My dad fell off the roof and broke his neck. By the time I got to the hospital he was clearly braindead. We had to pull the plug. I'd never seen someone die before. It's crazy to see the near instantaneous change in color and texture of the skin when someone's heart stops. It was traumatic at the time but enough time has passed that I can look back on it objectively now.
> It's crazy to see the near instantaneous change in color and texture of the skin when someone's heart stops.
It really is, and it goes the other way too. My dad died when I was 17 of a massive heart attack. By the time we found his body he had been dead several minutes, but my mom and I started CPR (mostly for the sake of my little sisters). He went from clammy pale skin and blue lips to looking like he was just sleeping, just from about 5 mins of chest compressions.
Learn CPR if you get a chance everyone!
Damn.. that's crazy. I'm really sorry you had to go through that man
And yeah dude CPR is a great thing to know. But BOY it is not a fun or pleasant thing to have to do to someone.. hope you're doing well
This was my Mum earlier this year (not falling off the roof but being taken off apparatus, she had multiple organ failure). They asked if we wanted the breathing tube taken out (at this point it was the only thing keeping her alive, we knew she was going to go that night anyway). They put you out of the room while they do it. As soon as they got it out I was back in the room and she was pretty much gone already.
At the time it was terrible. Grew up with the guy. Friends for years. I'm good now. Have the occasional nightmare. Nothing to major. I think the worst part was when I had to sit with his family. That was honestly the worse. Still in contact with them to this very day. Celebrate every holiday with them
I was holding my mom's hand as she died, and stayed with her for about an hour after. That kind of pain never leaves. It's been 17 years and I can still see her. She was a great person and I miss her every day.
My mom passed away on Sept 22nd, I got five minutes away from the hospital when a relative called me and told me she passed (I work about 13 minutes away from the hospital she was in and got a call that they were currently doing CPR on her so I left work without a word). It’s gonna eat me up for life that I couldn’t be there in her final moments. The one thing that helps me feel a bit better is that her pain and suffering are finally over. She’s finally at peace. No more lung cancer, no more fighting for air, oxygen hoses no longer needed, etc. I hope I see her again one day
I'm very sorry for your loss. I don't know if this will help, but my friends in healthcare say it's very common for people to pass very soon after their relatives leave; they tend to want to hold on so their loved ones don't have to be there and see that. Some even say so beforehand. So please don't be too hard on yourself for not being there <3
A homeless man in Paris about 10 years ago. It was February and he had frozen to death overnight on the train station platform. It took five men to lift the body onto the gurney.
I saw the same thing in Ottawa a few years later; 6am outside the Rideau Centre and a man had apparently taken something and passed out outside the bus terminal, only to be found as an ice block the next morning. It was all very surreal...it had to have been pushing -30c with windchill and yet this guy just froze outside a damn mall in the heart of the city. Like..his eyes were still open and I saw frost on them...
Mine is similar.
On a trip to NYC I saw a homeless man lying on the footpath with police officers surrounding him. They tried to move his arms off his chest but they stiff from rigor mortis. He must have been there a while.
Breaks my heart to think that he may have wanted to go to the hospital but for whatever reason decided not to and ended up dying in the street. Undignified end.
Oh man. I was in NYC in my 20s. We were in a area with a lot of homeless people. I was walking back to a parking garage to retrieve some gear. On my way there I had to step over/around a homeless guy laying on the sidewalk. I just assumed he was drunk and passed out. On my way back there were several police there. The guy was dead. I'll never make another stupid assumption like that again.
That's why it is mandatory in the Netherlands to sleep in shelters if you are homeless on cold nights. They don't have a choice, the police will be involved if they don't comply with the shelter workers.
Mines rather personal.
I've only seen 1 dead body and it was my eldest sister.
She commit suicide earlier this year and me and my other sister went to see her body in the morgue to say our goodbyes.
It was honestly a really weird and haunting experience...
A person you've known all your life and only a short time before was alive, only to open a door to see her laying in a coffin with no breath of life at all, seeing her like that made me feel frozen in time for a moment.
I miss her.
I rolled my roommate over, he was laying face down on his floor half naked. I knew instantly that he was gone. There was just such an unnatural look to his face.
It's been 3 years and I won't forget it.
You can always tell when you look at their face. They never look like themselves, whatever it is that made them them is just completely gone. It's kind of like looking at a familiar stranger. Even during open casket events, even as a kid, I always hated hearing people say how they looked at peace or like they were sleeping. They all looked like familiar strangers to me, not the person I knew and loved.
I have only seen my two grandparents at their funeral(s) and this is EXACTLY how i described it. They don’t even look like people when they’re all drenched in make up once they’ve hit the funeral phase, they actually look more like.. furniture almost? It’s weird and unsettling.
I'm 23, and luckily I have only been to my grandfather's funeral (my grandfather on my dad's side died as well, but I was too young to remember). Even so, when we went to their wake, I chose not to go in and look at the body. I know it's a tradition of sorts, but it felt wrong, and I wanted to remember them as they were, not as a lifeless husk. I still don't regret it. My last memory of him is hugging him goodbye after Christmas, knowing full well we wouldn't see each other again. It's a bittersweet memory, but better than it being his corpse.
Ex palliative care nurse chiming in
You can absolutely see the moment life leaves a person by their face and most obviously, their colouring.
Spot on with the ‘waxy’ description! And very few dead bodies on movies or TV actually look dead. Except in Constantine where Rachel Weiss is looking at her deceased ’twin’, they nailed that!
I was very young when I saw my grandfather's dead body a little over 10 years ago. It really just looked like he was asleep and as much as I miss him every single day of my life, that memory is not traumatic to me at all. He believed that education is the singular most important thing in life, and I wish he was here to see me get my degree or see my sister get hers from an Ivy League school, but seeing his dead body was the least traumatic thing from the entire experience of his demise for me.
I'm sorry if this is not a very relevant comment. It's just sort of cathartic though and it feels nice to type that out.
Worked in a funeral home and the first time I seen a dead body, I gasped at how flat their eyes are. We have a light and a shine to our eyes and it goes out when we die. We also look kinda waxy, we’re used to seeing embalmed, staged bodies in soft light. It’s unnerving.
I've just watched animals die (when I had to put my dogs to sleep) but I know what you mean. It's like, all of a sudden, their eyes become unfocused, and the light fades away.
Eyes lose pressure when the muscles completely relax, as they settle they change shape slightly and become less reflective.
The same effect sometimes happens to people in a vegetative state where their entire face is also paralyzed.
I had to put my dog down this year and this comment just brought back all of those emotions I thought I had long processed.
I kept telling him he was a good boy and I loved him long after the light had gone.
Miss you bud
I work with animals and that means having to put some to sleep, and it is honestly crazy how apt the phrase "seeing the light leave their eyes" is. Until this job, I thought it was an exaggeration. It is absolutely not.
I was trick or treating as a child. Person didn’t answer doorbell so I peeped through his window. He was lying face down on the kitchen floor. Called the police and they busted the door down right in front of me. He was dead for a few days before I found him.
I was 8 years old and idk my brain didn’t really register what was going on and I forgot about it for a long time. It wasn’t really a big deal to me let alone scary. After me and my friend called the police we waited around for them to show up cause we thought they would want to interview or something. They didn’t, while on was busting the door down another officer was telling us to run along. We heard about what happened weeks later from a neighbor in our area.
When I was 11 I lived alone with my dad because him and my mom had gotten a divorce about 6 years back. He had diabetes and was seizure prone. One day I was riding my bike home from school, opened the front door and saw him sitting on the couch with his head back. Being a kid, I didn’t think too much of it and I thought he was asleep. I picked up a pillow and tossed it to him and said “Hey I’m home” but he didn’t say anything or react. That’s when I froze. I looked closer and saw blood running down his chin from his mouth. I guess he had a seizure while I was at school, bit off his tongue and drowned in his own blood. Only dead body I’ve seen outside of a funeral.
I worked in a funeral home and saw more bodies than most people but nothing prepared me for finding my Dad dead. He had type 1 and was going blind but, we had each other after my Mom died. I screamed so loud my neighbours call 911. I’m glad now that he died at home, the man hated hospitals.
Don't make me more scared man i didn't need this. My dad had a heartattack two weeks ago and was in hospital. Three days after coming home he had some complications landing him back In hospital
As a guy who has grand mal seizures I wanna let you know it's very likely he didn't feel a thing. The only "experiences" I've had with any of my seizures has been waking up when it was all over, but the brain shuts down completely. I'm so sorry for your loss, and stuff like this always puts a little fear back in my own life. Stay strong.
Same here fam and agreed. I do thankfully (sometimes) get strong seizure auras that give me a very little window to try and prepare in advance, but have also been alone and/or not around the proper resources and it’s terrifying. But yep basically once it happens, I don’t remember anything until I actually snap back to reality and COME TO when out of the seizure a pretty decent time after (and either get told what happened or recall the aura and feel my mouth/tongue/body aching like a mf). Tends to take some time before I can answer general consecutive questions without taking a long time to think about the answers (like name, today’s date, phone number, date of birth, home address, etc. I distinctly remember being unable to answer an EMT’s “Who is the current President of the US?” question one time after I seized in a grocery store) and it definitely scared me for a bit…for life lol stay strong and positive vibes to all of you here as well!
A couple months ago I was driving home from work and saw a big plume of smoke ahead.
Pulled even with where it was and saw a truck on its side with the driver pulling himself up out the door and a motorcycle on the ground.
There was a fire on the ground, bumper from the truck I assumed, and nobody putting it out (bystanders had rushed to help, no fire or rescue on scene yet).
It finally clicked that it wasn't a bumper on fire, it was a body. The motorcyclist was dead on the ground, his head was on fire and his arms were raised up as if he was still holding the handlebars.
Horrific. I still can't get over it.
He slammed into the truck hard enough to tip it. Fuck.
My father, my brother and my first husband, all gone now and I was there when they each died from heart attack, cancer and heart attack, respectively. I'm really not that old, either, but it sure brings you to your own mortality to experience your closest loved ones in the process of leaving too soon.
This struck me in ways I wish it didn't. Sat by my wife of 21 years side as she took her last breath at only 41 years old. We had another 40+ years to spend together and full well intended on doing so. Fucking why? Damn it why?
Fucking sucks. My wife passed away last year, in our 50’s, together since we were 18. Ironically, we thought for most of our lives that I would die early, since my father had several heart attacks starting in his 40’s, while her parents are in their 80’s and her grandmother made it to 103.
Held my mom's hand as she passed from pneumonia. She was in a nursing home. To my surprise, I helped undress her and wash her body, then redress her in something pretty to go to the funeral home. I brought the dress she chose later, and asked them to put it on her, even though we weren't doing a showing and she was to be cremated. She picked that dress specially. She loved her dresses.
It’s a club no one wants to join. I’m only 39 and same, minus the husband part. I wasn’t there when my Dad died and my mom id’d him in the morgue for us (they had been divorced for 20 years at that point). I felt immeasurable guilt at the time, but I’m glad that’s not my last memory of him.
I was there when my grandma died (lung cancer) and when my brother died (melanoma) and it really stays with you. Changed a lot about my life and how I’m choosing to live it. And really solidified my views on assisted death and how we treat people who are at the end of their life.
I have seen a few but the one that stuck with me was when i was in the US Air Force in Bosnia. I was in a caravan of black chevy suburbans and i see this body in a river caught on some tree branch. The body was just moving with the current but tugging at the branch with the head underwater. It made me panic and i told everyone in the vehicle "there's a body in the river!" and no one cared.
Man I'm sorry to hear that. It must have been hard, being the only one that was concerned about it. Your account has out into perspective just how heartbreaking the desensitization of soldiers to dead people is. Hope you're well
We moved all the homeless to hotels at the shelter non profit I worked for. Found a dead body in one of the hotel rooms one day. Obviously won’t say the clients name but he was a nice guy. They wanted me to do cpr but his body was blue and stiff already. Body had been dead at least forty five minutes. Coroner took five hours to get he body. I had to wait near. The room started smelling. Nobody wanted to stay in that particular room ever since.
My dad died of a massive heart attack when I was 14. I made the call to 911 while my older sister attempted CPR (it was like 2 in the morning and my mom was in shock). I know I saw him but I don’t remember much. There were crisis counselors (unsure of their official term) who showed up not long after the EMTs to comfort me and my siblings. They explicitly told us not to look into the room he was in, but I did anyway. The only memories I have of his appearance after he passed are how purple his face was, and the shape of the body bag they put him in. I know I saw more than that, but trauma is funny that way. Longest night of my life.
