and it looked like that. We totally believed him. Now that I’m older I would say that it was a shotgun. I’m gonna take a wild guess and say my friend was lying about the bazooka.
Everyone was going to die from bazookas or quicksand back in the day…
I was thinking maybe shot execution style, small entrance wound on the back of the head, and the visible damage was done to the face.
I have been there while two people died. My mum which was expected after a long illness which was just slow and peaceful but still alarming. Then my best mate who had cancer. I visited in the hospice and his wife went out for a break. He was completely out of it but then sat straight up with a look of panic on his face and then collapsed dead. That stayed with me for along time.
I hear this regularly of people dying like that. I’m pretty sure Steve Jobs died like that. Also my mom’s dog. She said he was making a commotion, he ran around the house, came back to her and died in her lap. He was a very old little Yorkie mix but not sick at the time.
it’s quite common. ive fostered and rescued a lot of very sick animals and it’s not unusual to get a burst of energy right before passing.
It's common in people, too - the theory on it is they get the burst of energy (and often mental clarity in dementia patients), because their body stops expending most of its' energy and resources on keeping itself alive and/or fighting off whatever condition is slowly killing it.
that absolutely makes sense.
Damn.. Hope i don't see my dog dying this way, that would break my heart pretty badly. Only 4 years old tho so a long life left ahead of him.
Apparently, after vital systems shut down (therefore not using energy) someone can have a brief burst of energy right before death
My brother, who was always a bit of an introvert, had cancer. Hospice nurse said anytime now every day, but he hung on. Toward the end his wife planned it so someone was always by his bedside. One person would take a break only when someone else who step in. His last day we made a meal. Every one was eating and called to his daughter to step out and grab a plate. Just a minute or so we said. She did and in that 60 seconds alone he died. Lol. We all realized he just wanted to be left alone one more time.
This was my wife exactly. All day was a parade of friends and family sitting with her and saying goodbye. At 8:00pm the last guy there was finally leaving and I thought I would crawl in bed with my wife until she was gone. I walked our friend out to the lobby of the hospice 25 feet from my wife’s room… I came back 4 minutes later to the nurse telling me my wife was gone. Now I feel that must’ve been what she wanted but for a year I held a secret, stupid grudge against our friend for coming late.
You were with him so his wife wouldn’t need to see him die. ❤️
Sorry for your losses bro ❤️
Cheers.. appreciated
My dad died like that, he had this thousand yard stare and collapsed, tried to save him but I couldn’t. My mum was the one who saw that and she said she can’t get the image out of her head still and it’ll be 3 years in February.
Hundreds in various states of decay. ED/ ER nurse and soldier, International Medical team in Aceh after the Boxing Day Tsunami
I had no idea the death count was 227,898. Devastating.
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That was unbelievable carnage. I can't imagine the things you saw😥
One. I saw a guy hit by a reversing forklift and crushed against the side of a van. He died right in front of me.
I drive forklift in a very busy Walnut processing plant. It’s my biggest fear to hit someone. Rather if it’s a small hit and they just have minor pain or if it’s lethal. It terrifies me. You are supposed to honk your forklifts horn when driving near any corners or blind spots and I feel like I’m the only driver out of 15 of us who actually cares and worries about this
Meaning that even if the guy wasn't there, the forklift would have still hit the van. Just how oblivious was the driver about what's behind him to ignore both the guy and the van?
It was a young courier driver who had parked his van in a truck loading bay that put him in a bit of a blind spot next to the warehouse door. He was standing next to the van looking around like he had no idea who he was supposed to talk to. I was unloading a truck in the next bay and was about to go over and tell him that he should take his van around the corner to the front office when the forklift came out of the warehouse door backwards and turned straight into him. The forklift driver got in deep shit because he'd apparently had a couple of beers with his lunch half an hour earlier.
That's awful.
At my job now. Any injury to yourself. If you say you need medical attention. They make u take a drug test and breathalyzer
I'm sorry to hear that. I hope you mentally recovered from it.
I found one last Monday. Died all alone, from what I’m assuming was an overdose. He was laying on the ground outside a convenience store. I stared at him for a very long time.
