Fire and Ice

Someone asked me if I was watching the latest in TV law/crime drama.  That would be a ‘no.” Most of them are so removed from reality that they are hardly worth watching.

Yes, forensic teams often show up at the crime scene directly from the opera in their $1500 suits and then stick their faces down into the blood and the gore without even putting on protective masks. I could go on for days, especially regarding how they’ll have DNA evidence in about ten minutes. TV is fantasy; what remains of a life cut short is seldom so pretty. If you don’t suit up properly to protect yourself from the elements, the terrain, or a hoard of nasty biohazards, you will likely join the deceased on the next table. Then again, there are not too many jobs where you can occasionally rappel down a cliff into work.

These thoughts came up when I went for a morning walk and found the bones of a small animal out in the woods. How long had it laid there? Certainly, long enough for the bones to bleach to soft white, the flesh now part of the earth, the eyes—empty sockets of history. The shape was benign, as if the creature stopped quietly and died, unlike other bones that one finds in the wild, like the animals of the tar pits, trapped in the primordial ooze in the posture of shock. Other animals dropped while running, the bones scattered by predators until the remaining pieces were simply laid out like a discarded jigsaw puzzle.

These bones were in the shape of quiet sleep as if the animal lay down to wait when death called its name from behind.

It only takes a few days for an animal to decompose now that the weather is getting warmer. I’ve seen hunters lose their fresh game simply because, in the occasional hot temperatures of Indian summer, a kill left too long can turn quickly. It only takes a few days to return to bone, to the simplest components of life: carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and sulfur. Only bones are left, pressing into the soft, welcoming earth, the soil a rich bed of late summer.

Sometimes, all we find are bones laid bare to the elements or burned clean.

With the right temperature, all things will burn, yet bone itself stubbornly resists all but the hottest of fires. Even when all the carbon is burned, the bone will retain its shape. An insubstantial ghost of itself, it crumbles easily, the last bastion of the person’s being transformed into ash. In that ash remains large pieces, calcined and with the consistency of pumice when held in hand, almost seeming to possess a trace of warmth from within its core.

Even if they cannot speak to us, sometimes what is left gives the forensic technicians a clue. Who was this person? What manner of violence brought about their end? It’s the world few wish to visit, and yet it drives me, the mystery and the puzzle. Perhaps because I realize that the final mystery is within yourself.

Using physical evidence to build a theoretical model of a given crime or accident scene involves several sciences, including the chemistry of death and the engineering of the body. Even in the cold quiet of the woods, I stop and survey the scene, making mental notes in my head. How long had it been lying here? Bones, especially ones that have burned, do not give up a time of death. For that, you need to trace the extent of decomposition in volatile fatty acids, muscle proteins, and amino acids, all usually destroyed in a fire.

Even in the woods, simply surveying my environment, my brain sifts through ideas, timelines, and theories based on white bone.

I’ve been close enough to the aftermath of a violent configuration that just the smell of something burning takes me back. I remember waiting as the firefighters valiantly did their work, my skin almost blistering in the heat. Hoping to get close enough to see a clue before it’s burned and gone, a timeline of life and death lost to the flame.

Fire doesn’t just destroy paper and combustible evidence, it’s disruptive to the analysis of bone trauma, especially separating fragmentation patterns resulting from perimortem trauma, such blunt force, projectile impact, and so forth, from those resulting from postmortem heat and fire modification.

Fire suppression, though necessary even if there is no chance of life remaining, also does its damage. The sudden cooling of hose streams fracture or spall bones that are hot, especially if they’ve gotten hot to the point of delamination of calcination, and it can cause harm that may or may not be salvaged in a laboratory. Then, there’s mechanical damage, direct hose impact, and falling debris.

The tiny pieces of life’s remains that still can speak to us were drowning in water. I stood helplessly by the scene, like a person watching a rescue swimmer who was too late to help, knowing the outcome yet hoping for something from which I could put the case to rest. I wait, not wanting to turn away, as fire roars against the night stars and the deep, dark spaces. I wait while the silent ice drips from the trees, melting in the flame's heat. It is a patient wait, treading carefully on the small broken artifacts of life, part pathology, part engineering, and part going beyond either.

We did not yet know if a body or bodies were inside, so preserving evidence was crucial. After the mechanics of motion have stopped, after human physiology has broken down, and what once was animated life, a heart that loved, and a soul that dreamed is reduced to flesh or ash, decayed or dried bone, the dead will still bear witness.

They can tell us a story.

It is usually not a story that would make a good television show, and it rarely can be wrapped up in a neat sixty minutes, but it is a story that needs to be told.

Tonight, I write these words on my laptop as I gaze at a small fire, tended so that it will warm a house surprisingly cold after another front comes through. I watch the flames twist and sway in their age-old dance. As humans, we are more than our past, yet we are the same, seeking life and comfort, seeking answers. As I write, I gaze at a flame in a fireplace that warms something deep in me, something stirring in memory from the ashes as I return to my work.

For I realize that, here in the healing walls of this home, my heart, beaten and darkened by soot, still contains in its core one small piece untouched that may one day smolder back into life with just the proper breath on it.

Life is ice and fire. You can’t control what you will feel, who you can save, or how they will affect your life. You can take what remains that brings you joy and move forward. It is not the glamorous drama one sees on TV, done for the excitement, the money, or the time off to go to the opera. You do this work because you want to, for no other reason. This mission was not assigned, simply a garment of duty one felt compelled to pick off a bare floor one cold morning.

If another person ever reads my words after I am gone someday, know that the fire burns brightly in you, as it does in me, exposing what is strong and good, what is still useful. You cannot save every heart, but you can save your own heart, diligent in its task, even if wounded in battle.

Diligent, perhaps, because we’ve learned through our work that life is precious. We will all die, but we will not all truly live. In doing this, with the small tools we have and the mind God has given us, we do our part to see that perhaps just one person inherits more than the wind and the dark. No matter how hard the duty is, I live fuller, breathe deeper, and sleep with peace, even as the shades of my night are sometimes singed with regret from those things I could not save.

It's time to put away the tea mug and my thoughts. The scent of ancient woodsmoke remains in my hair, waiting to be breathed in deep, thankful to be alive so that I may speak for the dead and treasure that which remains. Life is a risk, never a possession; love and live accordingly

 - Brigid