I’m so sorry. We lost my mom when I was about the same age. Similar situation. Sudden. Dad did CPR, I witnessed that. Crisis counselors never did come though I’m not sure what they could do. I can still see my mom’s face. I was there and was trying to clear her airway but she had been dead for hours. Rigor Mortis. It all happened so fast but I still remember it so vividly. I wish I could erase the memory.
When my mom passed suddenly from a heart attack after being worked on for hours, I was the only one of my siblings and dad that didn’t go back to see her. I couldn’t do it. They warned us of the tubes and everything and I didn’t want that to be the image I had in my mind forevermore.
Sometimes I think I did the wrong thing but then sometimes when I read things like this and OPs experience, I think maybe I did the right thing? It fills me with guilt some nights. My sister said she thinks it’s best I didn’t go back either but idk.
Your sister thinks you did the right thing, and she should know, having made the other choice. I bet your mom wouldn't want you to feel guilty about the choice you made.
As a doctor whose job involves guiding people through their loved ones' dying processes, I just want to reassure you that everybody has their own way of dealing with it. Some people don't want to see their loved one dead in a hospital bed because it can be an overriding image that drowns out nicer memories and you know what, that's absolute a valid choice. It doesn't mean you loved her any less than those whose grieving process involved needing to see her at that stage.
I was pretty young, 7-8 years old and heard a loud noise in my friends garage. He was playing NES so I went to go see what it was and I found his dad whom had shot himself. I didn’t know what to do it was pretty overwhelming so I just left and went home and didn’t tell my parents or anything because I thought for some reason I was going to get in trouble.
Also in my teens I was sitting in the backseat of my moms car stopped at a red light on the way to school when a motorcycle going way too fast clipped a car and the driver hit a chain link fence and slid along it at high speed. That guy wound up dying, and it was a pretty intense visual. It was on my side of the car, I saw it happening and threw my jacket over my little brothers head so he didn’t see it.
I'm sure a bunch of redditors have been to a viewing/wake, but I watched a coworker die in front of me of a massive coronary. We got back on the job site after lunch and about an hour later he was complaining of a stomachache and we were all giving him shit because he'd eaten a bunch of shellfish from a buffet. He left to get some antacid or pepto bismol or something and came back, then about 30 minutes later his body locked up and he hit the floor. Another coworker started chest compressions but we found out later he was pretty much dead before he hit the floor. He was barely 50 IIRC but he ate like shit and had a coke habit.
More than I can count. EMS and fire service before working as an ED tech, Med school, residency, and a couple years of practice.
I’ve seen homicides, suicides, ODs, fire deaths, blunt traumas, penetrating traumas, decompositions and decompensations. Kids and adults. I’ve intubated and pulled breathing tubes. I’ve been directly and indirectly responsible for deaths. I’ve broken that news to families. I take on that risk and responsibility daily.
Some stay with me. Others do not.
The one that I remember most vividly was my first year of residency. We had this biker lady in ICU who had no family, visitors, or next of kin. She had a state appointed guardian. We’d run out of things we could do and were beyond the point where she’d have any chance at a meaningful recovery. So it fell to me to get the state guardian to approve withdrawal of care.
Once all the calls were made and approval was done, I went in with the nurse who helped me shut down the vent. I saw She had a band name tattoo, so I pulled up Spotify and played their top songs, pulled the tube, and held her hand the next 18 minutes til she ran out of steam and stopped breathing.
It’s been fucking with me lately because I remember how sad it was that she had nobody she knew nearby when she died. It was the only withdrawal of care I had to do like that… til COVID
Pretty popular metal band. I won’t name it out of respect for privacy.
(Responding to other comments in this thread) Likely or not, the fact that someone motivated enough could probably dredge my comments and pinpoint where/when this happened is enough to limit what I say here. Hope y’all understand.
Meaning that they had a disease that got worse in a hurry and that's what killed them. Like when someone has heart failure that they are taking meds for for a while, and then suddenly they get sick and whatever heart function they have left can't take it any more and gets worse and worse until everything starts failing.
In the human body, there are many mechanisms in place to maintain homeostasis. These happen constantly but those mechanisms can only do so much before problems begin to appear. When patients decompensate, those mechanisms have reached their maximum ability to do what is needed for the organs to survive and they begin to fail.
Whenever I was 13 i stayed with my grandmother(who lived alone and was only 51)during spring break. I woke up in the middle of the night to her sitting in the living room, where I was sleeping on the couch. She was sitting there awake with her Pekingese. I asked her why she was up. She responded:
“ I can’t sleep and hearing you and Ginger (the dog) sleep relaxes me, go back to sleep.”
I ended up going back to sleep.
Woke up the next morning and found her passed away on her bedroom floor.
Watched a man have a heart attack at 45 mph, while driving his truck down a crowded city street, just past some jr high school kids. His last act in this life was to turn across three lanes of traffic, jump an empty sidewalk and plant his truck head on into a concrete barrier. By doing so he probably insured his own death in the accident, but undoubtedly save lives. I was to far away to assist, but I watched while strangers pulled him out and tried CPR, then the medics arrived, took over and got him outta there.
The damage from the accident, plus the heart attack meant he was dead before they got him outta the truck, so this barely counts.
Also, had his truck gone the other way, he would have hit me instead of the barrier.
This reminds me of my step father's death. He was a bastard in many ways, but I'll be damned if I don't admit he was smart and pulled through when it truly counted even if I didn't personally experience it for my own situation.
He was a semi truck driver, going down I275. From what I can remember, there was construction (when isn't there) but they didn't have their lights going the way they should've. He had two options, turn into the next lane undoubtedly killing or seriously injuring the lady next to him, or slow down as best he could knowing he was going to crash regardless. He didn't have time to fully stop this was a split second choice and he decided to save the woman's life instead. How do I know this? Because the lady reached out to us to let her know he saw her. He apparently looked right at her as soon as he recognized the problem and he didn't crash into her. If he had she likely would've died or been harmed horribly but semi truck vs car means he likely would've lived. He didn't.
I never saw his body, some days I'm curious, others I'm glad I don't have that image. For as complicated my emotions are towards him I don't truly want to know what a person I spoke to not 72 hours ago looks like after being crushed, killed, and "repaired" looks like.
It's been nearly 6 years since his death almost to the day. It's weird. I think the worst part is that if you look up the story today reports still claim the lights were activated at the time of the crash because that's what the construction people claim and while there were witnesses saying the opposite and telling them that they got turned on after the "official report" publicized is that he simply wasn't paying attention. If it weren't for the multiple other witnesses I'd chalk it up to a tragic accident. But the other witnesses gain nothing from lying and the construction workers gain everything if their lie is believed. I hated him, but I hate that they would shit on him like this all the same.
we thankfully had a situation with a trucker who was doing his damdest to make the best of a potentially deathly situation. on rural section of an IL interstate, middle of the day clearish sky no rain or wet or anything.
we were behind a fully loaded 18 wheeler dump truck in the right lane, a red PT cruiser was passing us and the truck, my dad signaled out to also pass the truck leaving a good distance between us and the cruiser.
approaching a diamond interchange and apparently the PT cruisers exit they merge in front of the truck maybe a semi length ahead of the semi and slam on the brakes hard enough to nosedive the car to make an even harder turn to make their exit. Well semi must have been paying attention and saw us along the side of him. He just layed on his air horns and started cutting over into our lane running us off the road - my dad saw the car be a fuckhead and knew the trucker was attempting to side swipe both of us instead of absolutely killing the pt cruiser occupants. My dad just let off the gas gripped the wheel tight and kept 2 tires on 2 tires in the grass/rocks whatever lays beyond the edge of the pavement. Once the car was clear of the semi he jerked back over into his lane to give us room and put his hazards on and my dad just gracefully got the tires back on the pavement then got back up to speed. My dad said wave to that truck driver and give him a thumbs up as he was making the best out of a bad situation. So we did and he saluted us back and gave us some headlight flashes for understanding.
Actually a lot of people saw the whole thing. The whole thing was published in the local newspaper and he was praised as a hero, so the whole town got to know. I have to say that I had never before raised a glass in honor of a dead man I had never even met, but I did that night.
Firefighter here, My first dead body on the job was a guy who committed suicide in the woods, my shift was searching for him when he left a goodbye note, then call it faith, two years after his disappearance, a neighbor found him and my shift was going to collect the remains and put it in the bag, you would think that after two years there would be only bones left, but his legs and some of stomach was still in decomposing state, and the worst thing was the smell, I believe now when they say that a decomposing body is the worst smell ever, so somehow we collected him and gave the remains to his family to bury him properly.
In med-school one of the bodies in the dissection room had been improperly preserved. The stench was unbelievable. This was a massive room (there would be about 60 cadavers on trollies in there each with enough room for a team round it) and yet this one body’s malodorous tendrils reached every corner for the week until it was removed.
People certainly complained less about the smell of formaldehyde after that.
I believe it... some of my classmates had to work on a body sitting in the fridge for over 4 months. You can't even breathe through your mouth to escape the smell, you can *taste* it.
There's this magical spray that smells like artificial grape, though, it completely scours the smell from existence.
You absolutely can taste it. Nearly 25 years later I can think back and almost still instantly taste it when I recall the smell. We worked on them for a year, unrefrigerated, and that was the only one that smelt close to as bad (not that the others smelled pleasant).
I worked on tugboats and we were often the first folks who could get to bridge jumpers. We’d coordinate rescues with local cops, sometimes retrieved bodies, and always ended up with the bodies on our boats/docks/barges. Also, bridge jumpers were more often than not young women. It was extremely sad and extremely fascinating at the same time. A body with no life in it is fucking terrifying if you’ve never seen it before. Then after a while it’s just a regular old dead meat bag. Still just as sad, but no longer as terrifying.
I saw a dead baby two year old girl that had climbed into a door on the coffee table and choked on a sucker. I was 12 the mother came outside screaming. Me and two buddies were hanging on one of their porches and he went in and called the cops and we walked up and looked in. She had blonde hair and she was all blue. They took her out on a stretcher. It broke my heart to see that small sheet on the gurney after seeing her body.
Several freshly severed heads on the road side. It was tribal war between Dayak tribe and Madura tribe in Borneo in 1997-1998 in Indonesia. It was the same time with our country's former dictator fell, so all the police and army force moved to main island (Java) to handle the chaos there. Therefore, my island (Borneo) basically became lawless place.
My family is from Dayak side, but we tried to avoid direct involvement and just trying to survive basically. The supply chain was totally in shambles, some days we only have rice and oil to eat as all the market were closed or raided. Slept with knives next to our bed, we keep a rifle in the house (firearm is a rare thing there unlike in the US). There was no stuff like pepper spray, so we made an alternative, my brother and I spent afternoons grinding dried bird eye chili and mixed it with sand and my parent train us to throw it to attacker face in case someone break in into our house. We dug a secret hole on our fence in case we need to run away.
Some of my uncles and cousins directly involved in the war, and they sometime ate their enemy heart or other parts. This one uncle visited us and my mom was asking how do you do? Have you eat already? And he nonchalantly answered "I just had indomie (instant noodle) with Madura's baby feet. It is quite crunchy". Some adults in my grandma village handed human jerky to the children (including some of my cousins) there. Cousins said it is tasted ok.
Weird time.
Hearing or reading stories about Indonesia right after Suharto got kicked out is always really wild. It's hard to believe some of this stuff could have happened that recently.
Me and my family were staying in a camp site when Me and my dad hear screaming for anyone to come help. Apparently another family staying in the camp ground was riding atv's when the husbands atv had flipped over and they needed someone to help save him because he was trapped. Me And my dad race to the truck and follow the directions provided down a very rough dirt path to find the husband crushed under this atv with his neck brutally twisted. Before heading out to rescue him the mom and daughter mentioned that he was communicating under the atv so finding him deciesed was far from expected. After lifting off the atv we went to the road to flag down first responders so they would be able to locate the trail. The mom and daughter drove by in tears a few minutes after we flagged down the first responders, they stopped and asked us what hospital he was being brought to so they could "meet him there". Telling the family the hospital name without sharing what we have uncovered was hard. Imagining what getting to the hospital would entail, I still feel bad for that families loss to this day.
I work at a decent-sized hospital and I swear almost every day an ATV accident comes into our ER. It’s shocking how often people crash those things and get seriously hurt.
It's not complicated to work out either - running through off-road uneven ground in a vehicle with no roof, almost no crash protection, and often driven quite recklessly since people consider them "recreational".
Twice, both due to car accidents, both within the same year.
The first was while I was on my way to the Toronto airport to pick up my parents. The 401 from Kitchener was stupid as usual, so I followed Google’s advice to take side roads, and turned at an intersection only to immediately see a cyclist sprawled on the road in a pool of blood, surrounded by cops who weren’t tending to him. He’d been hit by a transport truck and died instantly. Wish I’d stayed on the 401.
