Any Ordinary Day

by Leigh Sales

  Wendy has now spent more than fifteen years in death-related work, every day grappling with questions of fate, mortality and chance that most of us would find highly confronting. She stares life’s most evil and senseless twists square in the face. But she also sees humanity’s strength.

  ‘Each day in this job I see love, sometimes anger and bitterness too. But mostly I see love in all its manifestations, including in loss – its most gut-wrenching form. I see the love that has bound families and lovers and friends together, and how it endures beyond the person’s death, and how it feels alive and real in the room. Each day I witness the bareness of life, stripped back to who and what we love, and it makes our lives seem magical and heartbreaking and wondrous all at the same time,’ she says.

  Wendy copes with the traumatic and frightening aspects of her job because she has the sense that she is doing useful, purposeful work. She finds comfort in the knowledge that for the person who has died, no matter how confronting or cruel the manner of death, their suffering is over.

  ‘I know that whatever death may be, it’s an ending of some sort. So for me, I think there’s a distance I can put between knowing that the death happened – and it may have been terrible – but it’s ended for that person now,’ she says.

  The suffering, however, is not over for those who are left behind, and that’s where Wendy feels she can make a genuine difference. Like Detective Graham Norris, she views her job as helping people to adapt to changed circumstances. That process begins before somebody even walks through the door of the morgue. Before that moment, Wendy will have already seen the corpse herself so she’ll be able to describe to the next of kin, in great detail, what to expect. Being given this verbal description can neutralise what’s going on in somebody’s imagination, and help mitigate the shock of what they’re about to see.

  ‘Even seeing some horrific injuries, people have gone, “Oh, it’s not as bad as I had imagined,” and I think that’s because our imaginations aren’t bound by reality and so our minds can create endless, and often worse, possibilities,’ Wendy says.

  I am absolutely riveted by every word Wendy has to say. I know it’s macabre, but nobody ever tells you these things. The first time most people have any idea of what it’s like to go to the morgue to identify a body is when they have to do it. The mystery surrounding it surely makes the experience even more terrifying.

  Wendy explains more to me, including the way that every deceased person is laid out identically, on a sheet with a green blanket covering them. If the person’s own clothes are in a fit state to be worn, they will be dressed in those, but most people end up wearing a white hospital gown with short sleeves and a round neck.

  ‘I start with a physical description of the room itself,’ Wendy says. ‘I’ll point to the door and say that when I open the door, they’ll see the room is divided in half by a low wooden barrier, and how the person is behind that barrier laid out with some bedding around them. I’ll then talk about how the person looks. I’ll describe individual features – the colour of their hair and skin, the way their eyes and mouth look, any tattoos or marks I see, any distinguishing features, really. I’ll talk about how the person will be cold to the touch, because that can be a shock. All this positions people in the room so they can prepare for what they’re about to see. It can help to stabilise people if you give verbal and visual cues about what is going to happen next and if you do it in a way that shows you care.

  ‘As best we can, we clean their faces,’ she continues. ‘If there are some visible, even significant, injuries, it can be helpful for some people to see them. It means the injuries were significant enough for the person to have died. Otherwise some people think, But he doesn’t look like he’s been hurt, he looks like he’s sleeping!’

  If the injuries are particularly horrific, the morgue workers will cover them as much as possible. They always try to leave the hands out, if they can, as many people will want to clasp their loved one’s hand when they say goodbye.

  When someone arrives at the morgue, they are led to a private lounge adjoining the viewing room. Beyond the verbal briefing they’re given before entering that room, Wendy doesn’t have any particular plan.

  ‘I think the essence of my job is to be kind and to know what I’m talking about,’ she says. ‘I meet people at their response. You have to go with what’s happening in the room.’

  According to Wendy, one of the most important ways to help people come to terms with a death, especially a cruel or unjust one, is to shift the focus onto the fullness of the deceased’s life, not simply their final moments.

  ‘Lots of people will come to counselling with trauma distress,’ Wendy says. ‘They’ll want to know what happened to that person, what the details of their death were, who was there, who wasn’t there, what the injuries were. So when you work with clients and they’re fixated on how that person died, eventually you want to shift that into a fuller picture of their life. You want to hear about what that person was like for their life, not just the end of it. That’s not the whole picture.’

  ‘And do people want to tell you?’

  ‘Yeah. I’ve been in viewings where people have pulled out phone after phone to show me photos and are like, “And this one, and this one,” because in that room, it’s the body of somebody they’ve loved but it’s not that person in their entirety.’

  This also means that, for some families, there can be laughter in a viewing, ‘poignantly funny moments’, as Wendy puts it, if the family is by nature playful. Wendy will carefully read the cues and if people look like they need encouragement to be themselves, she will try to help.

  ‘I remember being in the viewing of a young child. The grandfather wanted to put a toy in the boy’s hand but was a bit nervous about doing it. The grandmother was nervous too. They hadn’t touched him yet.’