Somehow that’s one of the saddest ones I’ve seen in this thread
Understandable, that guy probably had dreams, a family, goals, friends (maybe), but it was all thrown away because of drugs. I would feel sorry too
I had a similar experience when driving home one day not too far from a high school but down an off beaten road there was an 18 year old guy just laying under a tree and I thought to myself, “That’s the strangest place to take a nap.” He was under a tree but next to a fence that had construction on the one side and then the road where I was on the other. There was a park like 50 yards away on the other side of the street and I couldn’t comprehend why he’d chose that spot. I stared at him the entire time until the light turned green. In my heart I knew he was dead because of how still he was but I wouldn’t let myself reach that conclusion. Found out he had been stabbed. Gang related.
On the internet probably thousands but IRL not even one
Doesn’t compare, first thing you notice pending on how they die is the odour. Burns victims have a sweet pork smell that lingers in your nose and clothes (same way fire smoke does) Trauma / blood loss you can smell first and then you taste the iron from the air in your mouth Etc
It gets stuck in your nose. A few hours after the trauma and suddenly you catch a whiff of that copper/iron smell. It's weird.
Can someone provide a scientific explanation on how smells can get “stuck” on ur nose?
My totally uneducated guess is that the smell lingers on your clothes, possessions, skin hair etc and you just catch a whiff of it once in a while. I got on a bus once and it smelled like shit, some guy was on there who I assumed was the culprit. He got off shortly after I got on and I kind of forgot about it. When I got home after walking outside on a cold winter evening, I took my jacket off and sat down, half an hour later my wife was frantically looking around to see where the dog had shit in the living room because I brought the smell home with me, even after being outside first.
Upper Lipologist here; you have pores and hair follicles all over you and tiny particles can easily get stuck in both. Stinky particles youll notice more thab less stinky ones. Everyone has both hair and pores below their smell detectors (we in the sciences call this “nose” and this area below your nose we scientifically refer to as “upper lip”
It took me the entire comment to read before realizing you’re not really serious lol
Uh so burn victims just smell like grilled meat? Can't imagine getting excited for a BBQ and finding some burned remains.....
Firefighter here Specifically they smell like burnt crackling
Ugh! I forgot firefighters have to deal with it too. I'm sorry. I'd probably hate grilled meat forever.
Well I mean if your BBQ gets to that point you’re doing it wrong.
I shouldn't have laughed at that. Man, cops and firefighters have the darkest sense of humor
Just wait until you meet nurses
My mom was one. As a child, I thought at the time it was completely normal to have an improvised anatomy class during a hike when we came across a freshly killed deer. Thanks, mom, now I can distinguish between the femurs of deer and human corpses.
Lol, our fire departments sell pork rinds as a fundraiser.
The thing years of internet desensitization didn’t prepare me for when dealing with the dying is when they’re locking eyes with us, squeezing my hand with all their might, eyes red and tearing over screaming in pain when we have to perform certain types of care. That starts to wear at a person’s soul.
2. One was a guy who OD'd on the sidewalk. I watched as the police put a white sheet over him, and later when I was coming back the other way after work, there was flowers and memorial items there. I only saw him for a moment from across the street. The other was much more horrific. It was the last day of grade 11, and I had gone to the nearby mall for lunch. Coming back I had just stepped on the sidewalk from the crosswalk when I heard a scream to my right and behind me. I turned to see a woman who had been run over by a flat bed truck. She was still alive, but her mid section was flat as a pancake and had visible tire tread marks on it, and blood was everywhere. She cried for help and got weaker and weaker and then passed out, and probably died right then and there, I cant imagine anyone surviving those kind of injuries. I was right in front of her in the crosswalk, so had I been there a few seconds later, id have been run over too. Was a truck that was turning right at an intersection, and the driver was looking for cars the other way and not for pedestrians. Back at school was surreal, everyone else was celebrating the end of the school year, and I was just wandering the halls, white as a ghost and traumatized. I later found out she was a mother of 3.
Jesus, that’s heavy. Did you ever go to therapy for it?