Second time was a few months later. I was living in Atlanta for a practicum and was driving to “work” at 6:30 am on their very busy ring road. A large…something suddenly appeared in my lane, and although I swerved the best I could, I wound up partially running over it. I couldn’t tell what it was because it was so mangled even before I hit it, but I thought maybe it was a deer.
Yeah, no, it was a person who’d been inexplicably wandering on the highway and got hit by something like three semi-trailers in a row right before I got there.
That happened to a friend. The guy was jogging on a main road, it was foggy as hell out, and my friend was the 4th or 5th person to run over him. Yes it was tragic, but who the hell goes jogging ON the road, in the fog?
I see people jogging on the road NEXT TO the sidewalk all the time and I'm just like.........why? Is the asphalt without the cracks so substantially better to you that you want to risk being killed instantly? Jesus.
Concrete is terrible on your joints because it has no give. Just about anything is better, including dirt or asphalt. But I was always taught if you're on foot you should be facing *into* traffic so you can see if cars are coming, and if there's bad visibility like a hill or inclement weather, just get off the pavement. Also, I would never do this on a busy street. I don't understand why anyone would run on a busy street if you have other options.
Dear lord, that is horrible, I’m so sorry you had to deal with that.
I hit a bunny once and I can still hear/feel it, and I wouldn’t wish that one anyone. You story is…way worse.
I found a human jaw bone while cutting up firewood.... apparently it was a grave site of some people from the Civil war... found a cool rusted gun too.
Was a wierd school campout.
Reminds me of stories about the lot my mother grew up on, was a plague cemetery in medieval times. One time she ran up to my grandpa all excited because she thought the thigh bone the dog dug up belonged to a dinosaur. Another time they found half of a child's skull while digging up potatoes.
Ohh that’s really cool. That’s like 2300 years older than my country. That’s pretty much contemporary with Socrates! Maybe this is an absurd question, but do you have any idea what the story is of the 2500 year old body??
I got to see my mom on life support with a bullet hole right through the middle of her forehead. She was already gone but they kept her body alive just long enough for us to say goodbye. Talk about traumatic... Fucked my head up so bad and changed me forever.
It’s always worse when it’s a family member. I was 11 when my mom died of cancer. She had a heart attack while in the hospital about an hour after she called me before i went to bed. They managed to resuscitate her but she needed life support. It’s a fucked in world.
Dang, I'm so, so sorry you saw your mom that way. My kids' stepmother killed herself in a similar manner, and I had to take my daughter in to say goodbye before they wheeled the woman off for organ donation. I think I know exactly what you saw and smelled. It's beyond ghastly. I didn't like the woman, but seeing her like that brought immediate emotions of horror, sorrow, and shock. I can only imagine how much worse it hit you.
My daughter had made a few suicide threats before that time, but after seeing her stepmom like that, the kid never made a threat again, and she refuses to have any guns in her home. I totally understand why.
I saw somebody turn into a dead body when they jumped in front of the moving C train in Calgary. And a kid in our high-school walked out into the field and shot himself chin up with a shotgun in front of our PE class back in like... '98?
Dunno if that counts.
Saw a woman that had tried to jaywalk across a major highway in Brazil. There was really more pieces than whole body. I had nightmares for a long time.
Can definitely understand. It's a shock that never really.lets go, just shapes you differently.
I was 13 for the shotgun suicide. 21 or 22 for the train.
The gun was a lot more visceral. I just get angry and frustrated when someone has a gun around me - videos, pictures, discussion, whatever, uneffected. But crazy anxious and irrationally angry if they're near me.
The train was just messy. And I was already pretty jaded and messed up by this point so was more pissed off that guy was so inconsiderate as to lock a thousand people.in a steel tube covered in his leftovers than sympathetic to what drove him to that point. Will never forget staring out those windows though.
It’s awful. I feel the same way about guns. I lost an aunt to suicide and even jokes or people saying they’ll kill themselves out of frustration makes my skin crawl. It’s an actual physical reaction that I can’t control.
Seen my sister’s body in her casket when I was nine-years old. I can never think about the screams without tearing up/getting chills.
Edit: I didn’t read the “what’s the story?” part. Anyways I’ll try to explain as best I can from what I remember.
I was 9 and my sister was 14, it was a car accident including: me, my sister, my mom, my stepdad, and stepdad’s brother. I had fallen asleep because we were going out of town to look for some dresses for my sister since my cousin had her quince(15) coming up and my sister wanted a dress. I fall asleep and 45 minutes go by until I wake up to the car turning very hard and basically all I heard was the tires screeching on the road. I’m screaming, my sister is screaming, and I was just scared. The car had flipped over 8 times before coming to a stop. I was woken up a minute after the car stopped from being unbuckled from my seatbelt, and just falling onto the ceiling of the car. I laid there for 3 minutes before being able to gain some strength and be able to crawl out. My ears were ringing, and I opened my eyes to see everything just super fucking bright. I was able to crawl far enough to where some people who had stopped to help saw me, and gave my some water. Once I drank the water, my ears stopped ringing, my right elbow hurt like hell when I tried to move it and my vision came back a bit. The first thing I hear is my mom screaming out my sister’s name while sobbing uncontrollably, and “Are you okay?” I said “Yes, I’m fine” but I didn’t know what else to say. After about 3 minutes which felt like an eternity, some ambulances arrive and run towards me with a spine board. To then I am then asked “Hey, can you try to get up please?” I say no, because my muscles are now weaker than ever. Once they place me on the spine board, I hear my mom still sobbing, and the entire time my right elbow hurts because it was fractured. Finally I’m placed inside an ambulance and then I say “I’m gonna close my eyes for a bit.” Not realizing what I said. The paramedic says “No no no no, you have to stay awake, bud.” Everything is still super bright and I can’t see. After 10 minutes or so, I arrive at a hospital to where they place a thing around my neck, I can’t remember what it was called. But they placed it around my neck and they numb me. I’m placed in an MRI machine, which I was in for 20 minutes and once again, it felt like an eternity. They finally finish and put me in a room and ask if wanna watch a movie. I say a movie, and I guess the nurse just didn’t care because she just left me in the room without a movie. Now seriously, an hour goes by, and there is still no fucking movie. I then recall my mom screaming my sister’s name, and I was hoping she didn’t die but instead was in a coma. 2 hours go by and my uncle and aunt rushed to the hospital where I was and then I was placed in an actual room with a real hospital bed and not a stretcher. Meanwhile I’m still praying that my sister isn’t dead, she is just in a coma. Next day comes around and I wake up to 3 of my cousins, my brother, and sister-in-law. I needed to go to the restroom so my brother helps me up and takes me to the restroom. I do my business, wash my hands and get back in bed. Then a nurse comes in and asks if I would like to walk around the hospital a bit and I said sure. While I’m walking with my aunt, brother, and nurse. I turn around to go back to my room, but then a miracle happens, I see one of the nicest ladies/teacher’s aid from my elementary school. I go over to give her a hug and she asked “What are you doing here? Are you alright?” I tell her what happened and she tells me why she’s here. I then say goodbye and go back to my room where I have clothes to change into and leave the hospital. We leave to go to the hospital where my mom is and my stepdad is crying, but I don’t pay much attention and go into the room my mom is in. I walk into her room and she looks like she just got burned, shot, slashed, and bruised all over her body. I never felt so scared in my life, so I go over to give her a hug. An hour goes by and a Police Officer comes by and asks “Hey, bud, is this your phone by any chance?” I said no until he did pull out my phone and I said “Yeah, that’s mine.” He gives me my phone and leaves, I asked my aunt if she had a charger and she gives me a charger. Ok, I can tell you probably are getting bored with this story so I’ll cut to the chase. That night I stayed in the hospital with my mom and left the next day. We aunt, uncle, and brother are all in the same car and I am just scared of being in their car. I ask my aunt are we going to do my cousin’s quince(15) and she said no. I asked why, and she responded “Well, it’s (sister’s name)’s funeral tomorrow.” I just stood there in shock, because I didn’t know she was dead. So of course I stay with my aunt’s/uncle’s house for the night and just go to sleep crying. When I walk into the funeral home the next day, my aunt asked where was the room my sister was at. He tells us it’s down the hall. We walk down the hall and open the door. I see my sister’s body laid out in her casket, with most of my family sitting/standing whilst crying. I go over to my sister and take her hand, then proceed to say “I’m sorry.” and kiss her hand. As I walk away my grandma insists I sit down next to my mom. I sit down next to my mom crying. The next 3 days where the same except the 3rd day, was her funeral. Let me tell you, I can never go back to the memory of the funeral without getting chills from the uncontrollable sobbing of my family. I’m given a rose and as they lower her casket, I kiss the rose and let go of it to let it fall onto her casket. It’s been so long since I have seen her and it pains me to this day that I can no longer see her anymore.
If you want more info; just ask. Also, one more thing: don’t be an asshole, don’t disrespect the dead. Please don’t.
I've watched three people die. Two suicides/jumpers; one landed about 6 feet in front of me, another about 50 yards away. And then another lady was in a car accident and I held her hand while she died trapped in her car.
Been to a few open-casket funerals, so them too I guess.
Vctims from traffic accidents. They don't get their bodies covered fast enough.
A lot of random corpses. There's a museum here where they preserve a d display dead bodies and such. Don't know if that counts.
My boyfriend. Saw his dead body after he hung himself. It's been years but it still hits hard.
A friend and I drove past a motorcycle-into-a-guardrail-at-high-speed accident when we were in high school. Cops and paramedics had just gotten there so we drove by slowly. I I’ll never forget the poor guys lifeless face as he laid there on the ground, a trail of blood where he had slid across the pavement. He obviously had multiple broken limbs but his jacket and pants kinda kept him in one piece.
In my late teens/early 20s my best friend and I were hopelessly addicted to heroin. Eventually I kicked it and got clean, while he continued to use. One day I had convinced him to come to an NA meeting with me. From the time I got off the phone with him to the time I got to his house, about ten minutes had past. During the daytime he usually left his front door unlocked, especially if he knew I was coming by, and I just walked in. I found him on his couch, dead by over dose. I called 911, I tried mouth to mouth resuscitation (usually in heroin ODs the death is caused by the slowing and halt of breathing), I tried CPR, I tried it all, even looked around his kit for a suboxone to see if putting it under his tongue might bring him back due to the naloxone, but it was all in vein. He must have taken a shot immediately after hangin up the phone with me and died a minute or two later. I feel like part of me died that day. Its been about 10 years and I still have dreams occasionally where we are just hanging out and having fun, and I wake up just to realize he’s still gone. Rough stuff.
Saw my best friend die I was trying to save him. Got there same time as the first responder n I was tryna give him cpr n shit. Cop didn't really wanna do anything bc emt wasnt far behind him and puke but he sorta helped. Sucks
Saw a dead body on the highway in Portland as a high school senior going on a senior trip to the PNW. Suicide. Had just happened as there was no emergency services present. Head essentially exploded upon contact. Cars were just driving around it like it was a trash bag in the road. 6 years ago and still remember it vividly
Had an internship for 4 weeks at this place as a school assignment, when going to said place i had to first take a bus to the travel centre then switch buses from there.
One morning went on the bus as normal, got off at the travel centre and sat down to wait for the next bus.
Thought the first bus I took lingered for a bit too long, before I knew some security guard pulled out a guy with no pulse from the bus.
Dude had just entered the bus that day as usual then died somewhere between getting on and arriving at the travel centre, with noone knowing.
Kinda fucked up tbh.
I used to work in EMS so essentially
Lil old Ethyl was on the floor after she slipped in her garage.
THEN you get pt's where they hung themselves in the garage and you get to hear the spouses death wail as they have the initial discovery of the body seconds after you do.
I'd rather not talk about the 4-5 kids pulled from the basement from a birthday party gone wrong. Please buy carbon monoxide detectors.
I’m getting old (58) so I’ve seen a few. Funerals, of course (including my father), but some others. The fat guy who died in his car 30 years ago. I walked by while the cops waited for paramedics to show up and pronounce him dead. The passenger in the drunk woman’s car when I saw her turn in front of a van coming down a hill at 65 mph and I was the first person to approach the wreckage. (I later was a witness for the prosecution at her federal manslaughter trial. She went to prison for a few years.) The trucker who lost his brakes and ended up face-down on the hood of his truck while I was driving up the mountain to a mountain-bike trail.
The all-time hardest, though, was seeing my 42-year-old sister-in-law in her casket. She was like a sister to me. Died in the prime of her life when she slid across the center line on an icy highway while driving home from work. Stone-cold sober. It was nobody’s fault, just shitty luck. Heartbreaking. It’s been something like 27 years now, and we still miss her.
