Looking back at me from the computer screen, were the eyes
of a dead man. It haunts me. His eyes. His smile. He looked so happy in every
picture we found. He’s now lying in the county morgue.
I spend a lot of time looking at photos of dead people. I
guess it’s a part of the job that you try not to really think about, but at
times you can’t help but to. In the hectic moments before deadline, it’s usually
a frantic fury of excitement trying to get our story done. In this case, it
meant creating a graphic of the photos we downloaded of Filimon Lamas and his
family. It’s funny sometimes how excited you get when you find a photo, or a
piece of video that works for your story, without really thinking about what
you’re doing. A quick search of Facebook, I found exactly what I was looking
for, Lamas’ profile picture. That fits perfectly where my reporter talked about
how he’s dead.
That made me happy, so to speak.
There’s something in your brain you have to turn off when
you work in news. Sometimes I wonder if I will ever be able to turn it back on.
It’s not simply being desensitized. It’s not simply being callous, or uncaring.
It’s about being able to completely disconnect from reality. That the photo on
my screen is just part of the editing process. It’s not Fillmon Lamas, a man
who married his high school sweetheart, was a devoted father and husband, and
died trying to shield his children from a crazed gunman. It’s a graphic that
fits between 1:08 and 1:17 on the timeline.
All of us have walls. Some thicker than others, but there’s
no way you can do this job without one. The senseless crimes try their best to
find the cracks.
