We Regret To Inform You…

When I first became a supervisor, one of the new responsibilities I dreaded most was performing death notifies. In most police departments, any death notification must be handled by someone the rank of sergeant or above. Though I encountered exceptions to this rule before my promotion, I had scant experience with the unpleasant job. There is some training, of course, perhaps four hours, conducted during a month-long supervisor’s school and augmented during the field training that follows. Still, the unfortunate reality for any new sergeant is that the first death notify performed in the field will in all likelihood be your first. Protocol dictates that a second officer be brought along as a safety precaution. Those receiving the terrible message we deliver often react in unpredictable ways, sometimes lashing out at the bearer of bad news. Still, it is generally left to the sergeant to do all of the talking.

     In all my years in patrol, mostly spent on the midnight shift, I completed more notifies than I care to remember, many of which were to parents, roused from sleep in the dead of night to the bitter news that a beloved child would never again be coming home. As the years passed, I came to feel at times as if I were some sort of awful drone, guided in by fate through the quiet night to lay waste to the life of yet another family. Regrettably, I was already familiar with sudden death in a profoundly personal way before even starting my police career. When I was 21, I was awakened one summer day by a phone call telling me that my best friend in the world had been killed early that morning in a DWI crash, his sudden passing my first taste of the random and transient nature of our existence here on earth. I spent the rest of that day and many days after that at his family’s side, observing their unimaginable grief as it progressed and changed over the months and years. The remarkable depth of their pain never left me, and I carried my lost friend’s memory and the legacy of his parent’s anguished grief into each of the homes I entered. 

   In training, they tell you to be quick, that there is no sense in taking a long way around to telling the awful truth of your presence in the homes you visit. I have worked with supervisors who were seemingly unable to do this, and the minutes it took for them to stutter out the horrible message being delivered seemed to stretch into hours. In my experience, all of the parents I pulled from bed over the years seemed to know the purpose of my visit before I even spoke, their eyes telling me of their terror. Keeping this in mind, I tried to get as quickly to the point as I could without seeming callous in any way. Over the years, I found that it was crucial to be very specific in my language. Phrases like “he did not make it” seemed insufficient, parents often clinging to the slimmest hopes that they misunderstood my message, desperate to believe that their child was not dead. I learned too that I had to be prepared to answer any number of tough questions, often in excruciating detail, as those left behind are frequently intensely curious about the exact circumstances surrounding their loved one’s death.

   As the years went by and I grew more experienced, I learned to take some pride in what I eventually came to see as a sacred duty to the people I served. Eventually, becoming a parent myself added a layer of understanding to the magnitude of the loss I carried to their front door, though it also added to the already significant challenge of controlling my own emotions as I did my job. Strangers at answering the doorbell, our lives would soon be forever intertwined, my visit now emblazoned on their memories. I sought most to give as much immediate assistance as possible, without any false notions of providing any absolute comfort in their most awful hours. 

   One of the last notifies I did was the summer before I retired. I had responded as the on-duty supervisor to the scene of a fatal motorcycle crash. The victim, who had been killed instantly, was well known to the night shift, a “frequent flier” with a litany of minor arrests, primarily for traffic. After the medical examiner’s arrival, I left the scene to locate his mother and stepfather to deliver the terrible news of their son’s death. The young man’s stepfather, also no stranger to the local police, answered the door but refused to admit me into the house until I told him the purpose of my visit. Left with no other recourse, I spoke quietly through the rusted screen door, describing to him as gently as I could the sad details of how their son had been killed. Wordlessly he disappeared into the darkened residence. Standing in the driveway now, I heard hushed voices from somewhere inside the house, then after perhaps a minute, a woman in a bathrobe burst through the door, running towards me screaming her son’s name. Upon reaching me, she began weeping uncontrollably as she flung her arms around my neck, burying her face into my chest. I held her there in the driveway as the warm summer breeze rushed through the trees, quietly competing with the sound of her anguished sobs. She remained there for several minutes, never uttering a word, her tears soaking the front of my uniform. We were so close that I could smell the scent of her shampoo. The intimacy of that moment, so intensely personal, was almost too much for me to bear. I remember looking helplessly at her husband as he stared impassively at us, unable or unwilling to intervene. After a few more minutes passed, she silently withdrew, and without saying a word, turned and walked back into her house, her husband following her as she slammed the door behind her. My lieutenant and I padded back to our cars, our shift now almost over. 

   Whenever I see a news story about a fatal car crash, an accidental death, or a murder, I think first of the victim and the families and loved ones they leave behind. But eventually, my thoughts turn to the policemen tasked with bringing the sad news to these people. We carry a little bit of each of these tragedies with us as we find our way through our careers, and through our lives.