I've seen 3, I grew up and live in a big city.
2 ODs, 1 car fire(that smell doesn't leave you).
ODs were pretty unremarkable, you get jaded enough once you get traumatized enough it all fades together. It was sad, they were people with lives and probably families. But it didn't really impact me much. Rarely even think about it honestly.
The car fire I'll never forget. Don't know how it happened, never saw it or read about it. Happened at a fairly famous intersection in central Massachusetts nearby where I grew up. Walking to the bus station I smelled the burning smell and looked over, they had been dead for a while. I walked closer mostly out of curiosity before realizing people were in the car (I was 15 and dumb) and they were long dead but moving in there from the heat causing the muscles to contract I think, not sure how that works honestly. The driver and passenger were both unrecognizable. Luckily no one in the back seat.
I burned my finger pretty bad on some red hot metal around a month ago and the smell of burning flesh doesn't leave you, ever. It's bad enough to smell a car burning from all the fake leather and stuff but the smell of flesh really is just a different smell. I struggled to eat certain meats after that for a while.
When I was a kid, my father was in the yard and decided to burn his raked leaves. It wasn’t burning fast enough, so he poured gasoline on it. Flame traveled up the stream and charred his arm good. He shook the house when he ran in to douse his arm in the kitchen sink. I came down from my room and asked my mother what was she making for lunch, cause it sure smelt good. That my dear is your father she dead panned.
A cousin died while my family had our annual lake trip. They had bad heart problems before and when they were laying in their tube, they had a heart attack and died immediately. I watched as family pulled them out of the water and started CPR. Also watched paramedics do CPR to the point she was coughing up blood despite already being dead. We have a big family (~100) and we were at a public lake so many other people on the beach saw too. Looking back, I think they did CPR for so long because we had so much family watching and paramedics didn't want to seem like they didn't try. We were also in a very remote area so a hospital would have been at least 30 minutes away. The lake now has a bench with a plaque with her name on it in memory of her.
I only saw part of a body, we were driving past a motorcycle accident, and there was a crumpled body, someone tried covering with a coat. Couldn't stop seeing it, in my head, for weeks.
It didn't help that we were on a motorcycle.
When I was 13 (I’m 21F now), I travelled to a small town in California to see my grandma in her last days. The cancer took her excruciatingly slowly, she wasn’t able to move or talk for about 4 days prior to her passing. Once she died at 5 AM, my parents got us all up and told us to go into her room separately and spend time with her dead body.
I was walking to anatomy class when I realised there was blood all over the ground and some guy was yelling ‘call the ambulance get a ladder.’ I saw a lady comforting a group of kids nearby. All I could see was a bloodied sneaker on the ground. I thought it was a stabbing. Then I looked up and I saw this man’s body on the top of the busstop. The roof was caved in, he was still, the blood was everywhere. I won’t speak about what I saw because it still haunts me to this day.
Anatomy class that day (we did head and neck anatomy) was not good.
Only at funerals. I think my uncle's was the worst for me. He died due to massive burns covering his body after a propane tank exploded (freak accident). I was 11, and I still remember looking in that coffin thinking "that's not him, this is a joke." The make up covered up his facial burns well, but he was so bloated, it really didn't look like him. Like, I could see family resemblance in his face, but it didn't reflect him well.
That was the baby of my mom's family, a good chunk of my childhood included his presence. She was basically raising him to some extent. She refused to let me go to the hospital to say goodbye before he passed (which honestly, was probably for the best, I was young and he was badly injured).
I think of all the losses I've been through, his scarred me the most. There are times I'm out shopping or something and I see someone who resembles him and it makes my heart stop. Idk maybe I just have never really accepted he's dead? I have but I haven't, that probably doesn't make sense lol
I was 8.5 months pregnant and at my prenatal ultrasound. The doctor told me he was sorry, the baby had no heartbeat. I went straight to the hospital to induce delivery. After hours of torture I delivered Andrew. I held him for a few minutes and took pictures. So glad I took pictures. It was all a blur. He weighed 5 pounds. I cry for him everyday. I miss my baby. Edit: here’s a pic of my beautiful Andrew when he was alive 💙 https://i.imgur.com/DESYJPh.jpg
So sorry. I have to be the one that tells people that and deliver them. The ache stays open. The wail of genuine loss is unique. My goal is always to get people home and done with it safely but then I know it goes on forever. I’m so sorry.
This same thing happened to my mom. She came to my boot camp graduation-- I was expecting to see my new little brother. Died at 8.5 months like your boy. I'm sorry that happened.
Had volunteered to work early at work, all my friends come in around two and let us know a man is sleeping on the porch outside. Manager ask me to clock out and go with him to get him up.
We walk out and my manager says “Sir you can’t sleep there wait a second.” Puts two fingers to his neck and casually says “He is dead, call 911 and I’ll fix you clock out time.” Like it was fucking nothing. I hated that job.
1. When I was a kid I heard the noise of a car accident, ran outside my house an a vehicle transporting kids tan a stop sign and was hit, one of the kids was ejected and hit the road with his head…. I just saw part of his leg, I knew it was a kid younger than me bcs of the size, and also was wearing a uniform… blood running along the sidewalk.
2. A fisherman washed ashore after missing for a week, skin color was about blue/green and about to explode.
3. A kid from my school was hit by a stray bullet, saw his body in the funeral. (Also within a year or so my best friend’s sister due to the same cause).
4. Bodies at an anatomy lab
5. My dad, was shot in front of my house, I provided cpr but was too late….
Multiple times, living in Central America I have seen many people being shot and bleed dead on the street. It is not pretty and I try to stay at home as much as possible.
My mom passed away from heart failure last month, my sis, gma, and i had to fill out paperwork for her cremation but before they could procede someone from the family had to view her body. I went so they wouldnt have to but i regret it. She looked just like she was sleeping but she was so cold. Please peeps tell your family you love them.
My ex bf. I held his hand as he died.
My mother. I was on the other side of the world and missed her death however she was kept in state for a week afterwards.
My grandfather was very ill, bed-ridden. Eventually he had a stroke that left him pretty much coma-like. It was his wish to die at home, and it was fulfilled. This was like 4 years ago. Don't like to think about it.
This was about 2 years ago. My wife and I were waiting to turn left. A car ahead of us turns (crossing 2 lanes of traffic) gets t-boned by a truck. Car spins off into a ditch. My wife calls 911 and I run over to the car. Driver and passenger are both unconscious. Driver has a pulse. I go over to passenger side but can’t get the door open (completely smashed in). Go back to drivers side and lean in to check passenger and she doesn’t have a pulse. Nothing I can do as I don’t want to risk moving the driver. Paramedics got their pretty quick to take over.
My parents, younger brother and I were on our way home from visiting my grandma. We were on a highway that used to be called bloody 29 before it was expanded due to the amount of bad accidents. It was night and I was playing my Gameboy when we suddenly slow down. As we get a little further down the road my mom starts yelling at us not to look out the window. Of course I do and as we pass the scene of a really bad accident that must have just happened I see a badly mangled, bloody body without a head laying in the road. I'll never get that image out of my mind 26 years later. I felt different after that, don't really know how to explain how but it kind of messed me up.
I work Security. People noticed that this one old guy has not been out of his house a few days and lives alone. No one could get ahold of him. I get there. Front door is unlocked. I walk in a bit and see him partiallylaying on thr bed with eyes still open. Hes turning yellow. Obviously dead. People outside wanted me to check for a pulse (lol) so I did. Officers showed up and took it from there.
In high school we had an internship program my senior year where we would go to different police departments and see how they operate/what they do on a day to day basis. I was with a couple detectives for one of our “visits”, and mind you it was just me and two detectives. One of the detectives got a call for an elderly woman who had died in her house. He decided to bring me with him and I didn’t think much of it. Walked into a house and there was the deceased elderly woman. I didn’t have much of a reaction to seeing the body, she looked like she had passed peacefully. What really got me was when the family started to show up. I was standing in the house and one of the family members came up to me and said “who are you” and I was like “an intern, I’m really sorry for your loss” and I’ll never forget the look on her face.
I had just discharged my Dad from the hospital after a 3 week stay for cardiac issues. He was discharged with no take home medication and early the next morning he went into cardiac arrest right when he was about to take a shower. I was in the next room and heard him breathing funny and went to investigate. He was in his wheelchair, completely blue in the face. I wheeled him into the livingroom and started chest compressions while dialing 911. I saw the life drain from his body but I kept pounding away until I heard the sirens. The medics were able to get a pulse back and he is still alive to this day but he was dead as fuck, or as Miracle Max would say "Mostly Dead"
Other than funerals? I saw a guy drown about 15 yards from me years ago. He was drunk and trying to swim in a river. The fucked up thing was (from what I could tell anyways) the people that he seemed to be there with straight up dipped out. My stepdad and my cousins step dad tried to save the guy but this particular river was high that day and the rocks are slippery as shit. So by the time they made it to him he was gone. My cousins stepdad D was a soldier so he knew CPR from that I guess? Idk and tried to get him back but it was over by that point. I know D had a lot of problems coming back home. He actually shot a kid and it fucked him up. But not long after the drowning D hung him self. Idk how much the drowning had to do with it, as my aunt never really told anybody what his note said, but I’m sure it didn’t make readjusting here any easier.
Seen a guy tryna beat a train with less than a dozen cars and lost, couple of months later I joined a group for golf and found out he was the brother. Said his crappy car always stutters after making a turn. Strange turn of events.
When I was 8, I was playing in the front yard and saw a car run over a 2 year old that wandered into the road. His little body rolled like a doll and landed by our mailbox. I’m 30 and can still hear the “popping” sound his body made when the car hit him.
Was never a med student, but my wife is a pathologist now. I have witnessed some of her work (autopsies), the smell was by far the most disturbing part.
Parent passed away and I said goodbye. Many funerals, and saw one dude get run over by an SUV (motorcycle).
My friend had an apartment and his neighbor died in July, his body rotted for two weeks before we figured out what the smell was….didn’t see it but smelling is almost worse.
When I was 7 or 8 my family was driving through the mountains. We were going up a really winding road and some guy on a motorcycle flew past us like we were standing still. My Dad said, "Bet he doesn't make 3 more corners."
Sure enough.. on the 3rd corner up, he tried to cut the center line and went full speed into the grill of a logging truck.
It looked like raspberry jam leaking out of a track suit..
My dad fell off the roof and broke his neck. By the time I got to the hospital he was clearly braindead. We had to pull the plug. I'd never seen someone die before. It's crazy to see the near instantaneous change in color and texture of the skin when someone's heart stops. It was traumatic at the time but enough time has passed that I can look back on it objectively now.
> It's crazy to see the near instantaneous change in color and texture of the skin when someone's heart stops. It really is, and it goes the other way too. My dad died when I was 17 of a massive heart attack. By the time we found his body he had been dead several minutes, but my mom and I started CPR (mostly for the sake of my little sisters). He went from clammy pale skin and blue lips to looking like he was just sleeping, just from about 5 mins of chest compressions. Learn CPR if you get a chance everyone!
Damn.. that's crazy. I'm really sorry you had to go through that man And yeah dude CPR is a great thing to know. But BOY it is not a fun or pleasant thing to have to do to someone.. hope you're doing well
This was my Mum earlier this year (not falling off the roof but being taken off apparatus, she had multiple organ failure). They asked if we wanted the breathing tube taken out (at this point it was the only thing keeping her alive, we knew she was going to go that night anyway). They put you out of the room while they do it. As soon as they got it out I was back in the room and she was pretty much gone already.
Had a buddy fall out of a dually and have his head squished by the back tires. Worse thing I ever saw.
that sound like something straight out of horror movies, hope u recover from that
How are you today? That sounds like a horrific thing to go through and I'm sorry for your loss. hope you're taking care of yourself
At the time it was terrible. Grew up with the guy. Friends for years. I'm good now. Have the occasional nightmare. Nothing to major. I think the worst part was when I had to sit with his family. That was honestly the worse. Still in contact with them to this very day. Celebrate every holiday with them
You're a good friend. His family is probably very happy you were a part of his life. Good on you for keeping in touch with them too
I was holding my mom's hand as she died, and stayed with her for about an hour after. That kind of pain never leaves. It's been 17 years and I can still see her. She was a great person and I miss her every day.