  ‘I asked, “Do you want me to do it?” So I did the first one, put the toy in his hand, and then they wanted to add more. The grandfather took a deep breath, walked up, grasped the boy’s hand, opened his palm and put his favourite toy in it. And it fell off. And we both looked at him and I whispered, “We asked you to do one thing.” ’

  The family burst out laughing, and later the grandmother got in touch to thank Wendy for helping give them that experience.

  ‘She remembered that moment of being in the room and being able to be with the child in a way that reminded her of what the boy had been like in the family, which was fun and light-hearted and silly.’

  Humour also plays an important part in helping Wendy and her colleagues cope with their jobs. It’s very common for people in death-related occupations to use black humour to relieve stress.

  ‘We’ve each picked the trolley we want to come in on,’ Wendy laughs, ‘we have our trolley number, and that’s one of our ways of coping.’

  Not long after this, I can’t stop coughing. ‘Sorry,’ I rasp, ‘I’ve got that thing when you get a tickle in the throat and you feel like you’re choking.’

  ‘Well, you’re in the right place,’ Wendy immediately deadpans (yes, I did use the word ‘deadpans’ deliberately – sorry), and I laugh hard because it’s so unexpected. I didn’t anticipate laughing in this place. The context, a conversation about all the bizarre ways people can suddenly drop dead, makes it even funnier.

  ‘But I haven’t picked out my trolley yet!’ I splutter.

  I’ve never met anybody with as much firsthand observation as Wendy of ordinary days on which things went horribly wrong. It means my list of questions for her is endless. I want to know her theories on everything.

  How often does the universe offer ‘signs’ that this is going to be a life-changing day?

  Almost never, reports Wendy, including when the death is a suicide and you might assume that, in many cases, the family would have seen warning signs and been bracing for it.

  ‘Every suicide in the city metropolitan area and surrounds comes to us. Almost every time you speak to one of the family, e
ven if there was a history of mental illness or some ideation around suicide, when it happens it’s a shock,’ Wendy says.

  ‘Is there anything predictable about the way people react to a traumatic death?’

  ‘I can’t hazard a guess about what someone’s reaction will be. I’ve spoken to families where it has been a murder and also families where the death is natural and somewhat expected, and the grief response can be equally profound. It can be about the quality of the relationship, who is left behind, what was or wasn’t said or done, all those factors.’

  ‘How about the factors that make somebody more able or less able to cope with a traumatic death?’

  ‘There can be protective factors, such as being an optimistic or resilient person, or being someone who has secure relationships in the family or in the bigger community. If someone has been in a relationship with the person who died where they gave deeply of themselves and where there was strong connection, it’s not an easy path, but I think that can help. If you have an outside life that is more than the sum of just that person, that also helps. You can find meaning in something else.’

  But Wendy also concedes that sometimes a person can have all that in their favour and still flounder for a very long time. The type of death, for example, can be enormously influential on the ability of those left behind to adapt. Suicides are notoriously difficult to process because the victim is also the perpetrator. The grief at the loss and the anger at its cause are tied in a terrible knot.

  ‘Does it help if there is somebody or something to blame for the death?

  ‘I don’t know about that, because if you look beneath the anger, more often than not there is sadness and fear. Anger may displace other feelings but the person has still died and the loss is still yours, that suffering and loneliness is still yours,’ Wendy says.

  ‘How about posttraumatic growth – is it real or is it a way of consoling ourselves that something good can come out of something bad?’

  ‘Yeah, I’ve seen it. I’ve seen people who’ve gone through something so awful and somehow channelled it into living a fuller life where they are psychologically and spiritually transformed. Others get involved in changing laws or setting up foundations. Grief is many things but it can also be purposeful. In our sessions, Hannah was able to acknowledge the awfulness of what happened and together we tried to put it into some perspective. That took a lot of openness and courage on her part. She was really active in the process, really honest with herself and with me, which was great but also necessary. Ultimately, counselling is an act of hope. It’s the hope that something might get better, and for that to happen, it requires something to change.’

  Wendy’s frontline experience backs the clinical research that for posttraumatic growth to occur, the event has to be seismic.

  ‘It has to be monumental,’ she says. ‘Whatever happened to you, whatever that trauma distress was, has to be big enough to transform you.’

  I ask Wendy for her theory about why we take so much care in our everyday lives to avoid illness, injury or death and yet we are all so drawn to tales of disaster or survival on the news.

  ‘I think there’s something about the “hero” that’s certainly a narrative in our society, and we seem to need heroic figures to help us navigate dying and death. We create and are drawn to big stories where somebody has survived against the odds, where someone has gone through a death-defying feat and emerged. Or they haven’t, but in the meantime, they’ve been heroic. I think it’s because we fear the unknown and we don’t know what it’s like to die, so watching disasters on TV or reading about them in the paper lets us process death without dealing with the reality of it. And because we don’t have enough conversations about the big stuff, about life and loss and fear, we end up approaching death with morbid fascination, like it’s some dark awful secret or some big heroic event.’

