Finding a loved one’s body is traumatic enough, Sean Small said. Survivors shouldn’t have to relive the trauma of cleaning up the site as well.
“It’s like a sucker punch, a second hit … You’re in a fog,” said Small, the owner and operator of Yukon, OK-based Trauma Klean. “We, at least, have an emotional disconnect and see it simply as a job that needs to be done. But if it was a family member having to do this? I just cannot imagine.”
Small’s small business focuses on what he described as “a little beyond what you’d imagine as janitorial services. In fact, we’re a lot beyond that.”
There’s no polite way to discuss his job with the squeamish. Small cleans up biohazardous materials that are exposed to the environment during or after a person’s death, such as blood, urine, bile, and internal organs. Depending on the circumstances of death, those materials can infect a large area.
Most people cannot psychologically deal with those elements on a good day, much less in mourning. That’s where Small steps in, with protective gear and specialized industrial cleaning supplies and containment. His service provides both an emotional safety zone and another of health because Small and his small crew keep others from coming into contact with potentially infectious pathogens.
The human body can go through disturbing and sometimes explosive changes after the spirit has passed on, Small said. Internally, bacteria break down tissues and produce gases; externally, vermin may be attracted.
“When you get past the gross aspect of it, body decomposition is actually kind of a neat process. It’s nature doing what it’s supposed to do,” he said.
Small has adapted, of course; nothing fazes him. He said he almost never experiences the gag reflex associated with disgust while he’s in professional mode—the latest involved the memory of a man who was found in his bathroom after about six weeks.
One of his peers said it’s the nonhuman odors that cause the most difficulty, such as cleaning up a hoarder’s home, someone who kept more than 40 cats indoors.
Small was first drawn to the job after seeing it portrayed in police crime television shows such as CSI. The 2007 movie Cleaner, starring Samuel L. Jackson, also featured the profession, while a less savory interpretation appeared in the 1994 movie Pulp Fiction, also starring Jackson and John Travolta.
He’s been at the job for about three years and is still struggling to gain wider market recognition. Trauma Klean is seen primarily as the follow-up service for crime scenes after the police have finished their investigation and a medical examiner has removed the body.
“But a lot of our jobs have nothing to do with crime. Sometimes it’s as simple as an unattended death, someone passing away and it takes several days or weeks before anyone notices,” he said, as was the case with his own father. The body was found by church members.
“Once you get past the grossness, you begin to realize there’s a real need for this,” Small said. “I think that’s what appealed to me the most: the opportunity to help someone get through what I went through.”
Reprinted with permission from The Journal Record. Originally posted January 13, 2010. Photo by Maike Sabolich.
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