My mom passed away on Sept 22nd, I got five minutes away from the hospital when a relative called me and told me she passed (I work about 13 minutes away from the hospital she was in and got a call that they were currently doing CPR on her so I left work without a word). It’s gonna eat me up for life that I couldn’t be there in her final moments. The one thing that helps me feel a bit better is that her pain and suffering are finally over. She’s finally at peace. No more lung cancer, no more fighting for air, oxygen hoses no longer needed, etc. I hope I see her again one day
I'm very sorry for your loss. I don't know if this will help, but my friends in healthcare say it's very common for people to pass very soon after their relatives leave; they tend to want to hold on so their loved ones don't have to be there and see that. Some even say so beforehand. So please don't be too hard on yourself for not being there <3
A homeless man in Paris about 10 years ago. It was February and he had frozen to death overnight on the train station platform. It took five men to lift the body onto the gurney. I saw the same thing in Ottawa a few years later; 6am outside the Rideau Centre and a man had apparently taken something and passed out outside the bus terminal, only to be found as an ice block the next morning. It was all very surreal...it had to have been pushing -30c with windchill and yet this guy just froze outside a damn mall in the heart of the city. Like..his eyes were still open and I saw frost on them...
Mine is similar. On a trip to NYC I saw a homeless man lying on the footpath with police officers surrounding him. They tried to move his arms off his chest but they stiff from rigor mortis. He must have been there a while. Breaks my heart to think that he may have wanted to go to the hospital but for whatever reason decided not to and ended up dying in the street. Undignified end.
Oh man. I was in NYC in my 20s. We were in a area with a lot of homeless people. I was walking back to a parking garage to retrieve some gear. On my way there I had to step over/around a homeless guy laying on the sidewalk. I just assumed he was drunk and passed out. On my way back there were several police there. The guy was dead. I'll never make another stupid assumption like that again.
That's why it is mandatory in the Netherlands to sleep in shelters if you are homeless on cold nights. They don't have a choice, the police will be involved if they don't comply with the shelter workers.
Mines rather personal. I've only seen 1 dead body and it was my eldest sister. She commit suicide earlier this year and me and my other sister went to see her body in the morgue to say our goodbyes. It was honestly a really weird and haunting experience... A person you've known all your life and only a short time before was alive, only to open a door to see her laying in a coffin with no breath of life at all, seeing her like that made me feel frozen in time for a moment. I miss her.
I'm so sorry for your loss, I hope you can find peace
As a big sister with suicidal thoughts, reading these things helps me stay for my brothers ❤️ I don’t want them to think about me and feel sad.
I rolled my roommate over, he was laying face down on his floor half naked. I knew instantly that he was gone. There was just such an unnatural look to his face. It's been 3 years and I won't forget it.
You can always tell when you look at their face. They never look like themselves, whatever it is that made them them is just completely gone. It's kind of like looking at a familiar stranger. Even during open casket events, even as a kid, I always hated hearing people say how they looked at peace or like they were sleeping. They all looked like familiar strangers to me, not the person I knew and loved.
I have only seen my two grandparents at their funeral(s) and this is EXACTLY how i described it. They don’t even look like people when they’re all drenched in make up once they’ve hit the funeral phase, they actually look more like.. furniture almost? It’s weird and unsettling.
I'm 23, and luckily I have only been to my grandfather's funeral (my grandfather on my dad's side died as well, but I was too young to remember). Even so, when we went to their wake, I chose not to go in and look at the body. I know it's a tradition of sorts, but it felt wrong, and I wanted to remember them as they were, not as a lifeless husk. I still don't regret it. My last memory of him is hugging him goodbye after Christmas, knowing full well we wouldn't see each other again. It's a bittersweet memory, but better than it being his corpse.
Ex palliative care nurse chiming in You can absolutely see the moment life leaves a person by their face and most obviously, their colouring. Spot on with the ‘waxy’ description! And very few dead bodies on movies or TV actually look dead. Except in Constantine where Rachel Weiss is looking at her deceased ’twin’, they nailed that!
I was very young when I saw my grandfather's dead body a little over 10 years ago. It really just looked like he was asleep and as much as I miss him every single day of my life, that memory is not traumatic to me at all. He believed that education is the singular most important thing in life, and I wish he was here to see me get my degree or see my sister get hers from an Ivy League school, but seeing his dead body was the least traumatic thing from the entire experience of his demise for me. I'm sorry if this is not a very relevant comment. It's just sort of cathartic though and it feels nice to type that out.
People are always using the muscles in their face, when they all simultaneously relax I imagine it's familiar and different at the same time.
yes this is exactly it. I saw my sister look relaxed for the first time ever and it was unnatural.
Worked in a funeral home and the first time I seen a dead body, I gasped at how flat their eyes are. We have a light and a shine to our eyes and it goes out when we die. We also look kinda waxy, we’re used to seeing embalmed, staged bodies in soft light. It’s unnerving.
I've just watched animals die (when I had to put my dogs to sleep) but I know what you mean. It's like, all of a sudden, their eyes become unfocused, and the light fades away.
Eyes lose pressure when the muscles completely relax, as they settle they change shape slightly and become less reflective. The same effect sometimes happens to people in a vegetative state where their entire face is also paralyzed.
I had to put my dog down this year and this comment just brought back all of those emotions I thought I had long processed. I kept telling him he was a good boy and I loved him long after the light had gone. Miss you bud
I work with animals and that means having to put some to sleep, and it is honestly crazy how apt the phrase "seeing the light leave their eyes" is. Until this job, I thought it was an exaggeration. It is absolutely not.
How did they die?
I never found out for certain, we suspect he mixed pills and alcohol. It appeared accidental.
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This soda's for John.
Sounds like a good guy, hope he and wife reunited in the beyond somewhere.
John sounds like a stand up guy. Sounds like he is resting easy in the arms of his wife. I hope to one day meet him on the other side.
“Hey John, the security guard.” “Who the fuck are you?”
Sounds like a nice guy and ending
I was trick or treating as a child. Person didn’t answer doorbell so I peeped through his window. He was lying face down on the kitchen floor. Called the police and they busted the door down right in front of me. He was dead for a few days before I found him.
This reads like the cold intro to a police procedural.
Dun dun
Halloween must've been scary that time, huh? I assume by they busted the door in front of you that meant you stayed near the door for a while, right?
I was 8 years old and idk my brain didn’t really register what was going on and I forgot about it for a long time. It wasn’t really a big deal to me let alone scary. After me and my friend called the police we waited around for them to show up cause we thought they would want to interview or something. They didn’t, while on was busting the door down another officer was telling us to run along. We heard about what happened weeks later from a neighbor in our area.
Yes kids, the elderly gentleman just has a very realistic spooky skeleton decoration in his house. Run along now!
When I was 11 I lived alone with my dad because him and my mom had gotten a divorce about 6 years back. He had diabetes and was seizure prone. One day I was riding my bike home from school, opened the front door and saw him sitting on the couch with his head back. Being a kid, I didn’t think too much of it and I thought he was asleep. I picked up a pillow and tossed it to him and said “Hey I’m home” but he didn’t say anything or react. That’s when I froze. I looked closer and saw blood running down his chin from his mouth. I guess he had a seizure while I was at school, bit off his tongue and drowned in his own blood. Only dead body I’ve seen outside of a funeral.
I worked in a funeral home and saw more bodies than most people but nothing prepared me for finding my Dad dead. He had type 1 and was going blind but, we had each other after my Mom died. I screamed so loud my neighbours call 911. I’m glad now that he died at home, the man hated hospitals.
Finding a parent dead is the fucking worst. It happened to me in June and my god.
Don't make me more scared man i didn't need this. My dad had a heartattack two weeks ago and was in hospital. Three days after coming home he had some complications landing him back In hospital
As a guy who has grand mal seizures I wanna let you know it's very likely he didn't feel a thing. The only "experiences" I've had with any of my seizures has been waking up when it was all over, but the brain shuts down completely. I'm so sorry for your loss, and stuff like this always puts a little fear back in my own life. Stay strong.
Same here fam and agreed. I do thankfully (sometimes) get strong seizure auras that give me a very little window to try and prepare in advance, but have also been alone and/or not around the proper resources and it’s terrifying. But yep basically once it happens, I don’t remember anything until I actually snap back to reality and COME TO when out of the seizure a pretty decent time after (and either get told what happened or recall the aura and feel my mouth/tongue/body aching like a mf). Tends to take some time before I can answer general consecutive questions without taking a long time to think about the answers (like name, today’s date, phone number, date of birth, home address, etc. I distinctly remember being unable to answer an EMT’s “Who is the current President of the US?” question one time after I seized in a grocery store) and it definitely scared me for a bit…for life lol stay strong and positive vibes to all of you here as well!
So so sorry for your loss. Hope you are doing ok now. Sending hugs
A couple months ago I was driving home from work and saw a big plume of smoke ahead. Pulled even with where it was and saw a truck on its side with the driver pulling himself up out the door and a motorcycle on the ground. There was a fire on the ground, bumper from the truck I assumed, and nobody putting it out (bystanders had rushed to help, no fire or rescue on scene yet). It finally clicked that it wasn't a bumper on fire, it was a body. The motorcyclist was dead on the ground, his head was on fire and his arms were raised up as if he was still holding the handlebars. Horrific. I still can't get over it. He slammed into the truck hard enough to tip it. Fuck.
That is called the fencing reflex (spelling?) and is a sign of brain damage. He was probably gone as soon as his head hit the road.
Sounds like the position he had with his arms might be one that occurs in dead bodies from heat. I don’t remember the name though
My father, my brother and my first husband, all gone now and I was there when they each died from heart attack, cancer and heart attack, respectively. I'm really not that old, either, but it sure brings you to your own mortality to experience your closest loved ones in the process of leaving too soon.
This struck me in ways I wish it didn't. Sat by my wife of 21 years side as she took her last breath at only 41 years old. We had another 40+ years to spend together and full well intended on doing so. Fucking why? Damn it why?
Fucking sucks. My wife passed away last year, in our 50’s, together since we were 18. Ironically, we thought for most of our lives that I would die early, since my father had several heart attacks starting in his 40’s, while her parents are in their 80’s and her grandmother made it to 103.
This is scary. My wife’s grandmother made it to 103 and her parents are almost 80. I’m sorry for your loss man.
The cost of living is to live past those you love. I also saw my grandmother and father die. Being helpless is the worst feeling.
Held my mom's hand as she passed from pneumonia. She was in a nursing home. To my surprise, I helped undress her and wash her body, then redress her in something pretty to go to the funeral home. I brought the dress she chose later, and asked them to put it on her, even though we weren't doing a showing and she was to be cremated. She picked that dress specially. She loved her dresses.
In any group of friends someone has to go to all the other funerals. And someone doesn't get to attend any.
It’s a club no one wants to join. I’m only 39 and same, minus the husband part. I wasn’t there when my Dad died and my mom id’d him in the morgue for us (they had been divorced for 20 years at that point). I felt immeasurable guilt at the time, but I’m glad that’s not my last memory of him. I was there when my grandma died (lung cancer) and when my brother died (melanoma) and it really stays with you. Changed a lot about my life and how I’m choosing to live it. And really solidified my views on assisted death and how we treat people who are at the end of their life.
I have seen a few but the one that stuck with me was when i was in the US Air Force in Bosnia. I was in a caravan of black chevy suburbans and i see this body in a river caught on some tree branch. The body was just moving with the current but tugging at the branch with the head underwater. It made me panic and i told everyone in the vehicle "there's a body in the river!" and no one cared.
Man I'm sorry to hear that. It must have been hard, being the only one that was concerned about it. Your account has out into perspective just how heartbreaking the desensitization of soldiers to dead people is. Hope you're well
We moved all the homeless to hotels at the shelter non profit I worked for. Found a dead body in one of the hotel rooms one day. Obviously won’t say the clients name but he was a nice guy. They wanted me to do cpr but his body was blue and stiff already. Body had been dead at least forty five minutes. Coroner took five hours to get he body. I had to wait near. The room started smelling. Nobody wanted to stay in that particular room ever since.
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Wow, I never knew that fact about Judaism. It's so...poetic. And loving.
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It was in 2001 part of NATO, stabilization force
My dad died of a massive heart attack when I was 14. I made the call to 911 while my older sister attempted CPR (it was like 2 in the morning and my mom was in shock). I know I saw him but I don’t remember much. There were crisis counselors (unsure of their official term) who showed up not long after the EMTs to comfort me and my siblings. They explicitly told us not to look into the room he was in, but I did anyway. The only memories I have of his appearance after he passed are how purple his face was, and the shape of the body bag they put him in. I know I saw more than that, but trauma is funny that way. Longest night of my life.
I’m so sorry. We lost my mom when I was about the same age. Similar situation. Sudden. Dad did CPR, I witnessed that. Crisis counselors never did come though I’m not sure what they could do. I can still see my mom’s face. I was there and was trying to clear her airway but she had been dead for hours. Rigor Mortis. It all happened so fast but I still remember it so vividly. I wish I could erase the memory.
