The only formal training I had received in delivering a
death anouncement was during my time at the Police Academy. One afternoon, the
belt broke on a vacuum as it was cleaning one of the academy's hallways. The
TA's were always quizzing us about the various things we were supposed to be
learning as well as various terms, statutes and core values that we had been
charged with memorizing as well. An unsatisfactory or incomplete answer meant
that you were going to be sweaty for dinner. When the vacuum died we had just
received a block of instruction on CPR so our minders thought they would use
this as an opportunity to test our knowledge of cardio pulmonary resuscitation.
They singled out another guy and demanded that he perform CPR on the broken vacuum
cleaner. Giggles ran up and down the line as the poor guy struggled to blow on
the handle only to be told that the mouth was down near the base. "YES,
SIR!" He was all ate up. Who wouldn't be? Especially, with two TA's
breathing down your kneck, stetson brims pressed into your forehead, and
yelling abuse at you as you struggled to recall how to perform CPR. With horror
I realized that they were calling me to help him save the vacuum cleaner. We
had also learned two-man CPR. I didn't fare any better. I remember that in the
confusion as I violently did chest compressions on the vacuum bag, dust began
to fill the hallway, which caused the TA's to hastily declare the vacuum dead.
After dinner they had us deliver a death anouncement to the other vacuums in the
janitor's closet.
This was what I thought about as my cruiser nosed its way
down Lincoln Avenue toward an address on the south side of town. Another police
department had called that morning to inform us that a man, whose Mother lived
in St Albans, had been found floating dead in the Connecticut River, and they
wanted me to drive over to her house and break the news in person.
My cruiser stopped in front of an unassuming two story,
white with green trim and a screened in front porch. I reached up over the
visor and retrieved the envelope containing a neatly folded piece of
letter-head on which I had typed the name of the officer in charge of the
investigation and his contact information. Then donning my stetson I stepped
from the cruiser and gamely walked up onto the porch.
That is such a strange moment- it's like the calm before a
storm that you're in charge of unleashing. It's miserable. I did a gut check
and knocked on the door. There were some words that needed to be spoken and,
once uttered, I would be free to drive away from this woman's nightmare. I
heard feet shuffling down the hall, and I steeled myself for what had to be
done. The door opened to reveal an older woman, with thin graying hair and a
cigarette smoking in her left hand.
I said what needed to be said in the kindest words I could
muster. I asked her if I could call anyone to come be with her. I got her a
glass of water from the kitchen. Strangely, even harder than breaking the news
of her son's death was making my exit. How can you walk away from a woman who
is crying, devastated, and alone? I wished she would take me up on my offer to
call someone, anyone, to come be with her, but she claimed to have nobody. She
eventually gave me my out by thanking me for coming and showing me the door.
"I'm truly sorry for your loss, Mam."
Those words rang hollow. How empty.
As time passes, my memories from my brief tenure as a police
officer have grown dim and kind of fuzzy around the edges. Names and streets
elude me now. Unfortunately, however, some memories remain horribly vivid. Like
the time I kicked in the door to an old woman's apartment and found her
decaying remains in the back bedroom, or the handful of suicides I responded
to. There was also "Pie-Dog's" car crash down on the lake road.
That's to say nothing of the half dozen or so "untimelies" that I was
called upon to document for the state. With latex hands and a screaming heart I
turned them over, and ran fingers through their hair, looking for wounds. I
noted lividity, counted medications, and diagramed the scene. Every corpse is
filed away mentally, catalogued in vivid, macabre detail. I can remember
feeling a sort of tingly, light-headed sensation each time as I walked into the
presence of a deceased human being.
I want to be macho and say they didn't bother me, but that's
not true. They did. They still do. Worse than the corpses though were the
walking dead- men and women who were trapped hopelessly in their
self-destructive lifestyles. The walking dead haunt me. They were slaves of
compulsion, caught up and born along in a current which would lead inexorably
to their own destruction. Every time I dealt with them I would come away with
just one question- How's it going to end? I wondered if they saw the trajectory
of their lives as I did.
I'm not sure I could help them, but sometimes I want to try.
I know Christ is the only answer to their problems.
Fellow Christian, isn't it a joyous thing that the Great
Commission does not task us with giving death announcements to the living but
rather life announcements to the dying.
Here's a life announcement from Ephesians 2:1-6:
And you were dead
in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of
this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is
now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the
passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and
were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich
in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our
trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been
saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places
in Christ Jesus,
Go out today in the power of the Holy Spirit to notify the
dead that they can find the life abundant in Jesus!