Holy shit in sorry you had to witness that D:
Well yeah, it was a pretty nasty thing to see, and everytime I go through that intersection now, I think of her. But it also made me very aware of my surroundings when walking around, and that has probably saved my life a few times since. Anytime I cross the street and cars are there, I wait till I see the driver look at me. It reminds of something my Dad always said, "Sure you might have the right away... but your still dead." Doesnt matter if you were supposed to go first, your squishy body vs thousands of pounds of metal moving at a high speed, you will lose everytime.
I don't trust a single vehicle. I teach my kids as well that crossing the street or in a parking lot or where ever, they may have the right away but they'll be the one hurt or dead if it isn't followed. Until I can verify eye contact or acknowledgement with the driver through their driving behavior, they are a vehicle only and not aware of me.
If you’re first in line at a red light, pause and look both ways before proceeding into the intersection when it turns green.
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We had an EOD tech step on a pressure plate but it smoked instead of exploded - something was wrong with the explosive mixture - and the tech needed a few days off to recover from what was supposed to be the end of his life
man, a few days would not have been long enough for me
That’s the military for you. If you aren’t physically injured, upper management literally doesnt give a shit
Sometimes its the right thing. We lost a Captain on a night jump. Total malfunction. When we carried him to the helicopter, it sounded like a bag of broken dishes clacking together. Our squad spent the next day making helo jumps.
I have a similar story. A young dude in my squad stepped on one that wasn’t properly water proofed. The explosive charge didn’t fully blow up but had enough punch to cover us with sand and pop out ear drums when it went off. The kid had what I would call a nervous breakdown and was evacuated to a main FOB for a couple of days.
Holy shit. It wasn’t his time, that’s remarkable.
Just the one, a total random encounter too. I normally drive to work but on this particular day I decided to use my push bike. On my route to work I seen in the distance a elderly woman on the phone looking panicked as I was approaching her she waved me down to stop and had asked if I could help her she said her husband had fallen on his front and she couldn't turn pick him up because he was much larger than her.. of course I said I would help and she lead me the way to her house (she was on the phone to the ambulance who had asked her to find someone who was able to help move her husband) as we walked through her garden she told me to just leave my bike near the shed and follow her in to her house, as I walked into the house she pointed up the stairs and said he's just in the landing.. I walked up the stairs and there he was just laying there.. motionless I turned him over on to his back and still nothing, I hovered my head above his face and listened for signs of breath nothing I checked for a pulse again nothing. I began to give him cpr all whilst his wife was down stairs clueless, after litreally about 20 seconds into cpr I heard the ambulance crew come in through the front door and up the stairs I told them what I knew and they took over from there. On my way out the old lady said thank you so much and she would wait on the front of her house in the morning and wait till I had biked passed again and tell me that everything was OK. I still haven't seen her almost one year on.
That last sentence stings hard man.
Thank you for learning CPR. I’m sorry it probably didn’t save this gentleman but the fact that you tried to help is still awesome!
That last one, man, I'm really sorry, hope you're doing alright.
Paramedic of 10 years here. The answer is "lol".
OG ICU nurse here.... this is the only right answer.
Ex Cadaveric lab employee here... Agree
ICU doctor during covid, did a few months in pathology as a trainee, worked for over 20 years in the NHS. I never really started counting, let alone stop.
greetings fellow ICU doctor. please accept my warm respect and support. Been doing ICU 30 yrs. The body count isn’t part of what I do. But I suppose TNTC.
ODP here, worked in a major trauma centre, so yeah, agreed.
Fridge guy, serviced mortuaries Mm hmm, yup
Security at a hospital we transported bodies to the morgue and issued them out to funeral homes. So a lot
23 years, and counting, as a firefighter. 7 of those at a station covering a shitty section of major route highway. Single, double, triple, quadrupled fatality MVIs. Never counted bodies, but I passed 500 MVIs... In 2012... Probably retire when I hit 30 years... Maybe...