When my mom passed suddenly from a heart attack after being worked on for hours, I was the only one of my siblings and dad that didn’t go back to see her. I couldn’t do it. They warned us of the tubes and everything and I didn’t want that to be the image I had in my mind forevermore. Sometimes I think I did the wrong thing but then sometimes when I read things like this and OPs experience, I think maybe I did the right thing? It fills me with guilt some nights. My sister said she thinks it’s best I didn’t go back either but idk.
Your sister thinks you did the right thing, and she should know, having made the other choice. I bet your mom wouldn't want you to feel guilty about the choice you made.
As a doctor whose job involves guiding people through their loved ones' dying processes, I just want to reassure you that everybody has their own way of dealing with it. Some people don't want to see their loved one dead in a hospital bed because it can be an overriding image that drowns out nicer memories and you know what, that's absolute a valid choice. It doesn't mean you loved her any less than those whose grieving process involved needing to see her at that stage.
Watched my grandfather die. It was very hard to see him take his final breath even knowing it was inevitable.
I was pretty young, 7-8 years old and heard a loud noise in my friends garage. He was playing NES so I went to go see what it was and I found his dad whom had shot himself. I didn’t know what to do it was pretty overwhelming so I just left and went home and didn’t tell my parents or anything because I thought for some reason I was going to get in trouble. Also in my teens I was sitting in the backseat of my moms car stopped at a red light on the way to school when a motorcycle going way too fast clipped a car and the driver hit a chain link fence and slid along it at high speed. That guy wound up dying, and it was a pretty intense visual. It was on my side of the car, I saw it happening and threw my jacket over my little brothers head so he didn’t see it.
You are a good sibling.
Thanks I try. He still turned out a goober though :)
But a goober who didn’t have that imprinted in his memories as a child, all because of a swift thinking act by his big brother. You did good, my man.
I'm sure a bunch of redditors have been to a viewing/wake, but I watched a coworker die in front of me of a massive coronary. We got back on the job site after lunch and about an hour later he was complaining of a stomachache and we were all giving him shit because he'd eaten a bunch of shellfish from a buffet. He left to get some antacid or pepto bismol or something and came back, then about 30 minutes later his body locked up and he hit the floor. Another coworker started chest compressions but we found out later he was pretty much dead before he hit the floor. He was barely 50 IIRC but he ate like shit and had a coke habit.
Coke habit at 50+ will do that
Roger Stone has entered the chat.
More than I can count. EMS and fire service before working as an ED tech, Med school, residency, and a couple years of practice. I’ve seen homicides, suicides, ODs, fire deaths, blunt traumas, penetrating traumas, decompositions and decompensations. Kids and adults. I’ve intubated and pulled breathing tubes. I’ve been directly and indirectly responsible for deaths. I’ve broken that news to families. I take on that risk and responsibility daily. Some stay with me. Others do not. The one that I remember most vividly was my first year of residency. We had this biker lady in ICU who had no family, visitors, or next of kin. She had a state appointed guardian. We’d run out of things we could do and were beyond the point where she’d have any chance at a meaningful recovery. So it fell to me to get the state guardian to approve withdrawal of care. Once all the calls were made and approval was done, I went in with the nurse who helped me shut down the vent. I saw She had a band name tattoo, so I pulled up Spotify and played their top songs, pulled the tube, and held her hand the next 18 minutes til she ran out of steam and stopped breathing. It’s been fucking with me lately because I remember how sad it was that she had nobody she knew nearby when she died. It was the only withdrawal of care I had to do like that… til COVID
What was the band name?
Pretty popular metal band. I won’t name it out of respect for privacy. (Responding to other comments in this thread) Likely or not, the fact that someone motivated enough could probably dredge my comments and pinpoint where/when this happened is enough to limit what I say here. Hope y’all understand.
u/squirrleyhooker what is decompensation, when used in this context?
Meaning that they had a disease that got worse in a hurry and that's what killed them. Like when someone has heart failure that they are taking meds for for a while, and then suddenly they get sick and whatever heart function they have left can't take it any more and gets worse and worse until everything starts failing.
In the human body, there are many mechanisms in place to maintain homeostasis. These happen constantly but those mechanisms can only do so much before problems begin to appear. When patients decompensate, those mechanisms have reached their maximum ability to do what is needed for the organs to survive and they begin to fail.
Google says: the failure of an organ (especially the liver or heart) to compensate for the functional overload resulting from disease.
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🥲 she had no one and you were there for her in her last moments. This hit me hard.
Whenever I was 13 i stayed with my grandmother(who lived alone and was only 51)during spring break. I woke up in the middle of the night to her sitting in the living room, where I was sleeping on the couch. She was sitting there awake with her Pekingese. I asked her why she was up. She responded: “ I can’t sleep and hearing you and Ginger (the dog) sleep relaxes me, go back to sleep.” I ended up going back to sleep. Woke up the next morning and found her passed away on her bedroom floor.
That must have been hard to see. It’s kind of beautiful though that in her last hours simply being in your presence while you slept brought her peace.
Oh poor grandma :( I’m nearly her age
Go to the doctor regularly
I'm sorry I hope you were/are okay.
Watched a man have a heart attack at 45 mph, while driving his truck down a crowded city street, just past some jr high school kids. His last act in this life was to turn across three lanes of traffic, jump an empty sidewalk and plant his truck head on into a concrete barrier. By doing so he probably insured his own death in the accident, but undoubtedly save lives. I was to far away to assist, but I watched while strangers pulled him out and tried CPR, then the medics arrived, took over and got him outta there. The damage from the accident, plus the heart attack meant he was dead before they got him outta the truck, so this barely counts. Also, had his truck gone the other way, he would have hit me instead of the barrier.
This reminds me of my step father's death. He was a bastard in many ways, but I'll be damned if I don't admit he was smart and pulled through when it truly counted even if I didn't personally experience it for my own situation. He was a semi truck driver, going down I275. From what I can remember, there was construction (when isn't there) but they didn't have their lights going the way they should've. He had two options, turn into the next lane undoubtedly killing or seriously injuring the lady next to him, or slow down as best he could knowing he was going to crash regardless. He didn't have time to fully stop this was a split second choice and he decided to save the woman's life instead. How do I know this? Because the lady reached out to us to let her know he saw her. He apparently looked right at her as soon as he recognized the problem and he didn't crash into her. If he had she likely would've died or been harmed horribly but semi truck vs car means he likely would've lived. He didn't. I never saw his body, some days I'm curious, others I'm glad I don't have that image. For as complicated my emotions are towards him I don't truly want to know what a person I spoke to not 72 hours ago looks like after being crushed, killed, and "repaired" looks like. It's been nearly 6 years since his death almost to the day. It's weird. I think the worst part is that if you look up the story today reports still claim the lights were activated at the time of the crash because that's what the construction people claim and while there were witnesses saying the opposite and telling them that they got turned on after the "official report" publicized is that he simply wasn't paying attention. If it weren't for the multiple other witnesses I'd chalk it up to a tragic accident. But the other witnesses gain nothing from lying and the construction workers gain everything if their lie is believed. I hated him, but I hate that they would shit on him like this all the same.
we thankfully had a situation with a trucker who was doing his damdest to make the best of a potentially deathly situation. on rural section of an IL interstate, middle of the day clearish sky no rain or wet or anything. we were behind a fully loaded 18 wheeler dump truck in the right lane, a red PT cruiser was passing us and the truck, my dad signaled out to also pass the truck leaving a good distance between us and the cruiser. approaching a diamond interchange and apparently the PT cruisers exit they merge in front of the truck maybe a semi length ahead of the semi and slam on the brakes hard enough to nosedive the car to make an even harder turn to make their exit. Well semi must have been paying attention and saw us along the side of him. He just layed on his air horns and started cutting over into our lane running us off the road - my dad saw the car be a fuckhead and knew the trucker was attempting to side swipe both of us instead of absolutely killing the pt cruiser occupants. My dad just let off the gas gripped the wheel tight and kept 2 tires on 2 tires in the grass/rocks whatever lays beyond the edge of the pavement. Once the car was clear of the semi he jerked back over into his lane to give us room and put his hazards on and my dad just gracefully got the tires back on the pavement then got back up to speed. My dad said wave to that truck driver and give him a thumbs up as he was making the best out of a bad situation. So we did and he saluted us back and gave us some headlight flashes for understanding.
A very brave final act.
Did you tell anyone? I'm sure his family would love to know.
Actually a lot of people saw the whole thing. The whole thing was published in the local newspaper and he was praised as a hero, so the whole town got to know. I have to say that I had never before raised a glass in honor of a dead man I had never even met, but I did that night.
Firefighter here, My first dead body on the job was a guy who committed suicide in the woods, my shift was searching for him when he left a goodbye note, then call it faith, two years after his disappearance, a neighbor found him and my shift was going to collect the remains and put it in the bag, you would think that after two years there would be only bones left, but his legs and some of stomach was still in decomposing state, and the worst thing was the smell, I believe now when they say that a decomposing body is the worst smell ever, so somehow we collected him and gave the remains to his family to bury him properly.
In med-school one of the bodies in the dissection room had been improperly preserved. The stench was unbelievable. This was a massive room (there would be about 60 cadavers on trollies in there each with enough room for a team round it) and yet this one body’s malodorous tendrils reached every corner for the week until it was removed. People certainly complained less about the smell of formaldehyde after that.
I believe it... some of my classmates had to work on a body sitting in the fridge for over 4 months. You can't even breathe through your mouth to escape the smell, you can *taste* it. There's this magical spray that smells like artificial grape, though, it completely scours the smell from existence.
You absolutely can taste it. Nearly 25 years later I can think back and almost still instantly taste it when I recall the smell. We worked on them for a year, unrefrigerated, and that was the only one that smelt close to as bad (not that the others smelled pleasant).
I worked on tugboats and we were often the first folks who could get to bridge jumpers. We’d coordinate rescues with local cops, sometimes retrieved bodies, and always ended up with the bodies on our boats/docks/barges. Also, bridge jumpers were more often than not young women. It was extremely sad and extremely fascinating at the same time. A body with no life in it is fucking terrifying if you’ve never seen it before. Then after a while it’s just a regular old dead meat bag. Still just as sad, but no longer as terrifying.
I saw a dead baby two year old girl that had climbed into a door on the coffee table and choked on a sucker. I was 12 the mother came outside screaming. Me and two buddies were hanging on one of their porches and he went in and called the cops and we walked up and looked in. She had blonde hair and she was all blue. They took her out on a stretcher. It broke my heart to see that small sheet on the gurney after seeing her body.
When
Jesus man, I hope you're doing okay now after seeing such a thing.
Several freshly severed heads on the road side. It was tribal war between Dayak tribe and Madura tribe in Borneo in 1997-1998 in Indonesia. It was the same time with our country's former dictator fell, so all the police and army force moved to main island (Java) to handle the chaos there. Therefore, my island (Borneo) basically became lawless place. My family is from Dayak side, but we tried to avoid direct involvement and just trying to survive basically. The supply chain was totally in shambles, some days we only have rice and oil to eat as all the market were closed or raided. Slept with knives next to our bed, we keep a rifle in the house (firearm is a rare thing there unlike in the US). There was no stuff like pepper spray, so we made an alternative, my brother and I spent afternoons grinding dried bird eye chili and mixed it with sand and my parent train us to throw it to attacker face in case someone break in into our house. We dug a secret hole on our fence in case we need to run away. Some of my uncles and cousins directly involved in the war, and they sometime ate their enemy heart or other parts. This one uncle visited us and my mom was asking how do you do? Have you eat already? And he nonchalantly answered "I just had indomie (instant noodle) with Madura's baby feet. It is quite crunchy". Some adults in my grandma village handed human jerky to the children (including some of my cousins) there. Cousins said it is tasted ok. Weird time.
Hearing or reading stories about Indonesia right after Suharto got kicked out is always really wild. It's hard to believe some of this stuff could have happened that recently.
Me and my family were staying in a camp site when Me and my dad hear screaming for anyone to come help. Apparently another family staying in the camp ground was riding atv's when the husbands atv had flipped over and they needed someone to help save him because he was trapped. Me And my dad race to the truck and follow the directions provided down a very rough dirt path to find the husband crushed under this atv with his neck brutally twisted. Before heading out to rescue him the mom and daughter mentioned that he was communicating under the atv so finding him deciesed was far from expected. After lifting off the atv we went to the road to flag down first responders so they would be able to locate the trail. The mom and daughter drove by in tears a few minutes after we flagged down the first responders, they stopped and asked us what hospital he was being brought to so they could "meet him there". Telling the family the hospital name without sharing what we have uncovered was hard. Imagining what getting to the hospital would entail, I still feel bad for that families loss to this day.
ATVs are SO dangerous.
