"Handling" Death

A woman that I have had only a small amount of contact with in real life but consider a dear friend due to our contact in cyber life recently escaped what would have been a very precarious legal situation by the skin of her teeth.  She evaluated a dog that a local Medical Examiner was considering training as an HRD dog.  "HRD" stands for Human Remains Detection.  It's a nice way of saying Cadaver Dog.  My friend felt that the dog in question wasn't a suitable detection dog.  Some dogs are, some aren't.  Good for her for stating that the dog wasn't a good candidate.  Doubly good for her considering the Medical Examiner has been brought up on charges for STEALING "training aids"--in this case, human remains-- and mishandling ("gifting," to unrelated individuals) unclaimed (meaning the bill wasn't paid) cremated human remains.  Yikes.  My friend asked me what I thought of all this when it happened.  I was very happy she came out unscathed by association, and I remain that way.  Now that a few days have passed, I have a few other things to get off my chest regarding this situation.

My mother died in 1997.  She was three months shy of being a five year cancer survivor when she was killed in a car accident.  Everybody dies.  What happens to you when you die depends upon your belief system.  Personally, I have a very convoluted belief system that I won't unveil in detail right here right now.  The important thing is that my mother wished to be cremated.  She made this wish very clear to me before her double mastectomy surgery in December of 1992.  Mercifully, though she looked frighteningly pale and nearly dead after surgery, it wasn't a decision I had to make public at that time.  My aunt and my grandmother were the ones onto whom that burden fell.  I was living in Georgia with my dad at the time of my mother's death, and my mother had moved to Tennessee.  My parents were long since divorced, but I will never forget the anguish in my father's voice when he had to deliver to me the news of my mother's passing in the early morning hours that day.  I didn't take it well.

People do weird things when they are grieving, and a lot of my family members did a lot of weird things over the next few months, myself included.  My oldest brother, suffering from Multiple Sclerosis, didn't take our mother's death any better than I did and I found myself ensconced in an odd sort of marriage and family counselor position to him and his wife, even though I had neither a spouse nor children at the time.  Needless to say, certain things regarding my mother and her passing were handled by my aunt and my grandmother.  My brother passed in February, 2001 due to complications from Multiple Sclerosis.  Consider it a blessing; I'm not sure he would have been able to weather the storm that was about to ensue.

The rest of 2001 was spent building out the kennel and completing some K9 and K9 handler training.  I remember 9/11 and driving to the kennel and discussing doomsday plans with my then business partner and my friends and clients the Honabachs.  I had trained an HRD/SAR dog for the Honabachs, and my personal dog at the time was also an HRD dog.  We were "invited" to New York as the 2nd relief search team, two weeks later.  We declined.  We had already heard about search dogs and their handlers falling ill.  Two weeks after a building collapse there were certainly no survivors.  The risks of handling that much death in such a small space far outweighed the reward of a pinpoint positive indication.  Besides, we had limited work on real rubble piles.  It wasn't a good fit and it wasn't necessary.  It did make me feel good that we were even asked to go to New York, being that we were a fledgling team from Georgia.  No doubt our connections to law enforcement made that happen.  Requests for dogs trained to detect explosives ("bomb-sniffing") dogs began to pour into our little facility.  Those are some stories for another day!

Fast-forward a few more months.  The kennel is finding its groove.  My best friend is living at the kennel and working for me on a part-time basis as my kennel manager while she establishes herself in her real career pursuits.  A former client of mine is about to come on board as my second trainer and eventual business partner after completing his National K-9 certification.  I'm training both civilian and law enforcement handlers in the art of Search and Rescue, Mantracking, and Human Remains Detection.  My life is good!

One day, my best friend/kennel manager says she needs to talk to me.  We sit on the front porch at the kennel and she tells me about the tragic scandal at Tri-State Crematory.  How did I miss this on the news?  Probably because I had worked the last six months without a single day off (seriously).  She tells me that my mother was one of those sent to Tri-State Crematory.  I didn't know THIS because I didn't have anything to do with making the arrangements for "handling" my mother's body.  My best friend knew because my aunt had called the kennel trying to reach me.  I spoke with my aunt later that day.  She let me know that she had held on to the cremains she had been provided with, feeling that the time wasn't right to spread them at my great aunt and uncle's farm as per my mother's instructions.  Good thing!  When the DNA testing was completed, we learned my aunt hadn't even been provided with my mother's cremains.  She had, for nearly five years, been harboring the cremains of a MAN completely unrelated to our family!  Thankfully, that man's cremains were returned to his family.

We have never received my mother's cremains.  I have no idea if my mother's remains were scattered in some picturesque place, if they sit on some stranger's mantle, or if hers was one of the bodies left to decompose in an over-sized septic tank on the Marsh family property.  Regardless of your belief system, that is a disturbing thought.  Funerals are for the living.  People purchase burial plots or urns or cemetery spaces for their cremains to console the loved ones they leave behind.  Living people need a way to "visit" with and "connect" with their ancestors, even if that means picturing in their minds a beautiful place where ashes have been spread.  I choose to picture a beautiful place when I think of my mother because she was a beautiful woman and she would have wanted her cremains to feed a beautiful field of wildflowers.  A rotting cesspool fertilizes nothing.  I suppose there really is such a thing as too much information.  My knowledge of body decomposition as a necessary byproduct of K9 training teaches me that too much decomposition in a small space is detrimental, rather than beneficial, to the surrounding environment.

I have knowledge of law enforcement officers doing some pretty crazy things to obtain HRD K9 training materials. I have been provided with some of these training materials.  I have never had in my possession any training material that has been STOLEN.  Not stolen from the deceased and their wishes, and not stolen from the living, those left behind that yearn for a decent way to connect with their lost loved ones.  Tri-State Crematory didn't have any stake in K9 training or training materials, but I suddenly felt the need to tell this story.  There are plenty of legal ways to obtain awesome training materials that won't cause sleepless nights for relatives of decedents.  If there are any fledgeling HRD K9 trainers reading this that need to know what these are, please just ask me.  Patience and the ability to ask are the only necessary tools.  If you are a current trainer, consider how you handle your HRD training materials, out of respect for the deceased AND the living!

As for me?  There's an old Belly song that comes to mind:  "Be there when I feed the tree."  Preferably in the chalky, anonymous form.