I See People

on people and their secrets

I see people at their rock-bottom a lot. When their faces are crumpling like paper, falling apart at the seams. I see tears rolling down their cheeks like falling petals, I see ice freeze in their souls. Seeing this has taught me to get to know the panes and dynamics of a human face. The way hope can die, and how that surrender is visible in the crease of the eyes and the weakening of a clenched jaw. The way light can fade from a person’s eyes, each candle of their mind being blown out, one by one. The way expressions: anger, hope, pain, can disintegrate into slack blankness. I know that look so well, I feel as if it has been burned onto the back of my eyelids. The look of ‘I knew. I knew all along, but I let myself hope, and that has made me a fool.’ This whole exchange, between me and the family is the sort of thing you have to be strong for, at least that is what I am told. Stay calm, use a blank sympathetic expression, a soothing voice. That persona, that act, is supposed to show strength, to be tough, and to be the support your family needs at this time, because I am so very sorry for your loss Mrs. Jenkins, we did everything we could to save your husband, or your son, your sister, your brother. The faceless conclusions to each case form a long list that just keeps stretching. At first I remembered the names of every missing person, every families desperate pleas. Eventually I gave up remembering. There were just too many bodies found in the woods, down alleys, in basements of abandoned houses. Faces and stories became files in a drawer, and I lost my hope. Too many broken hearts, lying in pieces on the floor.

Staying silent and calm when someone falls apart in front of you is not strength, but possibly one of the greatest weaknesses possible to the human race. What would be strong is to help. To sit down, to talk, and to say what these people need to hear, to try and show them that they have to move on. But how do you tell a mother she will survive without her son? How do you show a person the surface, when all they want to do is drown? I guess you could say I succeed if I find the body, but I promise you it has never felt like success. Whenever I do find closure for a family, and I watch them brake down, releasing that tiny bit of hope they have been toying with for weeks, I try to learn. What they want to hear, what they don’t want to hear. What will make them pull themselves together, just a little bit? The right expression to help, to be kind. So maybe, just maybe, the next time can be less painful.

The worst thing is the clever ones. The people who know, as soon as the doorbell rings at one o’clock in the morning that it is an execution bell. They know before they even see my face, see the sympathetic, cold mask that covers my features, that it’s bad news. That it was always going to be bad news. I wish I could just nod at them, walk away. I wish I could just scream at them, like the coward I am. “He’s dead. I’m sorry, I tried, but not hard enough, because I knew, because I had seen this before, I’ve seen broken bodies in deep dark woods surrounded by empty bottles of pills before, and I knew what we were going to find.” I wish I could tell them that, but it would hurt them too much to know that their lost loved one is just another file to me.

So instead I play the game. I tell them what they want to hear, I lie, telling them that it would have been quick, painless, and that maybe they are happy now. Some break and cry, right there, some invite me in, hands shaking and eyes empty. Some scream at me and pummel me with desperate fists.

This time, it is a lot worse. This time, I see straight through the sadness of the mother in front of me. I see a woman, who can bake the best brownies but absolutely nothing else. A see the woman who held my hands as we dance across the kitchen floor, the radio blasting. I see the woman who held me when I cried, who filled her window boxes with sunflowers, even though they didn’t grow. I see a mother who gave everything, and expected nothing.

I watch as she crumples in on herself, giving up and giving in to the demons and swirling darkness inside her. I know now what that feels like. How your soul is replaced by a swirling pool of emptiness, and how it just gets more and more tempting. I watch as her heart breaks, giving into the cracks running through it. There are tears streaming down both our faces, a grief too deep for words blurring my vision. Her tears form pathways down her face, a network of sorrow. I tried so hard; but desperation leads to anger, and I wasn’t wearing my bullet-proof vest.

I reach up to touch her face, but I am not real, and like smoke, my hand drifts through her. I can offer her no solace as I am, pulling against deaths arms, desperate to stay, to try and make my death- meaningless as it was, too mean something.

“I’m so sorry, Mum, I didn’t make it this time.”

© 2016 excusemeitsrosie

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Reviews

RibhyMay

You bloody genius, gets better every time I read it!

Posted 8 Years Ago

1 of 1 people found this review constructive.

ANTO

Christ this is affecting.

"I see the woman who held me when I cried, who filled her window boxes with sunflowers, even though they didn’t grow. .." - my word, so subtle but overwhelming.
Brilliant.