After you’ve been in EMS for a while most calls become forgettable. Even fairly complex calls become routine after a while and only the really unusual calls stick in your memory. Occasionally someone will ask me if I remember a call and usually I’ll draw a blank. Embarrassingly, at least for me, that even extends to calls where someone was murdered. A few years ago an Assistant District Attorney called me regarding a case that he wanted me to testify about. The incident had happened a couple of years before and I told him I had no recollection of the call. He mailed me a copy of my report and I recognized my handwriting, but other than what was on paper I had no recollection of the call. Someone died and I couldn’t remember even being there. Strange.

All of which is to say that not many calls have really stuck with me over the years, although a few have because something or another has caused them to be memorable.

As some comedian says, “I told you that, so I could tell you this”.

I was driving home today and cut down an isolated street on my way to get gas. Not much of a street, mostly warehouses and businesses, but it has a house on it. One house. The house is run down, has a no trespassing sign in one window, hasn’t seen paint since Johnson was President, has an unkempt yard, a chain link fence, and a tree in what would be the front yard. If it had a yard instead of whatever it is. Every time I drive down the street I think of that tree and a call that I still remember all these years later.

It was 1983 or maybe 1984, I’m not sure which, but is was one of them. We had just started our shift, probably hadn’t even had coffee yet when we were dispatched to a call for a hanging. Although hangings aren’t very common in my city, it wasn’t the first one I had responded to, so it wasn’t a big deal. Usually people hang themselves inside their houses, basements being a favorite. Not this time.

We arrived without ALS or the fire department because in those days the fire department didn’t respond to many calls and the ALS was somewhere else. In the front yard was a man standing next to the tree. In the tree was a young man, sitting on one branch, who was dead. That was obvious before we even left the ambulance. Although he was sitting on the branch, he had a rope around his neck which was tied to a higher branch. The victim had killed himself by tying the rope as described and then leaning out from the lower branch. An odd position and I thought then as I do now a painful way to kill yourself. It wouldn’t have been fast and the young man might have had second thoughts but by then he likely didn’t have enough strength to pull himself back up. And so he died sometime during the middle of the night in a tree in his front yard.

The man standing next to the tree, looking up at the dead yound man was of course his father. He knew that his son was dead and told us what had happened. His son had a history of some sort of psychiatric problem and was seeing a psychologist. The night before he had argued with his father and threatened to kill himself. The father had called the psychologist. His advice was that the son had to learn not to use suicide as a bargaining chip and that the father should let the son leave because he wouldn’t carry out his threat. Only in this case the psychologist was wrong and the son had in fact gone outside and hung himself. He not only did that, but he did it exactly where he knew his father would find him in the morning.

In due course the police arrived to take a report, we wrote ours, the medical examiner was contacted and sent someone out to pick up the remains. Through it all the father remained calm and matter of fact answering our questions in calm voice. He even understood when we told him that we couldn’t cut the body down until the police and ME arrived to do their jobs. Yet just beneath the surface there was an undercurrent of guilt, because he had listened to the doctor and had ignored his instincts.

I’ve often wondered what happened to the family after that day. Did they move? Are they still in the house, reclusive, shutting out the world? They never cut down the tree, which I would have done. I guess I’ll never know what happened, nor should I. It was their tragedy and I was just a bit player.

Odd, what sticks with you over the years. Sometimes I wish I could remember less of what I’ve seen and done.