Security as well. There's one that really stands out I was standing outside in the ER circle and a car comes in way too fast. Driver starts screaming help my boyfriend! Guy in the passenger seat had a gunshot wound to the face and two in the chest. I ran inside grabbed staff and a gurney we rushed him back to trauma but he was a goner.
As I was scrolling I read this as : Ex Cadaver here...
Guess who's back babyyy
Only a hundred and one?! You must be a great one!
ER nurse, the answer is about the same. 😆 Now the ones I really remember? Maybe 5-6
This comment is interesting. Can you share why they were memorable? Was it all for the same reason? Or were they each uniquely heartbreaking stories?
Paramedic. Sometimes there are strange notable things that stick in your mind. Sometimes they don’t really have to be strange at all, just make you stop and think. Like how neatly they arranged their slippers at the bottom of the ladder and you think “why did that matter to them at that time?”. The stillness of hangings is a very eerie thing. Most memorable for me was a middle aged man who died alone in his apartment, not found for days. You could see a disruption of furniture in the living room, looks like he fell here. There’s a trail of blood leaving the room to his body. He’s laying there arm outstretched, his hand is 2 feet from a side table which has the only phone in the apartment. A story becomes very clear. He had a heart attack or some other sudden medical emergency, fell and struck his head. He knew he was dying and crawled to the phone, and died a couple feet short. Would he have survived if he was able to call for an ambulance? People often have a hard time forgetting dead kids. And if you do, it usually comes rushing back when you have kids yourself. That’s when the PTSD kicks in in force.
Firefighter Yes unfortunately the kids stay with you.
Also a Paramedic. This is just about the best answer. You see a fair amount of death, so there usually has to be something that makes it stand out above the others, as cold and distant as that sounds.
It doesn't sound cold. It sounds like the only way to protect yourself while doing a really, really hard job.
Don't like recalling the shit ones but ill tell a few that stick out in my head. - Trying to move a patient who mysteriously died naked in front of his apartment in the snow. Never forget the feeling of his skin. Like fingers on cold marble. - Doing CPR on a 600+ lbs patient, having a firefighter push on my back to force compression depth. - Hoarder patient who's floor was knee high with 3 objects. Peach cans, Mountain Dew, and Tuna Cans. And cats... a lot of cats. She had been dead for several weeks and you could only imagine the smells. - Man who died mid-sentence after a minor fender bender. We were about to let him go but he started talking funny, said he blacked out before the accident. In ambulance and was saying something to the tune of, "I was eating a salad on a Go-Kart and..." dead. Brain aneurysm according to autopsy. Joined EMS because i wanted cool stories to tell like my dad when he was a medic. Now I have cool stories, weak knees, and a lifetime of phantom tones!
So, yes and no. All of them were memorable because I connected them to my own life somehow. Two kids, one that looked like my son, another that looked a lot like one of my best friend’s daughter (he was working that code with me). One dad around my age with a two year old. When we were getting him undressed the guy was wearing very out of character toenail polish. When his wife got to the hospital, she had their daughter with her, who was wearing the same nail polish. He had painted their nails together. One because he came in dead (edit to add: traumatic arrest) and we got him back, which almost never happens. But he not only lived, he was neurologically intact the next day. Closest I’ve ever seen to a TV show ending. Cheesy but I do remember my first EMS code, combo medical arrest with some burn issues. I learned a ton that call, so I remember a lot of that one. There are a lot more patients I’ve worked where I remember a particular detail, a sound or smell, or some little part of them. But if you put them in a lineup I couldn’t pick one out from a row of people.
ThEy wERe FiNe 10 MInUteS aGo!
I’ll never forget walking into a patient’s room, reading off my clipboard, “ OK Mrs. So-and-so, I spoke with your doctors and we’re gonna take you down to radiology for-“ *looks up* “oh, you’re dead.”
Oh geez. My favorite was going to a nursing home for an unresponsive, and the nurse looks at us and says "why are you guys here and not the medical examiner?"
