When Death Became Real

"No one here gets out alive" - Jim Morrison

Death is inevitable. It's a part of life. In the United States, a death occurs every twelve seconds, amounting to 7,452 every day. In the time its taken you to read this, someone, somewhere in the country, passed on.

That's pretty morbid stuff, yet so common....until it hits home.

Death has impacted all of us at one time or another; for many of us, several times. We've lost grandparents. parents, brothers, sisters, sons, daughters or spouses. It is a terrible tragedy, losing a loved one, but a tragedy we've all faced.

Normally, its the grandparents first. That's just a fact of life. I remember losing my first grandparent, Grandma Clark, on Christmas Eve of 1965. No time is a good time to lose family, but Christmas time, in my opinion, is the worst. It sucks the joy out of the holiday. Instead of celebrating the birth of Christ into the world, we grieve loss.

I'd lost two of my grandparents prior to 1974; my Grandpa Clark died in November of 1973. While losing them was terrible, it was inevitable because they were elderly.

Losing a classmate when I was fifteen years old, a guy I'd played baseball with, was when death became all too real. It was a shocking event because we were just kids. Dying in high school just isn't supposed to happen. Ever.

Jim had just gotten his driver's license and tooled around in a VW Beetle. It had to be amazing, having that freedom, a day we all looked forward to. Independence carried in your wallet.

Back then there was no seat belt law, no restrictions on who could be in the car with you, or when, save for rules parents put in place.

Mansfield-Washington and Hull Roads intersect on the downhill side between two rises and is a nearly-blind intersection, a hazardous stretch of road for an experienced driver. On the night of his accident, Jim was driving with three of his Madison classmates in the car after dark, approaching the intersection.

And it was foggy.

Though time has robbed me of details, there was a terrible collision in the intersection; Jimmy suffered severe head trauma, one of the kids in the back seat sustained a broken hip and I think a third passenger broke a wrist. Jim's injuries were by far the worst.

He was in the intensive care unit of Mansfield General Hospital, as it was called back then. After hearing of this terrible event, I called ICU and they told me he was in critical condition; there were no HIPAA laws back then, either. The next day I went up to see him; unbelievable (by today's standards), they led me to his darkened room, and what I saw was the biggest shock of my then-young life: a form laying in a hospital bed, head heavily bandaged, monitors both above and beside where he lay. On the other side of his bed a machine, its hose snaking to Jim's mouth, breathed artificially for my friend. I don't know how long I stood in the doorway in stunned silence; I do remember the nurse tugging at my arm, leading me away.

I went home and cried.

Two days later I called the unit to check on Jim's condition. The nurse who answered the phone, when I inquired about him, seemed very nonchalant when she replied, "I'm sorry, but he expired."

Expired, as if she were talking about a gallon of milk.

I don't remember if the school excused those of us that went to Jim Norris' funeral; thinking back, I can't imagine they wouldn't have. I just recall how somber the service was, surreal as it ran its course. I didn't go to the cemetery because I knew it would have been terrible, watching them lower my red-headed friend, who had always seemed to have a smile, into the ground. I waited six months to visit his burial site, and I stood staring at the plaque with his name on it. I still hadn't accepted the fact he was gone.

Today, nearly 45 years later, its still hard to believe.

In the years between that event and 2013, when I retired from police work, I came to see death on a fairly regular basis, in all manner and form, taking infants through the very elderly. Much like that nurse on the phone so many years ago I, as have many of those I worked with and those who protect and serve today, formed the hard shell around my emotions. Its a shell that keeps you sane, helps the psyche stay intact and functioning. Its a necessity, an integral part of equipment for coppers, the same as a ballistic vest or gun belt, tools you don't go without. Its not that you don't care, as some would think; its because police officers inherently care too much, an emotion that can profoundly affect job performance as well as family life.

I've lost some of the hardness of my shell over the last five years, as the job has receded in my personal rear-view mirror, but vestiges of the shell still remain with me.

As does the memory of my Madison High School classmate, Jimmy Norris.