Why I Clean Crime Scenes

(Othello and Desdemona - Wikipedia)

I am a professional cleaner, which means that I earn my living by cleaning crime and trauma scenes - - "niche cleaning." In this field of biohazard recovery, I clean trauma (blood soiled scenes) for money. There are other reasons that I clean bloody scenes, less material reasons.

Trauma cleaning challenges my imagination at times, and at times my Will to move forward. Cleaning trauma as a small business also gives me a sense of ownership few occupations bestow. I suppose an artist shares some of this sense of control. Unlike the artist, I have control over the object of my labor from beginning to end. I do not have the pressures placed upon my labor like an artist's customers demand.

In philosophical terms, I am not alienated from my labor. My type of labor predates the Golden Age. It is ageless.

I do not need to sell my crystallized labor to survive. I need to dispose of it, legally. I often ask myself, "Where do I begin and how should I move forward as I remove bloody debris?". "Can this be cleaned?".

It is best to first make some sense out of the violent act that lead to the crime scene's distortion of the "normal." This way I can map out where I know that I need to clean. I can then anticipate the breadth and depth of blood and other human effluents to be cleaned. I know too that in the last hours of cleaning, I will find debris previously missed and out of the scope of my initial survey of the debris field. It is not that I "miss" any blood or such, but that cleaning means to clean and re-clean, and to revisit the scene from different perspectives and with "new eyes" after taking some time out for a personal debriefing.

This process helps me to recognize and clean blood contaminated furnishings, mattresses, walls, clothing, fans, books, electronics, dishes, and more. Knowing the whereabouts and movement of the perpetrator and victim(s) helps to at least limit the scope of cleaning, usually.

Yes, at times the screams of the victim come to mind, the horrendous agony of foreseeing impending death by the victim comes to mind. The loss of relationships to relatives and friends comes to mind, all of which may pass through the victim's mind in those terrorizing last moments. Every Desdemona suffers the torment of impending death, emotional trauma cutting deeper than physical trauma. There is nothing that I can do to call back the past, to save the victim, to reduce those agonizing moments of stark terror. I can only imagine.

In a sense, I can honor the victim by cleaning his/her remains from the scene. I can nod my head in respect for the lost humanity as one might nod their head in respect for victims of a Macbeth or Othello. I can take a moment for sorrow in recognition of this earliest of all human aberrations and source of archetypes.

Cleaning trauma, like art, challanges the imagination.