How a childhood shaped by the Medical Examiner’s office revealed what people value most, long before I became a writer.
Death was never a spectacle in my life. It was ordinary. Present. Instructive. Growing up around death investigation did not make me morbid. It taught me how people love, how they grieve, and what matters when everything else falls away. This is where my understanding of humanity began.
Death did not enter my life as a dramatic event. It was already there.
By the time I was old enough to form memories, death investigation was woven into the ordinary rhythms of our household. Not in a way meant to shock or frighten, and not as something hidden away. It simply existed, the way other families might have sports equipment by the door or briefcases on the kitchen table.
There were remnants of the Medical Examiner’s office throughout our home. Autopsy photographs and reports. Sometimes videos. Files from active cases. Vials of blood. Jars containing tissue samples. These items were not displayed or discussed casually, but neither were they treated as forbidden objects. They were tools of my father’s work, and his work mattered.
My father kept his M.E. field kit in the back of our Suburban. Under the middle seat were blue or yellow body bags, folded and ready. I did not think of them as ominous. They were part of preparedness, the same way other families might keep jumper cables or emergency supplies in their vehicles.
Our home landline doubled as the Medical Examiner’s office phone. When it rang, we answered, “Graeser residence,” already listening for urgency. Some calls were routine. Others were not. If my father was not available, we took careful messages. Names. Numbers. Locations. Circumstances. The calls were often quiet, sometimes halting, and occasionally heavy with emotion. Even as a child, I understood that what was said on the other end of the line mattered.
None of this felt unusual to me. It was simply life.
Growing up this way did not make me numb to death. It made me attentive. It taught me early that death is not theoretical. If an M.E. is called out, that means death has arrived suddenly, and it rearranges the world of the people left behind.
Learning That Death Is Not the Same for Everyone
One of the earliest lessons death investigation taught me is that there is no single way people respond to loss.
I cannot speak to how people behave when no one is watching. I was not present for the private moments of grief that unfold behind closed doors, when loved ones sit alone with memories or questions that have no answers. What I did witness, again and again, was how people respond when death first enters the room.
Sudden deaths leave people grasping for answers. Why? How? What happened? When relationships were close, the pain was immediate and overwhelming. The shock arrived first, followed by a kind of disbelief that seemed to suspend time. When relationships were fractured, the reactions were more complicated. Guilt. Anger. Distance. Sometimes indifference.
I learned early that grief does not follow a script. It does not behave politely. It does not arrive in neat stages. It is shaped by love, history, resentment, regret, and unfinished business.
One case has stayed with me my entire life.
A young man traveled from Pennsylvania to our county in northern Michigan and committed suicide. His relationship with his mother was disjointed and strained. When the time came to release his cremated remains, she refused them. The county had no pauper’s grave. My father buried him in our backyard. He made a small plaque. It remains there to this day.
This young man had no connection to our family in life. He did not know us. We did not know him. And yet, he has become part of our family story. We pass his resting place regularly on hikes out to the woods. We remember him. We acknowledge him.
What struck me then, and still does now, is the quiet dignity of that act. Even when someone feels abandoned in life, even when relationships fracture beyond repair, that person still deserves respect in death.
That lesson stayed with me.
Shock, Grief, and the Need for Truth
It is difficult to say that anything truly surprised me about death, because I was brought up inside its reality from a very young age. Children accept their surroundings long before they have the language to analyze them. I did not study grief as a child. I absorbed it.
What I remember most clearly is the moment death entered the room.
Shock. Sadness. Disbelief. Immediate, deep grief.
We were often on the front lines of grief, present when families first learned their person was gone. Those moments carried a weight that lingered long after the words were spoken. The later stages of grief came afterward. Denial. Anger. Bargaining. But that initial moment was always the same, no matter the circumstances.
After the shock began to settle, families wanted answers. Not speculation. Not platitudes. They wanted truth. What happened. How their person died. Why it occurred. What could have been done differently, if anything. Sometimes there were lessons to be learned.
This is where my father’s role mattered deeply.
He could provide clear, scientific explanations about cause and manner of death. He did not soften facts, but he did not deliver them carelessly. Those answers did not remove pain, but they often provided a measure of peace. They replaced helplessness with understanding. Especially in cases of sudden or traumatic loss, that clarity mattered.
I learned that truth, delivered with care, can be an act of compassion.
Silence, evasion, or false reassurance often left families suspended in doubt. Facts, even hard ones, gave them something solid to stand on.
Living With the Awareness That Time Is Fragile
Growing up around death investigation taught me that relationships are precious. It taught me not to burn bridges. Not to let anger linger. Not to assume tomorrow is guaranteed.
People live as if they will never die. Usually, this works against them. They hold grudges. They nurture resentment. They cling to perceived slights, whether earned, assumed, or unintended. They postpone difficult conversations. They wait for apologies that may never come.
Death strips all of that away.
Viewed from the end of life, most offenses lose their weight. What remains are relationships. Love. Regret. The words not spoken. The forgiveness that was not granted.
This awareness did not make me fearful. It made me intentional about how to live my own life.
I learned to approach relationships with care. To choose reconciliation over being right. To pause before letting anger calcify into distance. To recognize that time is not promised, and silence can become permanent.
Live as if you are already looking back. Ask yourself what you would wish you had done differently. Who you would want beside you. What truly matters when time runs out.
Ask forgiveness. Forgive others. And move forward in love. It’s seems trite, but it’s true. Only the love you have and give remains.
Why This Perspective Still Matters
As an adult, I have realized how unusual this upbringing was. Most people do not grow up with death investigation as part of their daily environment. Most people encounter death suddenly, often for the first time, as adults.
But the lessons I absorbed as a child continue to shape how I see the world.
I do not view death as a shock tactic or a narrative device. I see it as a truth that clarifies. It exposes what we value. It reveals who we are when comfort and certainty are removed.
This perspective informs how I approach crime, loss, and storytelling. It keeps me from reducing people to labels or outcomes or plot devices. It reminds me that behind every statistic is a human life with complexity and meaning. A character’s journey is everything.
How This Belief Lives in Emily Hartford
This worldview lives at the core of my Coroner’s Daughter series heroine, Emily Hartford.
Emily refuses to see humanity as something to be exploited or reduced to a job to be completed. She understands that behind every case and every body is a real human life. A person who was loved and loved others. A person who had hobbies, talents, flaws, routines, and relationships.
When that person is gone, there is a gap. A silence where their presence once mattered.
Emily carries this awareness into every space she enters. She does not rush past it. She does not compartmentalize it away. She honors it, even when doing so makes the work harder.
That belief did not come from training or procedure. It came from upbringing. From witnessing how death touches the ones left behind. Understanding that a person’s dignity is grounded in the truth that we are all fearfully and wonderfully created.
One True Sentence
We had a mug in our house with the coroner’s motto printed on it: Our day begins when yours ends.
It’s meant to make you chuckle. Gallows humor. But it serves to remind us that one day will be our last day. What we do until that day, matters. And any change we hope to see in the world has to begin with us. And it has to start right now.