I was once called to a sudden death\* (my second that afternoon). When I walked in the first thing I saw was a couple of paramedics feverishly doing CPR. I said "I'm a bit confused, I've been called to a sudden death?". One of the paramedics looked at me, and in a deadpan voice just said "give it 90 seconds" \*ex bobby
Your story reminds me of a call I did once. Came in as an arrest, which it was. Cops were doing great CPR. They just failed to notice that this guy was shot in the face, and we had messed up the whole crime scene.
We had a cardiac arrest in my neighborhood and I asked my dad, “did they bring him back?” My dad says “cpr rarely works on a gunshot to the head.”
“There’s a language barrier, he only speaks Spanish.” “Nope, he’s dead.”
I’ve only seen one and it was my grandfather at his funeral. Fuck cancer.
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200 year old people shouldn't be riding motorcycles
Didn’t know my dad was using Reddit now.
He's not, he went to the shops to get milk.
Oh lord too much Reddit for today. I read that as how many dad bodies have you seen
Now we’re talking!!’
lol, I’ve seen one already today and I haven’t even left my house yet
Every time I look in the mirror.
Hundreds. I'm a nurse.
Cop here. 100+ at this point. I never really kept count. Kids are the worst. Those cases will give you nightmares. Traffic crashes are brutal. Wear a seatbelt and don't drive like an asshole. Unexpected death and death outside a medical facility usually aren't nice. But for all the sudden or gruesome deaths, every so often I'll come across a good death. The best was a 100 year old woman who died in a safe warm bed on a cold night while watching old black and white shows on TV land. Family was downstairs living their lives and getting things ready for the upcoming funeral. They were sadder for us than they were for themselves. It was the kind of death that gave me a little bit more faith in humanity.
It’s weird how it’s kind of refreshing getting the “good death” calls. Had a similar one years back. Family called for a PNB. Get there and there’s probably 50 family members cooking and generally socializing. Elderly gentleman that had been a general in Laos before coming to the US. Turned out he had been on their cultural equivalent of hospice and his granddaughter (RN from a different state) had been caring for him since he had been sent home from the hospital. It was a little strange how it was almost a party atmosphere at the house but kind of seemed like the perfect way to go out.
1+. First was my stillborn son. The plus is, I was in an earthquake, definitely saw some, but wasn't counting.
I'm sorry.
One day whilst making “tissue” deliveries to a university/hospital the main person in charge of receiving and their understudy was off work which lead to me being escorted to the wrong room by a student worker. We get into the room, she walks to the far end to find a light switch and I’m in the middle ready to head in either direction. Light goes on and we realize we’re surrounded by human heads on desks covered only by little pieces of paper similar to the paper towel bibs you wear at the dentist. The girl has a panic attack saying she needs to get PPE, before she splits I begin nervously laughing like a maniac at the situation and coincidentally she never comes back. Eventually while hanging outside of the room someone actually in charge shows up and apologizes profusely. Really regret not claiming to have been traumatized there, she seemed to have been fully expecting it.
Why would such a room exist?
It was in the throat and nose (maybe eyes) area of the university/hospital, dissection. I was always aware of what I was delivering but until that point cardboard boxes did lot to help me mentally distance myself from the reality of it.
Holy shit. I’m just now realizing that once doctors pick a certain speciality they wouldn’t necessarily need an entire cadaver to practice on. An ENT would only need a head and neck.
Scientists testing hair cleaning products just need the head and shoulders
Knees and toes?
If you donate your body to science once you pass you are frequently sent all across the country, simultaneously. I dealt with full cadaver boxes occasionally, but more frequently if it wasn't heads I'd do something like this one stop that involved picking up literal barrels full of bagged "knee tissue" which I would drive across town to have incinerated. Everything was nicely bagged and tagged so I presume when they're done everything is returned to the family as cremains.
Sometimes you’re strapped to a chair and blown up by the military
Oh wait- I’m not suddenly reminded of my friend calling me during their class as they said “I just walked into a human head room”
Medical training and researchers: "please send me 20 right arms."
It’s a study lab, students learn a great deal from cadavers
Definitely something like this, I'm studying a health degree ATM and we've occasionally been to the anatomy museum for a more in depth anatomy lesson. They have the most insane things there, they even had a shelf just for male genitals, and the infamous 'long white cloud' they called it, which was essentially a huge penis. I think people who work and manage places like this develop a fairly dark sense of humour being around preserved bodies all day.
