Suicide

[Guest guest]

Mat, you may be aware of this, but I'll just throw it out as a discussion point.

Sometimes people who witness things that don't fit with their reality and that

shock them express their themselves in ways that in a logical sense are

inappropriate. A lot of people notice this at funerals, where someone will

laugh or make inappropriate and unappreciated remarks. In my grief counseling

role, I hear these stories often, and even when talking with the person who made

the remarks, it wasn't necessarily that they had no empathy, but more like they

found the situation absurd, the idea that in one moment there was life, and in

the next there was not. I've found this to be true for me when I witness a

death, sometimes it seems almost unbelievable that it just...happens. In less

than a second, a body has a rhythm and and a look in the eye, and in the next

it's all changed.

 

Emergency Responders also often will express in dark humor, and in my experience

this is so that they can function in their job. The ones I know are extremely

caring people and would do anything to help, and when there's nothing they can

do, they go to humor to function and exist.

 

I don't know if that might be part of what you witnessed, and there are

certainly some people who are hardened or simply never developed empathy. I

haven't witnessed what you saw and count myself fortuanate. I'm sure it must

have been quite a shock, and I think I would have been very angry to see people

laughing.

 

Lou Leet