Thanks everybody

[urbpan]

Many thanks to all of you for you well wishes and sorrow. I'm fine, a little weirded out, and wondering if I'm going to have residual psycological problems (I don't feel traumatized...) but once I got to work it was just another day. It was kind of strange to be working on the halloween event and to be surrounded by halloween imagery (including my own mock grave)--but the difference between real life death and pretend halloween death is very clear. I never felt like "Oh my god, we can't have pretend death! There's real death out there!!" Halloween is still fun to me. I hope I don't feel weird about walking by that place in the river from now on, but I imagine I will.

I still feel bad for the family of the woman who died, and I wish I knew more about her. I googled her name (see the comments to my last post--they include a link to a short article) and came up blank. That in itself is almost the strangest part of this. Every name exists somewhere on the internet! But not hers. Her life is none of my business, but I feel like I should know something about it, because I discovered her just after she left it.

Well wishes to all of you, and thanks again.

Comments

[spocks-girl.livejournal.com]

Hoping you and your wife have a peaceful and happy weekend.

[pinkveneer.livejournal.com]

take care of yourself :)

[fibro-witch.livejournal.com]

I suggest calling the Police chaplin and asking him for assistance. He will be able to give you some information about the woman and maybe even help you find her family.

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

Our police department doesn't appear to have a chaplain and I'm pretty sure it's not legal to give out information like that.

[fibro-witch.livejournal.com]

How odd, I am sure I met the man in January. And he would not give out the information, but would allow you to write a letter to the family.

I would suggest calling the police chief then.

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

you met our town's police chaplain?

[fibro-witch.livejournal.com]

In January I went to a meeting of all the neighborhood watch groups in the city of Boston. There was an officer there who was introduced to me as the police chaplin.

He was wearing a police uniform, but was unarmed, and is based in the police headquarters. One of his jobs is to assist the families of police officers. And he also works with the neighborhood watch groups. I think he like a unitarian minister or something. Don't remember much about the conversation. And I don't have my notes or the pictures from the event any more.

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

oh, that'd explain it - we don't live in boston and the police that my husband dealt with weren't boston police.

[morty-baby.livejournal.com]

Oh, I had to go back and read that entry. Yeah, I would have been feeling very strange, too. I have expereinced a death but it happened naturally and it happened Right Then.

http://morty-baby.livejournal.com/37970.html

[ndozo.livejournal.com]

What a sad thing to be a part of. If you felt like it, you might consider writing a note to the family of the young woman, telling them how quickly the police reacted to your call, about the man who found the note and tried to get help, and maybe about the reactions of your friends, many of whom offered sympathy and condolence for her family. It might give them some comfort to know that good people really tried to save their girl. The police might be able to get it to the family.

[anais2.livejournal.com]

Sometimes life opens a view to us that is stunning in its variance; yet, the same nature that shakes us can heal us.

Get thee to the forest, child.

[sin-agua.livejournal.com]

Hang in there, and talk to somebody who has some experience with this sort of thing. ((hugs))

Poor girl. I wish we knew more about her, too.

[zadcat.livejournal.com]

I think you're going about it right. I found a dead guy once, a day after Halloween, walking through a big cemetery with a friend. We were a little "whew!" at the time but I think that since we realized that the incident hadn't happened to us, but to the man (and his family and friends) it was not about us at all. We were just incidental witnesses, and – again like you – reporters of the event to the authorities. I never found out who he was, either; he was an older man who'd died naturally while cleaning up his family plot for winter, with some gardening tools around him, so there was no crime or suicide angle for the media to report.

[(Anonymous)]

My friend's son-in-law was taking a noon-time break to destress and went to a favorite hunting spot to check out a place for a tree-stand. He wasn't hunting, just trying to relax, when he found a body. He didn't look at it much, but it turned out to be a young man with a cocked revolver in his hand, who may or may not have committed suicide. The police took bootprints and tireprints of my friend's son-in-law, and needless to say the destressing jaunt ended up any but that. Time (a couple weeks) has passed and not much has come of it that I know of.

Hang in there.

Dwight

[urb-banal.livejournal.com]

Death is not something that we confront on a regular basis, especially here in this part of the world so there are very basic reactions that we do not have much experience with.

Some cultures and religions ritualize it in ways that seem to promise the ability to "ward off" what ever evil was involved that might have caused it, as I'm sure you know. Crossing one's self, or lighting incense are common. It doesn't change that birth and death are going on all the time, people who we don't know come and go in this world. The evidence of this stops us.

Buddhist Monks used to have what they called Charnel (sp?) grounds where the bodies were left. This was a place to practice. Later, skeletons were often hung in the monestaries to remind the monks that death too is a part of life.

Death too is a part of life. It is a profound realization.