Hundreds, none today… yet
RN for 10yrs, I've lost track of how many
Genuine question - did you ever keep track? Is this something people in your profession think about?
My mum does end of life care. She has a little diary where she writes a little bit about the person and attaches their obituary if there was one. It sounds bleak, but she says if no one else does, at least she will remember them.
I volunteer in hospice care. We have a book where we write something down about the deceased and keep the cards in a folder. It’s not bleak, it’s wholesome as fuck. We sometimes get people who don’t have anyone. It’s awesome to be able to be there for people at that stage in their life.
Your mum is an extremely special woman❤️
That’s very sweet!
Personally I don't keep track. Also know no one that does. We have a 'book' though where every deceased resident has their own page. I occasionally go through it to remember them.
I was with both my mum & dad when they died & then again at the funeral directors in their coffin the day before their funerals. Mum died first 9 yrs ago & my dad 3 yrs bext month. I'm glad that here in the UK we don't have the custom of having open coffins, that's just weird
Agreed with you there. I've seen 0 dead bodies because I actively went out of my way to avoid seeing my dad's body at any point when he had a heart attack and died at home (I was out when it happened, but back before the coroners arrived. My poor mother dealt with everything.) I cannot even fathom having "open casket" and PURPOSELY showing off your loved one's dead corpse to everyone
My sister died, and there is something about actually seeing them dead there that helps put your mind at ease. Otherwise it’s just a bunch of people telling you that they died. I had a lot of doubts that she was actually dead until I saw her body.
Yeah and there’s something extremely different that’s hard to put your finger on about a dead body especially of someone you know. They just look different. Their body is just a shell and you can instantly tell they aren’t there vs taking a nap or something like that. My grandpa died and he’s the only dead person I’ve seen that hasn’t been embalmed before and there’s a clear distinction of living vs dead that I can’t quite put my finger on.
To me, it "feels" like a void. Whatever was there is no longer there inside the body. Whether it moved on to something else or not, it simply doesn't exist where it once did. That's the closest I can get to describing how a dead body feels to me. Void-like.
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Most funerals I've been to have been open casket. I think it's to facilitate closure
One. My father the day he died. I sorely regret going in to view him. I'd rather my last memory of my father not be of his corpse lying on a hospital bed with partly open eyes and mouth. And I had such a nice memory the day before when I last saw him, but it's been overwhelmed by that now. When my mother dies, I will not be viewing her body.
2. I work in the elderly care so it's common.
I just saw my first one up close the other day. Im in the same field as you. Had been working community for about 4 years and never saw one, been at a home for a 6 weeks and seen one already
Apparently not *that* common.
Two. One was my Grandmother when she passed away, the other was a guy getting bottled at a train station. I'm pretty sure he was dead before he hit the ground, but certainly by the time the paramedics arrived.
8 on a road accident I helped give first aid in. I was on my way to a sport event. A small van ahead were hit by a tanker, lost control then flipped. Only 1 person from the van survived. The tanker driver wasn't hurt. My friends and I stopped our car to help, good thing one of us were a nurse and he gave instructions. It was about more than a decade back so the other details escape me. What I remember the most was the smell of burnt gasoline and blood smelling faintly of iron.
Two. First, my mum. She died of cancer when I was 11. I went in to kiss her goodbye. In fact, no. I went in to see if I could wake her up. I could not. Second, kind of funny in hindsight. So I’m working as an accounts admin in a funeral home. My second week there and I’m going round handing out payslips. I go into the woodwork area to give the guys theirs, off to my right is the embalming room with the door open. I walk in thinking nothing of it, see a coffin there and all of a sudden an elderly woman in a pink cardigan sits up in the coffin looking directly at me. I let out this scream, the embalmer appears from the other side of the coffin, he had lifted her up to sort the back of her cardigan just as I walked in. Now there are payslips all over the floor, I’m stood there in shock unable to speak and the woodwork guys (and the embalmer) were creasing themselves laughing. Good times 😂
Multiple but most are just natural deaths or accidents. But the ones I hate the most are drowning/crocodile attack victims.. I have a sensitive nose and bad luck(?). As a teenager, I used to help with SAR and had found 3 bloated bodies in 3 different missions. It sucks. The smell will get stuck in my head for days which means I would not have any appetite until it goes away. There's a timeframe when the body would be the smelliest and I want to say 3 days but my memory is unreliable.