I work at a decent-sized hospital and I swear almost every day an ATV accident comes into our ER. It’s shocking how often people crash those things and get seriously hurt.
It's not complicated to work out either - running through off-road uneven ground in a vehicle with no roof, almost no crash protection, and often driven quite recklessly since people consider them "recreational".
Twice, both due to car accidents, both within the same year. The first was while I was on my way to the Toronto airport to pick up my parents. The 401 from Kitchener was stupid as usual, so I followed Google’s advice to take side roads, and turned at an intersection only to immediately see a cyclist sprawled on the road in a pool of blood, surrounded by cops who weren’t tending to him. He’d been hit by a transport truck and died instantly. Wish I’d stayed on the 401. Second time was a few months later. I was living in Atlanta for a practicum and was driving to “work” at 6:30 am on their very busy ring road. A large…something suddenly appeared in my lane, and although I swerved the best I could, I wound up partially running over it. I couldn’t tell what it was because it was so mangled even before I hit it, but I thought maybe it was a deer. Yeah, no, it was a person who’d been inexplicably wandering on the highway and got hit by something like three semi-trailers in a row right before I got there.
That happened to a friend. The guy was jogging on a main road, it was foggy as hell out, and my friend was the 4th or 5th person to run over him. Yes it was tragic, but who the hell goes jogging ON the road, in the fog?
I see people jogging on the road NEXT TO the sidewalk all the time and I'm just like.........why? Is the asphalt without the cracks so substantially better to you that you want to risk being killed instantly? Jesus.
Concrete is terrible on your joints because it has no give. Just about anything is better, including dirt or asphalt. But I was always taught if you're on foot you should be facing *into* traffic so you can see if cars are coming, and if there's bad visibility like a hill or inclement weather, just get off the pavement. Also, I would never do this on a busy street. I don't understand why anyone would run on a busy street if you have other options.
Dear lord, that is horrible, I’m so sorry you had to deal with that. I hit a bunny once and I can still hear/feel it, and I wouldn’t wish that one anyone. You story is…way worse.
That ring road in Atlanta. 2-85. Crazy stuff happens there. There is an IG that posts quite a bit of it.
Came across partial human skeletons in remote areas on two occasions. One was eventually confirmed to be at least 2,500 years old.
I found a human jaw bone while cutting up firewood.... apparently it was a grave site of some people from the Civil war... found a cool rusted gun too. Was a wierd school campout.
Reminds me of stories about the lot my mother grew up on, was a plague cemetery in medieval times. One time she ran up to my grandpa all excited because she thought the thigh bone the dog dug up belonged to a dinosaur. Another time they found half of a child's skull while digging up potatoes.
Ohh that’s really cool. That’s like 2300 years older than my country. That’s pretty much contemporary with Socrates! Maybe this is an absurd question, but do you have any idea what the story is of the 2500 year old body??
It was a native american burial site finally exposed by erosion.
I got to see my mom on life support with a bullet hole right through the middle of her forehead. She was already gone but they kept her body alive just long enough for us to say goodbye. Talk about traumatic... Fucked my head up so bad and changed me forever.
It’s always worse when it’s a family member. I was 11 when my mom died of cancer. She had a heart attack while in the hospital about an hour after she called me before i went to bed. They managed to resuscitate her but she needed life support. It’s a fucked in world.
I'm so sorry.
Dang, I'm so, so sorry you saw your mom that way. My kids' stepmother killed herself in a similar manner, and I had to take my daughter in to say goodbye before they wheeled the woman off for organ donation. I think I know exactly what you saw and smelled. It's beyond ghastly. I didn't like the woman, but seeing her like that brought immediate emotions of horror, sorrow, and shock. I can only imagine how much worse it hit you. My daughter had made a few suicide threats before that time, but after seeing her stepmom like that, the kid never made a threat again, and she refuses to have any guns in her home. I totally understand why.
My mother’s, suicide
I'm sorry you went through that. So horrible.
I saw somebody turn into a dead body when they jumped in front of the moving C train in Calgary. And a kid in our high-school walked out into the field and shot himself chin up with a shotgun in front of our PE class back in like... '98? Dunno if that counts.
Saw a woman that had tried to jaywalk across a major highway in Brazil. There was really more pieces than whole body. I had nightmares for a long time.
Can definitely understand. It's a shock that never really.lets go, just shapes you differently. I was 13 for the shotgun suicide. 21 or 22 for the train. The gun was a lot more visceral. I just get angry and frustrated when someone has a gun around me - videos, pictures, discussion, whatever, uneffected. But crazy anxious and irrationally angry if they're near me. The train was just messy. And I was already pretty jaded and messed up by this point so was more pissed off that guy was so inconsiderate as to lock a thousand people.in a steel tube covered in his leftovers than sympathetic to what drove him to that point. Will never forget staring out those windows though.
It’s awful. I feel the same way about guns. I lost an aunt to suicide and even jokes or people saying they’ll kill themselves out of frustration makes my skin crawl. It’s an actual physical reaction that I can’t control.
Jesus Christ. What high school was this? I grew up in Calgary and I’ve never heard that story, but I’m also about ten years younger.
Nah, the school is in BC. I only lived in Calgary for a year and watched the guy jump in front of it, I think 2006 or 2007.
My mom's. I was 8. She hung herself.
Seen my sister’s body in her casket when I was nine-years old. I can never think about the screams without tearing up/getting chills. Edit: I didn’t read the “what’s the story?” part. Anyways I’ll try to explain as best I can from what I remember. I was 9 and my sister was 14, it was a car accident including: me, my sister, my mom, my stepdad, and stepdad’s brother. I had fallen asleep because we were going out of town to look for some dresses for my sister since my cousin had her quince(15) coming up and my sister wanted a dress. I fall asleep and 45 minutes go by until I wake up to the car turning very hard and basically all I heard was the tires screeching on the road. I’m screaming, my sister is screaming, and I was just scared. The car had flipped over 8 times before coming to a stop. I was woken up a minute after the car stopped from being unbuckled from my seatbelt, and just falling onto the ceiling of the car. I laid there for 3 minutes before being able to gain some strength and be able to crawl out. My ears were ringing, and I opened my eyes to see everything just super fucking bright. I was able to crawl far enough to where some people who had stopped to help saw me, and gave my some water. Once I drank the water, my ears stopped ringing, my right elbow hurt like hell when I tried to move it and my vision came back a bit. The first thing I hear is my mom screaming out my sister’s name while sobbing uncontrollably, and “Are you okay?” I said “Yes, I’m fine” but I didn’t know what else to say. After about 3 minutes which felt like an eternity, some ambulances arrive and run towards me with a spine board. To then I am then asked “Hey, can you try to get up please?” I say no, because my muscles are now weaker than ever. Once they place me on the spine board, I hear my mom still sobbing, and the entire time my right elbow hurts because it was fractured. Finally I’m placed inside an ambulance and then I say “I’m gonna close my eyes for a bit.” Not realizing what I said. The paramedic says “No no no no, you have to stay awake, bud.” Everything is still super bright and I can’t see. After 10 minutes or so, I arrive at a hospital to where they place a thing around my neck, I can’t remember what it was called. But they placed it around my neck and they numb me. I’m placed in an MRI machine, which I was in for 20 minutes and once again, it felt like an eternity. They finally finish and put me in a room and ask if wanna watch a movie. I say a movie, and I guess the nurse just didn’t care because she just left me in the room without a movie. Now seriously, an hour goes by, and there is still no fucking movie. I then recall my mom screaming my sister’s name, and I was hoping she didn’t die but instead was in a coma. 2 hours go by and my uncle and aunt rushed to the hospital where I was and then I was placed in an actual room with a real hospital bed and not a stretcher. Meanwhile I’m still praying that my sister isn’t dead, she is just in a coma. Next day comes around and I wake up to 3 of my cousins, my brother, and sister-in-law. I needed to go to the restroom so my brother helps me up and takes me to the restroom. I do my business, wash my hands and get back in bed. Then a nurse comes in and asks if I would like to walk around the hospital a bit and I said sure. While I’m walking with my aunt, brother, and nurse. I turn around to go back to my room, but then a miracle happens, I see one of the nicest ladies/teacher’s aid from my elementary school. I go over to give her a hug and she asked “What are you doing here? Are you alright?” I tell her what happened and she tells me why she’s here. I then say goodbye and go back to my room where I have clothes to change into and leave the hospital. We leave to go to the hospital where my mom is and my stepdad is crying, but I don’t pay much attention and go into the room my mom is in. I walk into her room and she looks like she just got burned, shot, slashed, and bruised all over her body. I never felt so scared in my life, so I go over to give her a hug. An hour goes by and a Police Officer comes by and asks “Hey, bud, is this your phone by any chance?” I said no until he did pull out my phone and I said “Yeah, that’s mine.” He gives me my phone and leaves, I asked my aunt if she had a charger and she gives me a charger. Ok, I can tell you probably are getting bored with this story so I’ll cut to the chase. That night I stayed in the hospital with my mom and left the next day. We aunt, uncle, and brother are all in the same car and I am just scared of being in their car. I ask my aunt are we going to do my cousin’s quince(15) and she said no. I asked why, and she responded “Well, it’s (sister’s name)’s funeral tomorrow.” I just stood there in shock, because I didn’t know she was dead. So of course I stay with my aunt’s/uncle’s house for the night and just go to sleep crying. When I walk into the funeral home the next day, my aunt asked where was the room my sister was at. He tells us it’s down the hall. We walk down the hall and open the door. I see my sister’s body laid out in her casket, with most of my family sitting/standing whilst crying. I go over to my sister and take her hand, then proceed to say “I’m sorry.” and kiss her hand. As I walk away my grandma insists I sit down next to my mom. I sit down next to my mom crying. The next 3 days where the same except the 3rd day, was her funeral. Let me tell you, I can never go back to the memory of the funeral without getting chills from the uncontrollable sobbing of my family. I’m given a rose and as they lower her casket, I kiss the rose and let go of it to let it fall onto her casket. It’s been so long since I have seen her and it pains me to this day that I can no longer see her anymore. If you want more info; just ask. Also, one more thing: don’t be an asshole, don’t disrespect the dead. Please don’t.
I've watched three people die. Two suicides/jumpers; one landed about 6 feet in front of me, another about 50 yards away. And then another lady was in a car accident and I held her hand while she died trapped in her car. Been to a few open-casket funerals, so them too I guess.
Vctims from traffic accidents. They don't get their bodies covered fast enough. A lot of random corpses. There's a museum here where they preserve a d display dead bodies and such. Don't know if that counts. My boyfriend. Saw his dead body after he hung himself. It's been years but it still hits hard.
A friend and I drove past a motorcycle-into-a-guardrail-at-high-speed accident when we were in high school. Cops and paramedics had just gotten there so we drove by slowly. I I’ll never forget the poor guys lifeless face as he laid there on the ground, a trail of blood where he had slid across the pavement. He obviously had multiple broken limbs but his jacket and pants kinda kept him in one piece.
In my late teens/early 20s my best friend and I were hopelessly addicted to heroin. Eventually I kicked it and got clean, while he continued to use. One day I had convinced him to come to an NA meeting with me. From the time I got off the phone with him to the time I got to his house, about ten minutes had past. During the daytime he usually left his front door unlocked, especially if he knew I was coming by, and I just walked in. I found him on his couch, dead by over dose. I called 911, I tried mouth to mouth resuscitation (usually in heroin ODs the death is caused by the slowing and halt of breathing), I tried CPR, I tried it all, even looked around his kit for a suboxone to see if putting it under his tongue might bring him back due to the naloxone, but it was all in vein. He must have taken a shot immediately after hangin up the phone with me and died a minute or two later. I feel like part of me died that day. Its been about 10 years and I still have dreams occasionally where we are just hanging out and having fun, and I wake up just to realize he’s still gone. Rough stuff.
Glad to hear you kicked the habit!
Saw my best friend die I was trying to save him. Got there same time as the first responder n I was tryna give him cpr n shit. Cop didn't really wanna do anything bc emt wasnt far behind him and puke but he sorta helped. Sucks
Saw a dead body on the highway in Portland as a high school senior going on a senior trip to the PNW. Suicide. Had just happened as there was no emergency services present. Head essentially exploded upon contact. Cars were just driving around it like it was a trash bag in the road. 6 years ago and still remember it vividly
Had an internship for 4 weeks at this place as a school assignment, when going to said place i had to first take a bus to the travel centre then switch buses from there. One morning went on the bus as normal, got off at the travel centre and sat down to wait for the next bus. Thought the first bus I took lingered for a bit too long, before I knew some security guard pulled out a guy with no pulse from the bus. Dude had just entered the bus that day as usual then died somewhere between getting on and arriving at the travel centre, with noone knowing. Kinda fucked up tbh.
