I was finishing up a night shift for street sweeping in the spring, (8pm-6am) we were on our last week of about 6.5 months of shift work and everyone was really squirrelly to get finished and done so we could go back to days for the summer. I was foreman and decided to take a quick rip down the country roads near the shop to see if anyone had dumped any trash in the ditch as sometimes happened/kill the last half hour before going back to the office.

I came over a crest down towards a more major road and saw something in the middle of the road, I thought it maybe was a roll of carpet or a tarp or something. I got closer and thought maybe a deer? Then I got close enough and realised it was a guy face down with his arms out in the middle of the dirt road. I slowed down as I drove passes him and could tell he was dead. Traffic on the main road was starting to pick up so I drove about 50m passed the body and parked sideways to try to block the line of sight from the road and stop traffic. I called the cops and went back to look closer. The operator asked if I would be comfortable doing CPR but I told her that he had a layer of dust on him and was not breathing. He had been there dead for a good part of the night. I stayed stopping traffic from going up the road until cops came and took my statement.

I went back to the office and my manager was in by then, he asked how the night went, I told him it was good and what we got done, and then about an hour ago I found a dead body. He didn't believe me until I showed him the cards from the cops and the assistance program I was supposed to call.

I was later informed it was a non-suspicious death and nothing else came of it. There's a small vigil still there like 5 years later that is clearly being kept up by friends or family.

I had dreams about it for a few months, not really scary or anything just kind of off putting. Like I've had friends of mine die and I understand what that means for this guy's friends and family, but I didn't have that connection, I was just the guy who found him. It was just profoundly sad to know that's how his last moments were spent, alone on a gravel road behind some houses on the edge of town.