Dead people

I cannot count the number of times I've written about dead people.

If you add the times I've edited stories about dead people, the number grows exponentially. And while there is some degree of truth to the fact reporters get cold and hard — we cannot feel grief for everyone or we'd go insane — we do have hearts. I will always remember the devastated father I once asked over the phone to tell me about his one child, a daughter who had only been dead for hours. Stricken does not start to explain how horrible he sounded. I will not ever forget calling the elderly parents of a 31-year-old woman who died suddenly during routine surgery and listening to them say how wrong it was for a child to die before a parent.

I won't forget those moments, but I don't think of them all the time. It's a necessity of my job. So we talk to the friends and family of dead people. We take deep breaths before dialing a phone number or approaching a source; we display enough sympathy to get through the conversations; and most of the time we turn to our colleagues afterward and say how horrible it would be to be a member of that family. And then we write, go home and forget. It's the only way to get through it.


In the past couple of weeks in my coverage area, one man has committed suicide by semi-truck, a teenage boy was found suddenly dead in his apartment, an infant reportedly shaken to death and a teenage girl airlifted out of the valley and put on life support. She needs a miracle to live.

That's all pretty typical. So, you see, we have to go home and forget or else we wouldn't return the next day.

So it's been a bit surprising to me how much I've been affected by the death of John Jones, the man whose body will apparently be left forever in Utah County's Nutty Putty caves.

I didn't write about him; the incident didn't take place anywhere near our coverage area. I shouldn't have even had to pay attention.

But it turns out my good friend Joey was with John during his last "normal" moments and that first hour of being stuck. He writes about it here. At first, like Joey says, it didn't seem that big of a deal. He was stuck; they'd get him out. On Wednesday night at my parents house for Thanksgiving I showed my mom all of the news stories online. Then we learned rescuers had temporarily gotten John unstuck only to watch him slide back into the wedged position — head first. I stayed up late that night, asking fellow reporters (who were on night duty for their respective papers and stations) on Twitter to keep me updated. The next morning, I grabbed my laptop and took it upstairs to find out with my mom whether they'd gotten him out yet. When my browner opened to CNN — my homepage — I gasped when I saw the headline: Man trapped in cave dies during rescue attempt.

Since then, I can't get it out of my mind. Maybe it's the little link through Joey. Maybe it's the fact that John is my age. Maybe it's because his wife shares my name. She's from Virginia; my husband is from Virginia. Maybe it's because it was so unexpected. I don't know.

It upsets me. I'm bothered. I became even more unsettled when I learned Friday they would not be able to retrieve his body. I don't know. There's nothing I can do, nothing to think. I don't even know him or his family, so I'm not really allowed to feel this strongly, right? But I just can't stop thinking about it.

And on Thanksgiving this year, I was more grateful than usual for my husband, and really, for everyone I love, that they were not dead and forever stuck somewhere in a cave.

So basically, I'm trying to deal with this the way I usually deal with death. I'm writing, going home and forgetting. It's the only way to get through it.

Right?