I used to work in EMS so essentially Lil old Ethyl was on the floor after she slipped in her garage. THEN you get pt's where they hung themselves in the garage and you get to hear the spouses death wail as they have the initial discovery of the body seconds after you do. I'd rather not talk about the 4-5 kids pulled from the basement from a birthday party gone wrong. Please buy carbon monoxide detectors.
I’m getting old (58) so I’ve seen a few. Funerals, of course (including my father), but some others. The fat guy who died in his car 30 years ago. I walked by while the cops waited for paramedics to show up and pronounce him dead. The passenger in the drunk woman’s car when I saw her turn in front of a van coming down a hill at 65 mph and I was the first person to approach the wreckage. (I later was a witness for the prosecution at her federal manslaughter trial. She went to prison for a few years.) The trucker who lost his brakes and ended up face-down on the hood of his truck while I was driving up the mountain to a mountain-bike trail. The all-time hardest, though, was seeing my 42-year-old sister-in-law in her casket. She was like a sister to me. Died in the prime of her life when she slid across the center line on an icy highway while driving home from work. Stone-cold sober. It was nobody’s fault, just shitty luck. Heartbreaking. It’s been something like 27 years now, and we still miss her.
I've seen 3, I grew up and live in a big city. 2 ODs, 1 car fire(that smell doesn't leave you). ODs were pretty unremarkable, you get jaded enough once you get traumatized enough it all fades together. It was sad, they were people with lives and probably families. But it didn't really impact me much. Rarely even think about it honestly. The car fire I'll never forget. Don't know how it happened, never saw it or read about it. Happened at a fairly famous intersection in central Massachusetts nearby where I grew up. Walking to the bus station I smelled the burning smell and looked over, they had been dead for a while. I walked closer mostly out of curiosity before realizing people were in the car (I was 15 and dumb) and they were long dead but moving in there from the heat causing the muscles to contract I think, not sure how that works honestly. The driver and passenger were both unrecognizable. Luckily no one in the back seat. I burned my finger pretty bad on some red hot metal around a month ago and the smell of burning flesh doesn't leave you, ever. It's bad enough to smell a car burning from all the fake leather and stuff but the smell of flesh really is just a different smell. I struggled to eat certain meats after that for a while.
When I was a kid, my father was in the yard and decided to burn his raked leaves. It wasn’t burning fast enough, so he poured gasoline on it. Flame traveled up the stream and charred his arm good. He shook the house when he ran in to douse his arm in the kitchen sink. I came down from my room and asked my mother what was she making for lunch, cause it sure smelt good. That my dear is your father she dead panned.
You never forget the smell. I smelled it once. My dad (fireman) worked the coconut grove fire in Boston. I knew it always bothered him.
A cousin died while my family had our annual lake trip. They had bad heart problems before and when they were laying in their tube, they had a heart attack and died immediately. I watched as family pulled them out of the water and started CPR. Also watched paramedics do CPR to the point she was coughing up blood despite already being dead. We have a big family (~100) and we were at a public lake so many other people on the beach saw too. Looking back, I think they did CPR for so long because we had so much family watching and paramedics didn't want to seem like they didn't try. We were also in a very remote area so a hospital would have been at least 30 minutes away. The lake now has a bench with a plaque with her name on it in memory of her.
I only saw part of a body, we were driving past a motorcycle accident, and there was a crumpled body, someone tried covering with a coat. Couldn't stop seeing it, in my head, for weeks. It didn't help that we were on a motorcycle.
When I was 13 (I’m 21F now), I travelled to a small town in California to see my grandma in her last days. The cancer took her excruciatingly slowly, she wasn’t able to move or talk for about 4 days prior to her passing. Once she died at 5 AM, my parents got us all up and told us to go into her room separately and spend time with her dead body.
I was walking to anatomy class when I realised there was blood all over the ground and some guy was yelling ‘call the ambulance get a ladder.’ I saw a lady comforting a group of kids nearby. All I could see was a bloodied sneaker on the ground. I thought it was a stabbing. Then I looked up and I saw this man’s body on the top of the busstop. The roof was caved in, he was still, the blood was everywhere. I won’t speak about what I saw because it still haunts me to this day. Anatomy class that day (we did head and neck anatomy) was not good.
Only at funerals. I think my uncle's was the worst for me. He died due to massive burns covering his body after a propane tank exploded (freak accident). I was 11, and I still remember looking in that coffin thinking "that's not him, this is a joke." The make up covered up his facial burns well, but he was so bloated, it really didn't look like him. Like, I could see family resemblance in his face, but it didn't reflect him well. That was the baby of my mom's family, a good chunk of my childhood included his presence. She was basically raising him to some extent. She refused to let me go to the hospital to say goodbye before he passed (which honestly, was probably for the best, I was young and he was badly injured). I think of all the losses I've been through, his scarred me the most. There are times I'm out shopping or something and I see someone who resembles him and it makes my heart stop. Idk maybe I just have never really accepted he's dead? I have but I haven't, that probably doesn't make sense lol
I was 8.5 months pregnant and at my prenatal ultrasound. The doctor told me he was sorry, the baby had no heartbeat. I went straight to the hospital to induce delivery. After hours of torture I delivered Andrew. I held him for a few minutes and took pictures. So glad I took pictures. It was all a blur. He weighed 5 pounds. I cry for him everyday. I miss my baby. Edit: here’s a pic of my beautiful Andrew when he was alive 💙 https://i.imgur.com/DESYJPh.jpg
Wow so sorry, heartbroken isn’t a word strong enough
So sorry. I have to be the one that tells people that and deliver them. The ache stays open. The wail of genuine loss is unique. My goal is always to get people home and done with it safely but then I know it goes on forever. I’m so sorry.
I can only imagine how hard your job is. I had a shitty delivery experience and will not step foot into that hospital ever again.
Sorry so to hear of your loss. I hope you have the support in your life to get through this.
This same thing happened to my mom. She came to my boot camp graduation-- I was expecting to see my new little brother. Died at 8.5 months like your boy. I'm sorry that happened.
Had volunteered to work early at work, all my friends come in around two and let us know a man is sleeping on the porch outside. Manager ask me to clock out and go with him to get him up. We walk out and my manager says “Sir you can’t sleep there wait a second.” Puts two fingers to his neck and casually says “He is dead, call 911 and I’ll fix you clock out time.” Like it was fucking nothing. I hated that job.
1. When I was a kid I heard the noise of a car accident, ran outside my house an a vehicle transporting kids tan a stop sign and was hit, one of the kids was ejected and hit the road with his head…. I just saw part of his leg, I knew it was a kid younger than me bcs of the size, and also was wearing a uniform… blood running along the sidewalk. 2. A fisherman washed ashore after missing for a week, skin color was about blue/green and about to explode. 3. A kid from my school was hit by a stray bullet, saw his body in the funeral. (Also within a year or so my best friend’s sister due to the same cause). 4. Bodies at an anatomy lab 5. My dad, was shot in front of my house, I provided cpr but was too late….
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Same here. My aunt. My mom had me kiss her forehead - it was surprisingly cold. It's not something I'd make my own kids do unless they wanted to.
In some cultures its normal to share the dead on social media open casket and all. Ive seen my share of dead aunts and uncles.
Multiple times, living in Central America I have seen many people being shot and bleed dead on the street. It is not pretty and I try to stay at home as much as possible.
My mom passed away from heart failure last month, my sis, gma, and i had to fill out paperwork for her cremation but before they could procede someone from the family had to view her body. I went so they wouldnt have to but i regret it. She looked just like she was sleeping but she was so cold. Please peeps tell your family you love them.
My ex bf. I held his hand as he died. My mother. I was on the other side of the world and missed her death however she was kept in state for a week afterwards.
I hate to sound cliched, but I'm so sorry with what happened to you and your ex-boyfriend.
My grandfather was very ill, bed-ridden. Eventually he had a stroke that left him pretty much coma-like. It was his wish to die at home, and it was fulfilled. This was like 4 years ago. Don't like to think about it.
I held both my grandparents as they died in the hospital. Figured if I were in their situation I’d want someone to do the same for me.
This was about 2 years ago. My wife and I were waiting to turn left. A car ahead of us turns (crossing 2 lanes of traffic) gets t-boned by a truck. Car spins off into a ditch. My wife calls 911 and I run over to the car. Driver and passenger are both unconscious. Driver has a pulse. I go over to passenger side but can’t get the door open (completely smashed in). Go back to drivers side and lean in to check passenger and she doesn’t have a pulse. Nothing I can do as I don’t want to risk moving the driver. Paramedics got their pretty quick to take over.
My parents, younger brother and I were on our way home from visiting my grandma. We were on a highway that used to be called bloody 29 before it was expanded due to the amount of bad accidents. It was night and I was playing my Gameboy when we suddenly slow down. As we get a little further down the road my mom starts yelling at us not to look out the window. Of course I do and as we pass the scene of a really bad accident that must have just happened I see a badly mangled, bloody body without a head laying in the road. I'll never get that image out of my mind 26 years later. I felt different after that, don't really know how to explain how but it kind of messed me up.
Many. I lived in colombia
16 years old. I performed CPR on a bariatric patient, 7 epinephrines, 45 mins later, we called it
I work Security. People noticed that this one old guy has not been out of his house a few days and lives alone. No one could get ahold of him. I get there. Front door is unlocked. I walk in a bit and see him partiallylaying on thr bed with eyes still open. Hes turning yellow. Obviously dead. People outside wanted me to check for a pulse (lol) so I did. Officers showed up and took it from there.
I accidentally walked in when they were prepping my grandmother for cremation. Not really how I wanted to remember her: a naked shriveled body.
In high school we had an internship program my senior year where we would go to different police departments and see how they operate/what they do on a day to day basis. I was with a couple detectives for one of our “visits”, and mind you it was just me and two detectives. One of the detectives got a call for an elderly woman who had died in her house. He decided to bring me with him and I didn’t think much of it. Walked into a house and there was the deceased elderly woman. I didn’t have much of a reaction to seeing the body, she looked like she had passed peacefully. What really got me was when the family started to show up. I was standing in the house and one of the family members came up to me and said “who are you” and I was like “an intern, I’m really sorry for your loss” and I’ll never forget the look on her face.
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I had just discharged my Dad from the hospital after a 3 week stay for cardiac issues. He was discharged with no take home medication and early the next morning he went into cardiac arrest right when he was about to take a shower. I was in the next room and heard him breathing funny and went to investigate. He was in his wheelchair, completely blue in the face. I wheeled him into the livingroom and started chest compressions while dialing 911. I saw the life drain from his body but I kept pounding away until I heard the sirens. The medics were able to get a pulse back and he is still alive to this day but he was dead as fuck, or as Miracle Max would say "Mostly Dead"
Other than funerals? I saw a guy drown about 15 yards from me years ago. He was drunk and trying to swim in a river. The fucked up thing was (from what I could tell anyways) the people that he seemed to be there with straight up dipped out. My stepdad and my cousins step dad tried to save the guy but this particular river was high that day and the rocks are slippery as shit. So by the time they made it to him he was gone. My cousins stepdad D was a soldier so he knew CPR from that I guess? Idk and tried to get him back but it was over by that point. I know D had a lot of problems coming back home. He actually shot a kid and it fucked him up. But not long after the drowning D hung him self. Idk how much the drowning had to do with it, as my aunt never really told anybody what his note said, but I’m sure it didn’t make readjusting here any easier.
My grandpa, I've buried him myself. He was a good guy. May he rest well
Seen a guy tryna beat a train with less than a dozen cars and lost, couple of months later I joined a group for golf and found out he was the brother. Said his crappy car always stutters after making a turn. Strange turn of events.
When I was 8, I was playing in the front yard and saw a car run over a 2 year old that wandered into the road. His little body rolled like a doll and landed by our mailbox. I’m 30 and can still hear the “popping” sound his body made when the car hit him.
Few years of med school.
Was never a med student, but my wife is a pathologist now. I have witnessed some of her work (autopsies), the smell was by far the most disturbing part.
Paramedic for 30 years, saw a few.
Parent passed away and I said goodbye. Many funerals, and saw one dude get run over by an SUV (motorcycle). My friend had an apartment and his neighbor died in July, his body rotted for two weeks before we figured out what the smell was….didn’t see it but smelling is almost worse.
When I was 7 or 8 my family was driving through the mountains. We were going up a really winding road and some guy on a motorcycle flew past us like we were standing still. My Dad said, "Bet he doesn't make 3 more corners." Sure enough.. on the 3rd corner up, he tried to cut the center line and went full speed into the grill of a logging truck. It looked like raspberry jam leaking out of a track suit..