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I do not cry at funerals either and I have had other people confront me because I had a friend die and did not cry about it. I have seen a lot of death in my life and have come to terms with it.
When I was a combat medic during the Vietnam War I used to help people, who were otherwise very scared of death, die. Help them let go. An the first job I got when I was discharged from the army was being an EMT on an ambulance. I was obsessed with death back then and could not stop talking about it.
As an ambulance paramedic went into people’s homes who had a heart attack, did CPR on them and they died, or carried a dead baby in my arms who had died from SIDS. Went into a high school where a young girl bought her father's gun to school went into the girls bathroom, put the gun in her mouth and pulled the trigger because her boyfriend broke up with her; a very messy scene. Talked with people many times in hospitals and hospices who were on their last breath when I worked in the medical field. I’ve got about a hundred stories like this which I could share but out of sensitivity I will not.
Although a dead baby had more effect on me than a dead adult, but even with an adult who had died it sometimes could gross me out. Hobo’s riding the freight trains who died was a good example of this; because they would die in the freight train car and laying in the sun their skin would loosen up, and when you go to pick them up all of their skin would come off in your hand. Yeah, I know, gross.
I have seen lots of people autopsied and that can also be gross, especially watching a baby autopsied; that will bring emotional feelings out of the most harden among us. I was talking with some older veterans today and instead of using the word “death” they used the word “passing.” Because death is about the human body and passing is about that person, or consciousness, which inhabited that body. When someone I love dies I don’t cry but I do celebrate and toast their life and the relationship which I had with them.
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