  Wendy also thinks that because most of the time, people can’t easily talk about death and suffering, when a high-profile person dies unexpectedly, or a particular event is dramatic enough to land on the television news, such as Matt Richell’s death, it presents an opportunity.

  ‘I was in London at the time that Princess Diana died,’ she says. ‘I watched that unfurl and it was incredible to see. Not everybody is a monarchist but what you see is almost everybody being swept into this outpouring. We don’t get to talk about the horror of death until something big like that happens. Sure, we are talking about somebody else’s death or their violent death or whatever it may be. But we’re also reacting to past losses we’ve experienced and our own feelings and fears around death. It’s not just about the person who died.’

  I cannot imagine doing Wendy’s job for even one hour. I find it terrifying to think of having to be around dead bodies and to spend all day, every day with people who have experienced the worst thing I could ever imagine happening to me or a loved one. Wendy sees things so bad that they would be well beyond my deepest fears. I suspect she is putting limits on the detail of cases she’s telling me about, knowing that as a ‘civilian’ I won’t be able to cope. Wendy is truly remarkable, because somehow she’s not only able to endure her job, she takes something positive from it. This petite, quietly spoken woman is so strong.

  ‘I think if I can be in the moment with families, be really present, that seems to mitigate some of the impact for me, because I’ve done the best I can when I’m with them. I’m not left with lingering doubts about my part in it. And my job is amazing because it’s constantly reinforcing the stuff that’s important to me,’ she says.

  The stuff that is important to Wendy is living a life, both at work and at home, in which kindness and sharing are central.

  ‘My connections with people are paramount. I think if I can serve myself and serve others well, if I can live in a way that I’m generally proud of, that is what is important,’ she says. ‘Through my work, I’m getting a pretty incredible free lesson about how to live well, if I pay attention.’

  Recently, Wendy has had her views about how to live a meaningful life and her feelings about death seriously tested.

  ‘Last year, I was diagnosed with breast cancer,’ she tells me, ‘and of course I took stock of my life, but I realised there’s actually nothing I need to change. The important things are in order. I really feel like I live a wondrous life and what I have is enough.’

  Don’t be misled into thinking that by a wondrous life, Wendy means anything remotely like living in a swanky apartment with a harbour view, or dining at only the finest restaurants or possessing the looks of a supermodel. Wendy means that she once more has a healthy body after cancer treatment, as well as a healthy mind, loving relationships and meaningful work.

  ‘For me, thankfully, my constant exposure to death has heightened the things I believe, and heightened my really clear ideas about what I want in a good life,’ she says.

  As in my conversation with Hannah, Wendy and I have spoken about gruesome and distressing topics and yet the atmosphere is utterly life-affirming. Wendy’s wisdom and her grasp on what’s important are extraordinary. Meeting her is memorable and thought-provoking, and as we near the end of our time together, she beautifully sums up the key lesson of her unique occupation.

  ‘Somehow we need to be aware that we’re mortal, that this time is finite,’ she says. ‘It’s knowing this is all going to end, so let’s make it matter.’

  After my son’s terrifying birth in 2014, life hadn’t quite finished shaking me by the scruff of the neck. Six weeks later, he contracted viral meningitis and we were back in hospital. Two months after that, another blindside: not my baby, though, but instead his two-year-old brother. His day care centre noticed that his hands had a tremor. There followed years of visits to doctors, hospitals and therapists. My beautiful boy has various medical challenges to navigate, but that is his story and I will leave it for him to tell one day if he wishes. His little brother is now a rambunctious four-year-old who rules the house, defying his perilous arrival. He is d
eveloping ‘neurotypically’, which is how I’ve learned the medical profession describes a child I would have previously called ‘normal’.

  And then, amidst all of that and when it seemed things couldn’t get worse, my marriage of almost twenty years collapsed. It felt as if I must have done something wrong for the universe to turn against me so comprehensively. Like so many others, I too thought: I’m not a bad person, why is this happening to me? I was constantly braced for further grim news, fearing that I was about to lose my job or contract cancer, or that one of my parents would suddenly die. I felt as if I’d been hit by a bus and had staggered to my feet only to be hit by another bus. And then another.

  When I started thinking about writing this book, I was frightened by what had happened to me, how thoroughly and rapidly my life had been upended. I was also scared of what appeared on my own TV program every night, how fickle and cruel the world often seemed. Mostly I was worried about what might happen to me next. What if something else went wrong? Something even worse? Walk through a children’s hospital or read a newspaper and you’ll realise there’s always something worse.

  Lately I’ve noticed among friends and even strangers a desire to stop watching or reading the news. The world seems so unstable and dangerous nearly two decades into the twenty-first century that it’s easier to switch off and watch things that make us laugh or feel good instead of perpetually anxious. I completely understand that compulsion to look away, and so it seemed strange to me, as I embarked on this book, that I was choosing to do the opposite, to walk towards pain and suffering, particularly when there had been a modest measure of it in my own life. Now that I know more about how our brains work, I think perhaps it was an effort to impose control. If I could understand the things that rattled me, perhaps I could harness my own rampaging fear.