One Snapshot

This is a short blog about one of many snapshots in this investigator's head.

All the images appear in my mind like black and white Polaroids with rounded white edges.
This snapshot bubbles up from the depths of the subconscious frequently, without an ounce of resistance or protest from my saner side. The image comes from so deep... and surfaces so quickly... there is no time for decompression.

I learned first-hand the fragile balance between ascent and descent while scuba diving.
The human being must not resurface from deep, dark waters too quickly. Without a slowed, controlled ascent...without stops along the way... the body can not equalize itself.
Too quick a resurface can result in death for some without decompression chambers.

There are the certain images, snapshots, that haunt the investigator who has viewed them.
Decompression is required.
Normally, they are filed away in the coldest, darkest, deepest canals of the brain.
Occasionally, the snapshots resurface.
Every now and then, they begin their uncontrolled ascent.
Unbeckoned, unrestrained, they rise up from the depths of the unknowing to the conscious... and everything goes from color... back to black and white.

Here is one of those snapshots.

There was a seaplane. It had a pilot and his wife in the front seat.
It had their best friends, another man and woman, in the back seat.
Both couples were attractive, rich, in their mid-40's. They were planning a trip to the San Juan Islands here in the Pacific Northwest.

So there they were...flying over the Puget Sound in their Float Plane.
They left from Seattle, they headed north and then somewhere along the way, something happened and the plane dropped like a boulder from the sky.

There were the words "May Day... May Day...
We're going down."
The pilot shouted out latitude and longitude.
Women's screams were heard in the background.
Then... nothing.

When the plane was finally found, it was laid on the pilot's side at the bottom of at the bottom of the Puget Sound. The plane was in tact, all four people drowned still buckled in their seats.

There was a camera under the water that got a shot of them in their watery tomb.
Their mouths were wide open, their hair was all swept back, their open eyes were nibbled by fish.
It had to be seen, though it was too surreal to absorb.

Of all the pictures in the big case file called my head, that's the one that bubbles up from my subconscious at times I can't control or predict... like tonight, when I was walking on the beach and a seaplane passed overhead.

The Viewmaster in the investigator's' head features images of the brutal and bizarre.
Most too dark, too ugly, ragged, deep and intense to move from our minds to yours.

It wouldn't free me of the images to offload mine now. And it would only burden you.
Yet some of these things we see, they cry out to be shared.
Some snapshots, truly, are "worth a thousand words."

And this image... this snapshot...these four people... would have disappeared completely were it another point in space and time.
When there was no such thing as GPS and locator beams.
Or cameras to photograph their recovery.
And, Coast Guard, Police, Recovery crews, who had the skills to bring them home.

I was told the family never saw the snapshot.
I think that was a good thing.
I can't imagine a family member seeing the way they had really gone.
I didn't even know them, and still, the image haunts me.