8. The Hard Truth: The Autopsy Report

“I actively wanted an autopsy…I needed to know how and why and when it had happened...I had to believe he was dead all along. If I did not believe he was dead all along, I would have thought I should have been able to save him. Until I saw the autopsy report, I continued to think this anyway, an example of delusionary thinking, the omnipotent variety.” 

~Joan Dideon, The Year of Magical Thinking

Within a few weeks of Jon's death in 2007, I spoke to a woman who lost her husband in 2004.  For her, knowing every detail, down to how her husband appeared while lying on the stretcher on which he was MEDEVAC’d, was essential to her sanity.  She simply had to know.  Although at the time I was still in profound shock and disbelief, her words struck a powerful chord when, a few months later, I learned in a support group meeting that I could make a request for Jon’s autopsy photos if I wanted them.  If I wanted them?  Of course I wanted them!  I had to know exactly what the men that set that fatal IED did to my husband to prevent him from stepping off the plane back at home with the rest of his Soldiers.  I needed to know why, when I saw him lying there in the casket, he hadn’t made it, even though it looked to me like I could somehow just breathe life back into him.  In all honesty, he simply did not look that bad.  His brother, Jason, said that he didn’t think he looked like the Jon we knew, but I would have known him anywhere.  Same beautiful face, same Roman nose, same hairline and dirty blonde hair.  They had coated his face with heavy make-up, something I knew he would hate since he was always telling me to skip my daily make-up regime – “You’re beautiful without it, baby,” he would say – but he was still my Jon.  When I leaned over to kiss him, the make-up smudged and revealed dark patches of discoloration on his cheek; it didn't cause me to recoil or withdraw from his body, but rather, just made me want to know and understand more.  Many years later, I still finding myself wondering about that discoloration and Googling images of what happens to the skin after death to try and figure out what the make-up was hiding beneath its thick layers.


The point is that seeing him like that did not, as one might think, provide me with a sense of closure, but rather, simply raised more questions.  Why hadn’t he made it?  What did “blunt force trauma” mean as a cause of death anyway?  What head injury could possibly be so bad that he could still look so damn good lying there in a casket?  I remember noticing several stitches at the right side of his head and asking Jason if that meant his skull had been fractured.  I didn’t know this to be the case – I just assumed, having no medical knowledge, that a head injury severe enough to cause the death of someone as strong as Jon must be nothing less than a horrific, gaping, open skull wound.  As I later discovered, however, performing an autopsy is an incredibly in-depth procedure that involves, among many other things, cutting around the entire circumference of the head and peeling back the face to reveal the brain.  Only from the corresponding photos was I able to comprehend that perhaps a severe head wound of this kind could indeed have been enough to take the life of my wonderful husband.

I remember the day the photos arrived in the mail – everyone who knew they were coming (mostly the women from my support group) urged me not to be alone when I looked at them.  I promised both them and myself that I would not view the CD, that I would put it away and wait until I had friends sitting by me to hold my hand and wipe away my tears.  So that’s exactly what I did – for about one day, until the heavy presence of that envelope and the urgency of the endless questions became too much, and I succumbed to the pressure.  On August 21st, 2007 - one day before my twenty-third birthday - I opened the CD, read the accompanying letter, and looked at each and every one of those autopsy photos of Jon’s broken body.  Of course, I sobbed as I looked through them – how could I not?  "Worst nightmare" does not even begin to describe the extent of the grief one feels at seeing the body of their beloved husband emerge from a body bag. 

Although I had previously received a copy the autopsy report, many of the medical terms were abstract and meant very little to me without the photos to confirm what each specific injury signified.  The list of injuries was extensive, covering an entire sheet of a standard 8 ½" by 11” piece of paper.  An entire piece of paper…considering that there are a total of 46 lines of type available on a piece of paper, that’s a hell of a lot of room for a list of injuries.  For every technical medical term I did not understand, I looked it up, and, if the internet description still did not suffice, I asked my brother-in-law to explain it to me, sparing no detail.  I made notes next to every injury listed on the report, often making notes about the notes I had already made once I clarified what each term meant.  I thought that this incredibly precise, detailed process would bring me some sense of acceptance or at least understanding.  Yet, as I looked at each of those pictures, I still couldn’t shake the old feelings of denial as I focused on the physical proof of each of his injuries.  To me, he still didn’t look that bad.  Yes, there were burns and lacerations and broken bones.  Yes, he would undoubtedly have suffered from scars from which he might never have completely recovered.  But there were no bloody, gaping wounds, no visible evidence that with the best medical care available on the scene, he had no chance at survival.  I understood on a limited level from reading the autopsy report that the majority of his fatal injuries were internal and simply could not be appreciated from the outside for their severity, yet this still did not comfort me any more than seeing his body lying in the casket had helped to bring me closer to a sense of peace.  I still felt like I should be able to take him in my arms and simply love him enough to will him to get better and allow him go on to have that beautiful life we dreamed about together.  I still felt like he should have been able to get off the operating table at the end of the day, hop on a plane, and fly home to me.  The fact that one of the medics on the scene later claimed he thought he could have saved him didn't help...in fact, when this information was relayed to me via the Rear Detachment Commander from Jon's unit, I was inconsolable for hours.  So he thought he could have saved him...well, why didn't he???  I was also told that this medic had frozen on the scene, overcome with shock at the extent of the carnage following the blast from the IED.  Was that why Jon hadn't made it?  If someone else had gotten to him first or even just a minute earlier, would he have lived to see another day?  According to another witness, Jon had showed signs of consciousness after being ejected from the vehicle by the 550-pound bomb - he even blinked a few times but never spoke again and struggled to breathe before passing away on the MEDEVAC bird en route to the nearest hospital.  When they reached Balad, his official status was listed as "DOA" - Dead on Arrival.  Why, dear God, why?  If he had been able to survive just a few minutes longer, would he have enjoyed a few more years here with me on earth?  So many questions...so few answers.

Ultimately, I think I did the right thing in requesting and viewing those photos, but they will undoubtedly continue to haunt me when the slideshow of nightmare images from April 7th, 2007 and onward plays through in my mind.  If I hadn't seen them for myself, I would have imagined the worst, but this is of little consolation when I think of what could have and should have been in the five years since Jon left us for a better place.  I pray he didn't feel any pain or suffer in those final moments.  I understand that God must have desperately needed a man like Jon to help him out with some higher mission up in heaven.  I just wish I could have been there to hold him and tell him one more time that I love him with all my heart.  I hope you can hear me now, Jon.  I love you, I love you, I love you.  I'm so sorry I didn't get to tell you goodbye, baby.  But it's not goodbye, at least not for me.  It's just "see you later," because I know I'll see you again.  Just not yet.  Not yet...