Dead End?

I just returned from spending a week with family in Florida. Every day, when I drove back to the apartment I passed the same "Dead End" sign. Definitely not the first Dead End sign I've seen and it definitely won't be the last. But I do not recall being in a situation where I've seen a Dead End sign on such a regular basis. The sign got me thinking though. Isn't Dead End redundant? If something is dead, then that's the end!

And then I thought about many of our cases. Unfortunately, dead is just the beginning. End would be when the person is buried, but sometimes, the gap in between can be very large.

When I got back to the office this morning, I looked at the memos of the cases we handled in the past week. I kid you not, we buried a person this past Sunday, January 13, 2008 who died on March 29, 2007. Due to several mix-ups, the person was sent to the morgue and was never registered there. He was there but completely unaccounted for, and only recently was he discovered! Fortunately, HFBA was contacted and we buried the man.

We are presented every day with messages. Some are clear and some are hidden. But when the hidden ones are found, like the "Dead End" sign, the clarity that results is crystal clear.