Looking on the sunny side

The police are pulling a body out of the bay right now. Can you run down to the pier to check that out?"\nThat was the idea of a message from my editor that flashed across my screen one day this summer. I was interning at a Florida newspaper as a reporter on the city desk. My mission was to find out who died -- and how. \nI hurried to the pier, where I was told by police to stand about 40 yards away from where the police boat would dock when it arrived. I sizzled in the sun, sweating, waiting. Finally the boat moored, and the coroner went to work on the body. I looked the other way. \nBut I couldn't help noticing another boat approaching the dock. It was one of those yellow boats-on-wheels that parades tourists around town and splashes into the water. The passengers were craning their necks, straining out of their seats to see what that man was doing in the police boat. \nMeanwhile the ice cream truck was approaching from the other end of the pier, its repeating tune growing louder and more sinister by the minute. \nThere I was, in the middle of this three-ring circus. The tourists passed by, a bit greener than before, and the police shooed the ice cream lady off the pier. The body was then covered, and loaded into an ambulance. \nThe man's death was ruled a suicide. He was a 35-year-old transient with a history of mental problems. It took several days for police to find one family member to notify of his death. I'm not sure that there was anyone there to cry at his funeral. I don't even know if there was a funeral. I only wrote a brief about the incident -- it's the newspaper's policy to minimize coverage of suicides. \nWhen I got home that night I had to tell my roommate how bizarre my afternoon day had been. "And then comes the ice cream lady hawking bomb pops!" \nWait a minute. Even as I spoke, I got a sick feeling in my stomach. I felt so callous, so heartless to make light of such a tragic event.\nThis man probably felt suffering beyond my own comprehension before he killed himself, and there I was, joking about the circumstances of his death before catching up on the plot of "Sex and the City."\nTo fully acknowledge the tragedy of the situation would be paralyzing, it would hinder me from doing my job. To blow it off and not care would paralyze my existence as a compassionate person altogether. \nThat's the dilemma a lot of people face at work, especially police, doctors and social workers: People who deal in raw reality. \nObjectivity is a great concept on paper, but when lives are intersecting in brief, intense moments it's hard not to want to cringe or just shake your head in defeat. Journalists swap stories among themselves: My twilight zone on the pier for my reporter friend's account of the nudist attacked by an alligator.\nSometimes the best relief is to laugh - not the "ha ha" kind, but at least a snicker. Maybe it's just human nature for laughter to follow a shudder. And for people whose job is to sort through the extremes of sad, strange situations, it's necessary to survival.