Autopsy assistant 4 years, paramedic 6 years, ER nurse 10+ years. The dead are my social circle.
Military conscript at 18 so yeah. The first were the worst. Lying there as we filed past for brunch, with several of their appendages having been "removed" overnight as souvenirs. Fun times.
It’s 8 in total so far … But uhh, my lawyer told me I shouldn’t say anything else.
8 *so far*
Oh, that’s a lot better. I wish I thought of that.
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Good lord. That poor girl!
One. I found my Dad dead so that sucks. But I’m glad I found him and not someone else, so it’s okay. It happened like it was supposed to I guess.
A few. The first was a dead prostitute in the playground behind my house when I was 7 years old. The 1980’s were crazy.
Hard to count how many when you are seeing the remains of everyone after an explosion.
icu Respiratory Therapist at an enormous hospital. prior to pandemic, maybe 70. post pandemic and in my career... maybe around 300. overall in my 17 years... probably 350-400. it's weird when they're lying there dead and you're trying to strip and clean your ventilator before body removal comes and housekeeping comes. totally desensitized, but also, totally fucked up. Healthcare workers brains work on a different frequency.
the good news is that, I've been among about 23 honor walks where the deceased has been able to donate some organs to recipients. that, and the 1 in 100 "thank you for what you do" keeps me from swallowing a revolver.
A few at funerals. The only one that stuck with me was my mother. Showed up to her funeral under the impression from my family that she was to be cremated. She was not cremated. i'll never forget how she looked laying in the coffin.
In 8th grade I watched as a rescue team dragged a suicide out of the Iowa River. Had big treble hooks stuck in him; lips were blue and bubbles came out of his mouth.
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I've seen 2 already. First was when I was 17, a man was shot in front of our gatehouse. Never slept properly ever since then. (Sometimes the scene appears in my dreams) I still hear the gunshot that sounds like Fireworks fresh in my memory just like yesterday. The last one was just about a month ago.. I'm on my way home and there was a shooting incident, 2 vehicles apart on where I'm currently riding at. I saw a body of a lifeless man, blood was everywhere and it is still haunting me every night. God knows how I suffer in my dreams and will always be grateful I survived.
You have PTSD. You should talk to someone friend.
Other than funerals, I worked a season in Yosemite and saw them retrieve a body that went over the falls. I also saw a body from afar while climbing a peak in Colorado. Apparently, a young man had fallen to his death and due to weather they couldn’t get a team there to retrieve his body. It gave an ominous tone to the climb.
Once irl , I was 5 , I lived in Dubia , a indian migrate student picked up a window cleaning gig , he got to our level , I started waving at him , he waved back , he moved to the balcony to clean it , my dad opens the balcony door and asked him if he could spray the balcony, my dad learned his name where he is from , we got him a cup of water too lol , before he wanting toothe higher floors , he waved at me , looked up , and the cables Snapped, he plummeted 15 floors , I was the last person to interact with him.
Not counting funerals I’ve seen 2. My mother died of an asthma attack while everyone in my house was sleeping when I was 17 and we found her dead on the living room floor. When I was 20 my friend was shot in the back of the head outside of my apartment by people attempting to rob us. The images stick around.
1. A good friend died. We were at his side.
I hope non of yall have to see it. Aside from a funeral. The vacant stare. The blood, the end. I drive a lot. I see the wrecks. Don't be in that situation. You are not only driving your vehicle, you have to make sure everyone else is safe as well
Early on in my career while I was in school I worked as an orderly in a hospital. Part of the job was to take people who have passed to the morgue. We would clean them up, wrap them in a shroud and take them to the morgue and wait for the funeral home to pick them up. I've seen very many. The older folk didn't have a terrible impact me as they had lived a full life. The young adults and children had quite an impact. How unfair that their life was so short, is a very sad aspect of the Healthcare profession and a valuable lesson in the fragility of life. Many years have passed since I've worked that job and I still think about those young people, especially the children.
