KORONER’s KORNER: Who am I?

When I submitted my last article I wondered, “Well, what am I going to write about next?”  Then I received a text from a friend of over sixty years.  She wrote, “You’re so talented.”  It made me cry.  Why?  Because I don’t consider myself talented.  I write what I feel the Spirit inspires me to write.  I cried because I felt that maybe I had misled people to think that it was my own talent that enabled me to write the words to help others to understand the meaning of death and more importantly, to emphasize the importance and temporariness of life. 

My friend is not the first.  Many pass their appreciation through others.  I beg you to understand that it is not me, at the most it would be a God-given talent.  As Rush Limbaugh used to say, “Talent, on loan from God.”  But I believe that I am only a messenger.  Trying to help people through what is most likely one of, if not the most difficult times of their lives, the loss of a loved one.

You see?  The job of the coroner isn’t to help the dead, it’s to help the living  Help the living to understand maybe not why their loved one is gone, but hopefully at least how.  While working with a deceased person’s body, another friend told me, “Nothing we do here is going to change anything.”  She may be correct for those who have departed, but I think that everything we do can help to change things for those left behind.  At the very least, help give them the understanding of what they can and can’t change.

As I stated here before, when my son passed away, “Nothing you can say can make anything better and nothing you can say can make anything any worse…”  But the coroner’s office can at least try to help in the healing process.  We can try to explain how death occurred and sometimes give a best estimate of when.  Neither of which changes anything, but sometimes it does provide a small measure of comfort where comfort is finding a hard place to rest.

I can’t make death any more acceptable, it’s a hard thing to accept.  But I can use my knowledge of death and its processes to try to help people understand the value of life.  I never dreamed a coroner’s job would entail this.  As a retired veteran myself, I even try to make sure that veterans and their dependents understand the entitlements they have earned through service to their nation and to us.  These services are certainly not in the Missouri Revised Statutes governing what a coroner’s duties and legal obligations are, but in my office, serving the survivors is at least as important as all of the designated duties. 

Serving you, the living, is just as important as we try to ensure folks understand that death is a part of life.  It is the ‘unknown’ that frightens us and we hope that our passing on of knowledge is helping clarify and enlighten folks so that the ‘unknown’ becomes smaller and smaller and the apprehension and fear is at least allayed to some small degree.

It is so sad that some have lately decided that the difficulties and disappointments of life have made them decide to end their own lives.  It leaves many of us wondering, “Could I have said something?  Could I have done something?  What did I miss?”  All questions that will forever go unanswered.  Some religions believe that suicide is the ultimate sin, that it is killing someone who is made in the image of God.  While other folks believe that it is a person’s own, individual choice.  There are those who even think that the word suicide brings shame on the family.  Much like we used to not mention that someone had to seek mental treatment.  Some folks say, “Don’t wash your dirty laundry in public”.  My thoughts were always that someone who believed in not washing their dirty laundry in public were likely the same ones who never ‘washed their dirty laundry’ at all.  If we have issues, we need to confront them.  Otherwise, our children are left in the dark and only know things through rumors and the internet.

Some states have made it legal for others to assist in suicide.  I have seen people in those irrevocable and sometimes vegetative states.  Sometimes they are in unrelenting pain and beg God to end their lives.  My utmost respect and admiration go out to those whose job I wonder if I could ever do, that of being a hospice nurse.  My own sister is a hospice nurse who helps bring dignity to people when they are finding every day a challenge to find any kind solace.  I have run an emergency room night shift, I have saved lives in emergency situations, I have helped a lot of people, but all of those pale in comparison to those who help our loved ones move on to the next stage of their life, death.

So, the answer to the question I wrote at the beginning, “Who am I?”, I’m nothing more than a messenger, trying to help folks understand that loving one another with the short time they have here on Earth is what the meaning of life is.  The more you give, the more you get.

While it will be more difficult for some than others, I hope everyone has a Happy New Year. 

Respectfully and in all humbleness,

Danny Leo Green

Coroner, Cedar County