Requesting Medical Examiner's Photos

[JacklessSally]

 

Personally the BEST one that helped me SO much was the post of taking someone that you trust to see first. That gave me SO SO much peace.

 

 

That was going to be my plan if they would let us have/see them. Let my cousin look first and let me know if it was ok for me to look at them, or even to just give me the "...it is him". Would be more than I have now, the constant wondering if maybe they got it wrong and he is still out there and can not come home for whatever reason. I just HAVE to know.

 

I carry around a copy of the police report with me everywhere I go. I have photos from the accident that were taken by a first responder group, I have photos of his car from the wrecking yard.. Call me a collector, call me insane, I don't really care. Everyone's journey is different and their coping techniques are different as well. Hell if I could dig him up and check to see if it is him, I would!

[Lisa]

Im not judging you at all. People who actually see their loved one die can still have trouble accepting. It is a process. Im trying to give you other avenues for working through it. In your own time obviously . I apoligze for coming off insensitive and wish you well .

[Carey]

I was able to suggest having someone you trust look first only because I experienced it. My trauma wasn't pictures but was his actual body after he had been dead 6 weeks. My brother and sister went in first. And I had a dear friend on standby to go home with me.  I couldn't NOT look. Really there was just no way I was walking out of that funeral home without touching Chad. Its a touchy thing, a lot of people just cant understand why someone would "intentionally do that to themselves".  Even to other widows sometimes it's hard to communicate why that desperate need is there. Not everyone's loss happened the same way and some special circumstances/tragedies just defy logic. Our brains cant compute.  I'm one that would have insisted on photos and I'm sure everyone would say how crazy I was, I just cant explain the why.  Yes it hurt like HELL to see him like that, but then again I got at least a couple answers to the hundreds I will never have.  I'm sure Lisa didn't intend any harm at all, she just expressed concern.  No one here would intentionally hurt one of our own.