No one likes to think about their own mortality.
Working this job, however, one is constantly reminded of how unpredictable life can be. One minute you’re here, and the next minute you’re gone. No matter who you are, or how much wealth you have or how important or insignificant… death eventually pays us all a call.
In my experience, families most often have the hardest time coming to terms with the death of their loved one when it involves an accident, murder, or suicide because there is no time to prepare their minds for the finality of the event. Family members may find attaining closure is difficult when there was no time to say I love you or to apologize or say goodbye before their loved one is gone for good.
It can make those in my career field extra cautious about telling our friends and family how much they mean to us, because we see the devastating after effects of being too late with loving words.
A recent call we took from a woman and her children in Raleigh, North Carolina underscores how quickly the people we love can be taken from us.
The home was located in a rural community just outside of the capital of North Carolina, and we passed beautiful country neighborhoods with nearly as many horses as people inhabitants. Pulling into the long dirt driveway, we could see that our female client was waiting for us as she sat in the shade of a huge oak tree just adjacent to the home.
After a brief introduction to explain the processes we use to thoroughly restore a home to it former glory, she led us around the back of the house to a attached garage.
There, as she lifted the large aluminum door, we saw what she had previously described on the phone.
Apparently her husband had been a large, jovial man much loved in his community and the church he preached at. He had been known to be a very generous man, always going out of his way to make sure that anyone who needed his help got it.
One Sunday after services at the church, he had been approached by a young couple who was struggling to make ends meet. Deciding that he could make their lives a little better by supplying the young family with a big portion of the frozen deer meat he had stocked in his cooler out in his garage, he told the family that he would drive home to grab the food and then bring it back to the church.
When he failed to show back up, the parish members grew concerned and went up to the family home. That was when the preacher was discovered, dead and bleeding profusely from a head wound he suffered when he fell down the flight of stairs in the garage after he experienced a massive heart attack. The autopsy would later determine that the middle aged father, husband and man of the cloth had died almost immediately from a special type of heart attack involving the aorta which doctors dubbed “The Widow Maker”… in this case, it had left his wife a widow, his children fatherless and a church without their kind leader.
The cleanup was very straightforward since most of the remediation was concentrated to the concrete floor of the garage. Once we removed the blood, there wasn’t much left to do but sanitize the area to protect the rest of the family members from the numerous pathogens which can be contained in even the smallest amount of bodily fluid. In the end, we completely erased the signs of trauma which had given evidence to the tragedy that had befallen this family.
In cases like this one, it is so important to be able to perform this service for loved ones of the victim. No family should have to face the sometimes overwhelming task of cleaning up in the aftermath of a terrible event while they are struggling to deal with the loss. I hope that we were able to give this family a clean foundation for closure and eliminated some of the burdens that come along with an unexpected death. Judging from the widow’s relaxed set of her shoulders and the easing of the tension visible on her face, I would like to think that she was able to start the healing process after we had finished the cleaning process. Still, I wish sometimes that I could do more…
You don’t want to try and attempt to clean up a crime scene or accident scene. Blood and other bodily fluids can contain dangerous pathogens which pose a significant risk to human health. Our scene clean up technicians will decontaminate and remove any blood, tissue or bodily fluids a crime and trauma scene has left behind. Advanced Bio Treatment is a professional scene cleaning company.
Regardless of whether the scene is at your home and personal property, a commercial business, or industrial site, we’ll strictly adhere to OSHA regulations and API Worksafe guidelines in our cleanup efforts. We only deploy EPA registered hospital grade cleansers and disinfectants.
