Note: Submissions contain graphic imagery of death you may find disturbing. Please proceed with caution.

"My boss had arrived when the police did (I had called her, too). After the police had my statement and were good with the report, my boss sent me home and gave me the weekend off. Because the body was so ‘not normal’, it didn’t feel real, and so I was mostly unfazed. The only things that get me now are certain textures that feel like touching him — soft wet things like yard furniture or sleeping bags that have been rained on, or flan.

It turned out the 15-year-old and some of his friends scaled the high wall (8 ft) and snuck into the pool area after we closed that night, sometime around 10 p.m. I found him sometime around 6:30 the next morning. What they figured is that the kid dove into the shallow end and broke his neck, instantly paralyzing himself, and then drowned. His friends, either before or after he was dead, realized what had happened, freaked out, and ran. It wasn’t until the police went to tell the parents about the poor kid that the story came out, as he was supposed to have been at a friend's house that night. Once they spoke with the friend, the truth was revealed. I'm not sure what happened to the friends, punishment-wise, but I am sure they are scarred."

"We made our way back to the school in complete silence. We were all very much in shock. A couple of the teachers went out to investigate further before calling it in. Forensics arrived quickly, and our school went into lockdown. Counselors were brought in to help us work through what we saw. Years later, and it still sticks with me. Especially since we never got closure — we never heard anything more about it."

"It was especially rough on my mom, losing both of her parents and her husband in such a short time. The ironic thing that we laugh about as a family is that she gave my uncle, a musician, an unwrapped O’Henry bar in a shoebox and titled it 'Beethoven’s Last Movement.' Then my grandma died of a heart attack, pooping on the toilet, the following year."

"We called 911, and they instructed me to pull him out and do chest compressions on him until the ambulance arrived. When we pulled him out and carried his dead weight, it became clear that he really was dead. But I decided to do the chest compressions anyway. Part of me thought that we might actually be saving him. I felt his ribs crack and break under my hands. I must’ve broken a few ribs, unfortunately. It was an awful feeling. I did the compressions for maybe three minutes, and by the time the paramedics took over, I was completely exhausted.

Later on, the police came to get a statement and let us know that the man was likely dead for seven or eight hours by the time we found him. Which means he was in that same position, with his vehicle idling, propped up in my neighbor's driveway, when we left that afternoon for the river. He had a massive heart attack and most likely died instantly. He was a father of two, and he lived just around the corner.

After the incident, I felt almost nothing. I felt bad for the family, but I expected to feel traumatized by the experience, but I wasn’t. I felt kind of empty and that I should be feeling more about it. Trauma shows up in funny ways because soon after that incident, whenever I saw somebody sleeping anywhere that wasn’t a bed, I would get this panic that they were dead. It’s been 15 years, and I still occasionally get that panic response to seeing people sleeping."

Note: Some submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.