As Far As I Can Recall — Episode 2: The Sound of Nothing

There is a script for grief.

We all know it. We have seen it enough times to know what loss is supposed to look like.

The problem is that grief does not look one way. It looks like everything. And one of the things it looks like is also what guilt looks like.

Calm, in a room where you would expect devastation, is information. It is just not the information most people assume it is.

This episode is about the absence of expected emotion. What flat affect actually means, what causes it, and why reaching for it too quickly as an explanation is one of the most dangerous things an investigator can do.

It is also about a woman called Margaret. And six words she said, about forty minutes in, that told me everything I needed to know.

Not about the case.

About forty years of a person.

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