Another sudden death in the family
Oct. 2nd, 2017 12:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sonjajade As is becoming common apparently with my loved ones, my brother-in-law passed away suddenly. Well, it's not as sudden as it seems- he'd actually been lying on the floor of his apartment anywhere from 6 to 10 days, dead, and no one knew until neighbors called police to report the smell. They found him face down, partially liquefied, dead of an apparent heart attack. Some back ground on this particular brother-in-law: I met him months before I met my husband. I knew him from when I worked at Walgreens, because he was a regular customer and bought the same 2 packs of Salem light 100's every day. We'd sometimes chat if I didn't have a line, and one day he mentioned that he was writing a song for a contest and that he needed a violinist to do the melody for the recording. I had played violin for many years and told him I'd be happy to help if I could. We set up a time to jam at his house where he lived and helped look after his parents (now MY house), and that was when I met my husband, as he was behind the drum kit when I entered the garage that evening. The rest is history.
Robert was very ill mentally. He was bipolar, had been hospitalized several times for paranoid schizophrenia (hey I spelled that right the first time without spell check woohoo!) and had several episodes of just not being normal. He was once hospitalized for thinking that the mafia was coming after him, going so far as to leave the garage door open about a foot every night so he could sneak in and out of the house without being detected by the mobsters who were supposedly looking for him. He once was found wandering a beach in Long Island NY (where my husband's family lived from like 1957 up until 1981) with a piece of tinfoil in his mouth, claiming that he could talk to the aliens with it. Most recently was when he was married to my mother for a time, and due to undergoing cancer treatment and thus altering his metabolism to a point where it couldn't break down his medication properly anymore (me and my mom's theory), he took off on a cross-country car theft adventure with the intent to go to Hollywood and be a stunt driver. He stole 3 cars over the course of a week, and was finally caught in Mexico, Missouri, where they arrested him and then put him into a mental hospital for four months before transferring him back to his home state which was Alabama at that time. He thought his apartment was bugged, thought my mother was sleeping with anyone she made eye contact with, was hiding secret government spy cameras in his truck- all kinds of crazy shit. At one point he stripped down naked and crawled under his truck, which had run out of gas. When I first met him, he was doing really well on his medication and acting pretty normal. By the time he passed away, I hadn't actually spoken to him in since before Joey was born, and that was because he thought every woman was using their vagina to hold secret transponders and transmitters that telegraphed his every word and thought to some government entity.
Despite all he'd been through and the hell he lived in his own mind, Robert was a very kind, very sweet person. He would give you the last cigarette in his pack if you asked for it, or the shirt off his back if you needed it. I'm a death enthusiast... I know what a corpse looks like after 6-10 days. He didn't deserve that, no matter how frustrating it was to deal with him when he was having an episode. On one hand, I know he's not suffering anymore. On the other, he deserved more than to die at his apartment alone like that.
The surviving brothers decided to do a direct cremation, meaning no service or flowers (he couldn't have been embalmed anyway at that stage of composition, and it would have had to be a closed casket service anyhow). We are all just in a state of shock and emptiness... Tragic.
When my husband went by the apartment, he took some photos and a video to show me. The photos are not graphic, but I won't share them. It basically showed the carpet cut out where the body was found, the subfloor removed and the discoloration on the insulation from the bodily fluids that had seeped through the floor.In the kitchen garbage can were dozens of boxes of nicotine lozenges and patches, as well as boxes of all kinds of cigarettes. While the official cause of death was heart attack, the family believes that happened because of all the damn nicotine in his body. He would have been 62 on Oct 17th.
So with all of this going on, I've lost my job, again. Art and fic commissions are open for those interested. CLICK HERE for the details. Otherwise, hug your loved ones, you never know when it will be the last time you see them.
Robert was very ill mentally. He was bipolar, had been hospitalized several times for paranoid schizophrenia (hey I spelled that right the first time without spell check woohoo!) and had several episodes of just not being normal. He was once hospitalized for thinking that the mafia was coming after him, going so far as to leave the garage door open about a foot every night so he could sneak in and out of the house without being detected by the mobsters who were supposedly looking for him. He once was found wandering a beach in Long Island NY (where my husband's family lived from like 1957 up until 1981) with a piece of tinfoil in his mouth, claiming that he could talk to the aliens with it. Most recently was when he was married to my mother for a time, and due to undergoing cancer treatment and thus altering his metabolism to a point where it couldn't break down his medication properly anymore (me and my mom's theory), he took off on a cross-country car theft adventure with the intent to go to Hollywood and be a stunt driver. He stole 3 cars over the course of a week, and was finally caught in Mexico, Missouri, where they arrested him and then put him into a mental hospital for four months before transferring him back to his home state which was Alabama at that time. He thought his apartment was bugged, thought my mother was sleeping with anyone she made eye contact with, was hiding secret government spy cameras in his truck- all kinds of crazy shit. At one point he stripped down naked and crawled under his truck, which had run out of gas. When I first met him, he was doing really well on his medication and acting pretty normal. By the time he passed away, I hadn't actually spoken to him in since before Joey was born, and that was because he thought every woman was using their vagina to hold secret transponders and transmitters that telegraphed his every word and thought to some government entity.
Despite all he'd been through and the hell he lived in his own mind, Robert was a very kind, very sweet person. He would give you the last cigarette in his pack if you asked for it, or the shirt off his back if you needed it. I'm a death enthusiast... I know what a corpse looks like after 6-10 days. He didn't deserve that, no matter how frustrating it was to deal with him when he was having an episode. On one hand, I know he's not suffering anymore. On the other, he deserved more than to die at his apartment alone like that.
The surviving brothers decided to do a direct cremation, meaning no service or flowers (he couldn't have been embalmed anyway at that stage of composition, and it would have had to be a closed casket service anyhow). We are all just in a state of shock and emptiness... Tragic.
When my husband went by the apartment, he took some photos and a video to show me. The photos are not graphic, but I won't share them. It basically showed the carpet cut out where the body was found, the subfloor removed and the discoloration on the insulation from the bodily fluids that had seeped through the floor.In the kitchen garbage can were dozens of boxes of nicotine lozenges and patches, as well as boxes of all kinds of cigarettes. While the official cause of death was heart attack, the family believes that happened because of all the damn nicotine in his body. He would have been 62 on Oct 17th.
So with all of this going on, I've lost my job, again. Art and fic commissions are open for those interested. CLICK HERE for the details. Otherwise, hug your loved ones, you never know when it will be the last time you see them.
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Date: October 3rd, 2017 02:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: October 3rd, 2017 05:11 am (UTC)