Coroner Relations

Dealing with people whose family member (or friend) has died is often incredibly difficult. All deaths are sudden, even those most anticipated (e.g. hospice deaths). It is an exceedingly emotionally charged time. It is not a time for thinking clearly, the thoughts race or the thought process slow to a crawl. The family and friends can’t “hear” or at least process what they hear adequately. Disbelief and doubt creep in (actually really roll in).

You try to anticipate that in talking with them, helping them through the processes, through the experience. Each death is different. Every person is different. Things may seem to be going well for them initially, but come tumbling down later. It may be hell for them from the beginning. You try to comfort, to be truthful, to be straight-forward. But it can be perceived as less than that. It can become distorted or seem to be distorted.

We always do our best. We are human, too, and “to err is human”. So we don’t always get it right. Or we may get it right, but it seems lees than right by those family members and friends. It gets put through a grinder, looked at with a microscope or telescope, at times with a less than perfect lens. It sometimes comes out looking less than perfect, even seemingly less than acceptable.

But we do it all again with the next individual who dies.