Unexpected Loss
I woke up this morning to the kind of phone call you never want to wake up to.
My brother had been calling my cellphone, which was, of course, dead and downstairs. There'd been an accident. My father is dead.
My father is dead.
It's true, but it really doesn't seem like it should be. Of course it doesn't.
I woke up this morning, and found myself in the middle of a police procedural. My brother came to get me. We went to my dad and stepmom's house, in their nice suburban neighbourhood. Where there were police cars. And police officers. And a body in the swimming pool
...
There had been a chipmunk in the pool. My dad was worried that with all the rain, it would drown. So he went out to make a ramp for the chipmunk. My stepmom was in the kitchen, and wondered what was taking him so long. She phoned his cellphone and he didn't answer, so she figured he'd gone for a walk, or shared a glass of wine with the neighbour, or something. So she went to bed.
When she woke up in the small hours, he still wasn't there, so she got worried, and went out to look for him.
She found him in the 18 inches of water in the bottom of the swimming pool. Dialed 9-1-1.
We waited, while police photographers photographed the pool and the body, while forensics officers looked around, and recorded, and measured, and did their thing. Then a sergeant came to tell us that it was very slippery in the pool, that there was no evidence of anything amiss (except for the dead person), that the funeral home would transfer the body to the morgue, that we'll hear from the coroner or maybe the police when they know anything for sure. And please if we can stay out of the back yard until they tell us we can go into it, they'd appreciate that.
Then some people took the body away, and we were left staring at each other, and at the business cards left behind on the ktichen table by coroner and police officers.
She never heard him fall. Never heard him call out. We don't know what happened. I mean, yes, my father died in a freak chipmunk-related accident, but we don't yet know how or why.
There are a zillion things to do, and we did some of them today: visit funeral home, decide on cremation, rent a casket, write the obituary. Other things, we will do tomorrow and the next day and the next. There will be a funeral service (called a "Celebration of life" for our atheistic family). We need to plan that. There will be visitation. There will be a reception at the Club where he golfed. There is a plan to deal with the ashes (it involves sneaking out to do something mildly illegal on a golf course.) There will be life insurance and the will and helping my stepmother to deal with his stuff. Once the autopsy is done and the coroner's report made, we switch from the police procedural to the boring family drama, for which we make up the script as we go along.
There's the monotony of grief and the discombobulation that comes of confronting the reality that I really should have phoned him last week and that a whole bunch of things will never happen now, and I was not ready for this at all. Nobody was. He wasn't. I mean, who dies rescuing chipmunks?
I'm okay ... inasmuch as anyone can be at a time like this. I'm tired: waking up at 06h00 in that particular way is not conducive to an overall feeling of restedness. I'm sad, of course, and bewildered, and shocky, and I don't quite know what to do, because this is the part where there's nothing anyone really can do (yes I have eaten. Yes, I will sleep). I'm fighting the kind of guilt that comes when you meant to call someone and they up and died (with, or without, chipmunks) before you did. So, I guess I'm not really okay, but I know where okay is, and I know I have to get through all this in order to be okay again.
Who dies rescuing chipmunks, I ask you?
My brother had been calling my cellphone, which was, of course, dead and downstairs. There'd been an accident. My father is dead.
My father is dead.
It's true, but it really doesn't seem like it should be. Of course it doesn't.
I woke up this morning, and found myself in the middle of a police procedural. My brother came to get me. We went to my dad and stepmom's house, in their nice suburban neighbourhood. Where there were police cars. And police officers. And a body in the swimming pool
...
There had been a chipmunk in the pool. My dad was worried that with all the rain, it would drown. So he went out to make a ramp for the chipmunk. My stepmom was in the kitchen, and wondered what was taking him so long. She phoned his cellphone and he didn't answer, so she figured he'd gone for a walk, or shared a glass of wine with the neighbour, or something. So she went to bed.
When she woke up in the small hours, he still wasn't there, so she got worried, and went out to look for him.
She found him in the 18 inches of water in the bottom of the swimming pool. Dialed 9-1-1.
We waited, while police photographers photographed the pool and the body, while forensics officers looked around, and recorded, and measured, and did their thing. Then a sergeant came to tell us that it was very slippery in the pool, that there was no evidence of anything amiss (except for the dead person), that the funeral home would transfer the body to the morgue, that we'll hear from the coroner or maybe the police when they know anything for sure. And please if we can stay out of the back yard until they tell us we can go into it, they'd appreciate that.
Then some people took the body away, and we were left staring at each other, and at the business cards left behind on the ktichen table by coroner and police officers.
She never heard him fall. Never heard him call out. We don't know what happened. I mean, yes, my father died in a freak chipmunk-related accident, but we don't yet know how or why.
There are a zillion things to do, and we did some of them today: visit funeral home, decide on cremation, rent a casket, write the obituary. Other things, we will do tomorrow and the next day and the next. There will be a funeral service (called a "Celebration of life" for our atheistic family). We need to plan that. There will be visitation. There will be a reception at the Club where he golfed. There is a plan to deal with the ashes (it involves sneaking out to do something mildly illegal on a golf course.) There will be life insurance and the will and helping my stepmother to deal with his stuff. Once the autopsy is done and the coroner's report made, we switch from the police procedural to the boring family drama, for which we make up the script as we go along.
There's the monotony of grief and the discombobulation that comes of confronting the reality that I really should have phoned him last week and that a whole bunch of things will never happen now, and I was not ready for this at all. Nobody was. He wasn't. I mean, who dies rescuing chipmunks?
I'm okay ... inasmuch as anyone can be at a time like this. I'm tired: waking up at 06h00 in that particular way is not conducive to an overall feeling of restedness. I'm sad, of course, and bewildered, and shocky, and I don't quite know what to do, because this is the part where there's nothing anyone really can do (yes I have eaten. Yes, I will sleep). I'm fighting the kind of guilt that comes when you meant to call someone and they up and died (with, or without, chipmunks) before you did. So, I guess I'm not really okay, but I know where okay is, and I know I have to get through all this in order to be okay again.
Who dies rescuing chipmunks, I ask you?