Death Message

A "death message" is what we call having to visit somebody's house, often at night, and tell them that a family member has died. When you write it down like that it seems quite simple really. Turn up, give them the news, go to your next job... Simple enough.

But, as ever, the reality can be a bit different. Whether the message is being passed on behalf of a Police Force at the other end of the country, or if you've been to the incident yourself, you need as much information as possible before you go to pass the message. The family will often have loads of questions regarding how the deceased person actually died and you want to keep the amount of "sorry, I don't know" answers to a minimum. And because of this it's really important to have a proper point of contact to give to the family for any questions that might occur to them afterwards.

When you're on your way round to the house you can't help but try and predict what the reaction will be like. I told one bloke that his brother had died in another part of the country. He actually seemed a bit put out, like I'd caught him at a bad time. Given that he was holding some sort of drill thing (I'm not much of a DIY-er!) I think he was in the middle of putting up some shelves. He just thanked me and asked if there was anything he needed to do, offered me a cup of tea and got back to his shelves. Turns out they hadn't spoken in years.

I've passed a death message to a whole family before and got different reactions from everybody present. Their adult son had been killed whilst riding his motor bike, again in another part of the country, and I got the job of telling them. Mum was shocked, and burst into tears. Between breathless sobs she was asking for details about her son's death. It was really hard to understand her and I didn't want to keep asking her to repeat herself. I wasn't helped by the son's sister who was also in floods of tears, but just sat by herself on another seat staring at my boots. Fortunately for me, Dad decided to do the stoic, stiff upper lip thing. I could see that his eyes were glazed with pinpricks of tears, and clearly he was going to be having a good cry at some point, but he'd taken it upon himself to assume the role of steadying rock for his family.

I made them a cup of tea each, all of which went cold and untouched, and answered as many questions as I could before leaving them to their grief. By the time I left I just felt like I was intruding on such a personal, devestating moment for them. Whenever I think back to this job, the one detail I remember the clearest is the cold cups of tea. I wonder if the detail the sister remembers clearest is my boots?

As I walk up the path to the house and reach for the door bell I'm normally quite nervous. But you have to keep up appearances so I put my "game face" on. When the person answers the door you first, before anything else, have to make sure that you're speaking to the right person. I mean, can you imagine saying to a woman who answers, "I'm afraid I have to tell you that your husband has died". She collapses onto the ground at your feet wailing, "But he's in bed! I only took him up a cup of tea five minutes ago!" "er, this is number 15 isn't it?"

So, try and avoid that... Once I know I'm speaking to Mrs Smith (and the right Mrs Smith at that) I'm normally quite forward with delivering the news. Something like, "I'm truely sorry to have to tell you that your husband died this morning in a road traffic accident" I've never been on the other side of the fence, but we did some training and apparantly most people want us to just come out with it rather than beating about the bush and drawing the whole experience out for them.

And then you get this strange feeling. If you do this part of the job right then you can be an enormous comfort to the family, at least in the first few minutes. But you can't help feeling like a wrecking ball smashing your way through their lives. And then, ten minutes after leaving their house you can be taking a report of a burglary or restraining a violent shop lifter and you have to act just as calmly and professionally as if it was the first call of the day.