People take their lives for many reasons, as I have seen working at ABT, but there seems to be one that stands out among the rest… money.
A few months ago, my office received a phone call from a very nice older woman who needed our blood removal services after the death of her husband.
Packing up our gear, we headed out, driving through some of the most beautiful country in the nation, around the base of the Appalachian Mountains just north of Atlanta, Georgia. The neighborhood was located in a rural community, with each home we passed occupying a large piece of land some with horses or cows, some with rows and rows of pecan trees lining the driveway.
Pulling up in front of the address, we found ourselves looking at a very charming country home, complete with a tire swing gently swaying in the shadow of a massive oak tree. The windmill of a small water pump creaked softly as we made our way to where our client stood, just at the bottom of a short flight of stairs which led up to a large wrap around porch. Pots of flowers and garden sculptures lent a homey feel to the place, which stood in stark contrast to why we had been called.
Offering her my sympathies for her loss, she gave me a winsome smile that must have melted many a gentleman’s heart in her younger years, before quickly explaining what had happened.
Her husband had been a simple man, which suited her just fine, but he had often felt obligated to provide his family with a certain quality of life. He put a lot of pressure on himself to always be the reliable one, the one who always made things happen. For 41 years of marriage, he had been an outstanding husband and father, raising a whole slew of children and eventually grandchildren. But when he learned that he was suffering from a rare form of pancreatic cancer, he had spent most of his time worrying about how he was going to leave his family to deal with his sickness as it progressed and the catastrophic monetary cost of his treatment. He just couldn’t live, or die, knowing that he would end as a burden to his family who he didn’t wish to leave destitute. So, he decided to do what his father did with their old hound dogs once they had reached the end of the line…
He waited for his wife to leave for bible study, then he took his antique revolver, and a glass of sweet tea, and went out to sit on their porch swing to watch the sun go down over the mountains. Then, he pulled a final love note to his wife out of his pocket and sat it beside him on the swing, then he put the gun to his temple and pulled the trigger.
Watching her tell the story my eyes were drawn to the wooden swing hanging from the beams of the roof and to the crimson swath just beneath it on the far right. My heart felt for this brave little woman who spoke with love and understanding despite the finality of what her husband had chosen to do. The years of their lives spent together, in her mind, had afforded him the right to decide the terms of his own death.
Even his choice to do it on the front porch seemed to speak of a thoughtful character… he had committed the act in a place that made cleanup extremely easy to clean, and we quickly removed any trace of his final act.
As we left the home, I had to smile. Looking around I saw evidence of a life well lived… pictures of family and friends, souveniers of places traveled, military honors for service to our country… We might have erased all signs of his death, but I knew that he had built a life that would not be forgotten regardless of his physical presence. A sign which hung on a rusty nail over the garage door read, “We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give”… wise words I try to remember.
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.
