Re children. Absolutely.
'Goodbye Mog,' by Judith Kerr. But mine refused to even contemplate reading it. So, a non-starter, lol.
Police officers with the equivalent of PTSD.
My brother was telling me how proud he was of one of his team; a young WC, who was called to a house where a man had died, been dead some days.
He had lived alone, a double amputee, and died not wearing his legs. Empty tins, empty biscuit wrappers. He had not eaten well his last days. My brother warned the young WC to stand well back when the paramedics came to remove the body. He knows what is going to happen the minute they move a dead body that's none too fresh.
He tells me he has to regard it as interesting. All very interesting, what happens to the body after death. He makes himself like stone and thinks, what is he learning here? That's how he manages the sadness. And he is completely sensible of the sadness, but cannot, as a matter of equilibrium and self preservation, afford that attrition, year in, year out, trawling ponds for murdered girls and the murderer smiling in the back of the car because he knows where there is another dead girl, but if he takes them there, they will have their hands tied by a legal technicality because due process has been breached. And if they don't, he won't tell them where she is, and the family won't get her body back.