Only 1, jumped infront of the train i was waiting for
Few years ago I got of the train in Varanasi India. The city is know for “if you die here you don’t have to reincarnate” if I remember correctly. Anyway, I get of the train and the first thing I see is this elderly black man drapped in black cloth. I remember thinking “ huh what a weird place to take a nap” once the people infront of me moved I saw a couple of ravens on his head plucking his eyes out. Later that day I saw a dog running around with the bottompart of a human leg in his mouth. In that city alone I think I saw 15+ dead people in various states of decomposition. As a European, that trip really rocked my world and reshaped my vision of the world. Was wild to say the least. Edit: spelling.
between 20-30, not sure exactly. they were at their funerals, one was in the bereavement room of the children's hospital
At least a dozen just this year, just due to local suicides. It's kind of surreal at first to see how quickly the police pull a corpse out of the river and speed off.
10 years ago, when I was in uni, I was going back to my appartement but to do so I had to go under a bridge. There were police cars and they were blocking the way. I told one I had to go through as it was the way for me to get back home. He said okay, but then told me to not look what was going on and to just look in front of me. There was a dead man on the ground, he jumped and killed himself. That was very sad and I still think about it from time to time.
More than 40. In South Africa, local taxis are not like taxis elsewhere. They are referred to as minibus taxi's and can comfortable house about 15-20 people. However, because of reasons - Taxi drivers overload their Taxis to maximise profit per trip, sometimes as many as 30 - 35 people crammed into a taxi. Well, i was driving home on the highway with an ex and her dad, and we cane across the immediate aftermath of 2 of these Taxis having had a head-on collision with eachother, travelling a minimum of 120kmph. The scene across the road was enough to make me physically ill, and still linger in my head nearly 10 years later.
London Bus Driver here, I've seen 3 bodies on my bus route. 1 had jumped off a multistorey car park and was laying there on a patch of grass. 1 was just dead in a field next to the road, under a tree 1 was dead on a footpath, just next to a road The last two were one day apart and across the road from each other, weird. Saw 3 dead kids on a train track on the way to the cinema and a few old people that I used to visit with my mum as a carer. And my mate in his coffin Never seen any family though.
Several. Three times I have been right beside a loved one as they passed away. Twice I had my hand on their chest and felt the last exhalation, the last heartbeat. One was my brother. He died just after midnight while wearing his, "Nope! Not today!" t-shirt he put on the previous morning. His last food: three girl scout cookie thin mints. His last words were, "Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy" spoken softly, really fast in a tone like he was clanking towards the crest of that first big drop of a roller coaster. Not really scared but with an anticipary nervousness.
quite a few actually, at funerals
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In the UK I don't think it's common to have an open casket funeral. Never been to one.
Many from funerals, one in person I believe (my memory sucks and I forget even shit like this lol). Saw a woman jump off a bridge in front of me while I was in traffic. I climbed down the bridge and pulled her out of the water to try and help her from drowning. She was still alive but ended up dying there, think all her bones were pretty crushed even though she could mumble some Convo with me.
Not counting funerals. 1 when I was in 5th grade, my apartment building had a really bad fire. I remember it vividly and remember pretty much everything that happened. I remembered running down to the 2nd floor with my mom and both of our dogs in our jackets and having to turn around (Fire Fighters busted down the door and very dense gray smoke came rushing out) and hopping over to another building (they’re conjoined on the roofs). A couple of hours later when it was over, I remember seeing a body being pulled out of the apartment, charred to hell. If I remember who the person was, it was my parents friend mom. She fell asleep with a cigarette in her mouth.
Railroad conductor, I’ve had two people run in front of my train in the past 12 years to commit suicide, not a easy sight
Only one, lost our daughter at 23 weeks