tracker7 | Entries tagged with death

My last uncle on Dad's side died last week. Garland had a long history of heart problems and I guess it was just one beat too many and that was it. Dad's taking it about as well as can be expected; he and Garland were close. I'm concerned about my aunt - she's been dealing with Parkinson's for some time and it's the type that causes strong hallucinations in addition to the tremors. She's got plenty of kids and grandkids to help care for her, but there's going to have to be some kind of professional care involved.

FX's Alien: Earth has been fantastic. It's managed to introduce additional non-terrestrial critters that are plenty icky without taking away any of the menace of the good ol' Xenomorphs. Timothy Olyphant continues to be an absolute treasure.

No sense in burying the lede. One of our clients died recently.

DK was manic-depressive and his wife died a couple of weeks ago. He was put on our daily visit list, and today was my day to check in on him. Despite our best efforts, no one had been able to locate him since Friday (it's Wednesday, for future reference). I rolled in to the apartment complex and knocked at his unit, no answer. Went to see a neighbor who had spoken with me on previous visits, and after another attempt, we called the security office. This is at a public housing complex that is little more than storage for humans, and it's slated for demolition in the next 18 months. Security showed, and called maintenance to gain access to the unit. Officer went in, came back out after a minute, and motioned for me to step away from the other residents. I figured it was bad, and, well, yeah.

Talked with my supervisor, then with DK's therapist, and then with the EMS sergeant who responded. I'll probably have to talk with someone from the coroner's office, too, to provide some of my agency's information on DK. Supervisor had me come back to the office and file an incident report, and gave me the option to go home for the rest of the day. So, I did.

We're letting the rest of the team know tomorrow. I'll have counseling offers, and will probably sit for a couple of sessions so I don't look like a sociopath or something. I'm not without compassion, but ... well, ultimately this was someone that I was working with, and not one of the clients that I have real rapport with. It's a loss, and people cared for him. Poor guy. He was dead at least a couple of days, half-naked corpse on the floor of a sixty-year-old government housing building. DK was, in my experience, an okay guy, and I hope if there's something else out there, I hope he's at peace.

I've had some decent days lately. Rode around with Dad on a clumsy but ultimately successful attempt to find a boat repair place someone had suggested to him. I'm continuing to burn through the Netflix DVD queue before that service sadly comes to an end in a few months - Tubi has helped with that, too.

Got a lead on a Delta Green game, and I'm looking forward to seeing how that shakes out. I thought that last night was going to be the session, but I misread the store's calendar. Saved myself a drive when I checked again before heading out and saw that last night was D&D night, and, no thanks. So, I ordered a pizza and settled in for some reading ... and that became some writing, and hokie-smokes did that feel good.

Today started pretty well. Dad needed a few things for some baking wanted to do for the reunion today, so off we went to the grocery. After that, I felt the need for some tea and the Escape needed fuel, so stopped at the large convenience store/small truckstop for such. On the way out of the store, my clumsiness reared its head - I smacked my left wrist against a doorframe and popped the screen right off my smartwatch. Its battery had started to swell up (it's six years old, after all) and had pushed the screen up a little bit, so it was probably just going to happen eventually. Anyway, it wasn't reparable by my hands, so I just replaced it this afternoon. It's currently syncing with the phone, and I have a shipping label ready for sending the old one off for recycling.

The reunion was okay. I had pie. That was about it.

It's Memorial Day weekend. Somewhere along the line, it became a thing here in the South(ish) to add flowers and decorations and whatnot to the graves of any and all relatives. I'm not much for that, but since I failed to do so for Mother's Day, I got a nice simple bouquet for Mom's grave. It's pretty, quite colorful, and she would have loved it.

Goshdarn it, Mom, I miss you today.

The Indy 500's tomorrow, and coverage of the Monaco Grand Prix, too, so there's my afternoon soundtrack sorted out. Dad's already promised to not ask me to go to church with him.

Monday's the holiday itself, and the Honor Guard Dad's part of will have a part in the town's observance. That, I will definitely attend. He's proud of this continued service and universe knows it does my heart good to see him enjoying this.

The phone and new watch are still syncing, so I think I'm going to get some reading in (Magician: Master, by Raymond Feist, for the record).

Bub died early Sunday morning. Body to be cremated and a memorial service in Taplin sometime this week. I don't plan to go unless Dad asks me to back him and Mom up.

I hadn't considered this part. Jeannie is in her early 80s and suffering from dementia of some kind, possibly Alzheimer's. Jeannie cannot remember, for much more than an hour, that Bub's dead, and completely breaks down when she asks for him and is told that he's gone. According to another cousin, this happened several times yesterday afternoon.

As expected, the minor flooding has arrived. The Ohio is noticeably high, and parts of River Road are closed and under water. I think the most recent forecast called for a crest on Monday afternoon, so we can count on River Road reopening around Wednesday.

I'm about to lose another cousin - the third of six brothers. 40 years of unrelenting alcoholism and a couple decades of various antipsychotics have caught up with him. This morning, his hospice nurse told the family that his lungs were filling with fluid, and he could be gone in a day or two. Mom's in no shape to travel to the impending funeral - she fell getting out of the shower a couple of days ago - and to my surprise, she understands and acknowledges that.

Got in a couple X-Wing matches last night. Lost a close standard game, and won an Epic game through the U-Wing's maneuvering.

Coronavirus COVID-19 is spreading. About 67K cases and 1500 fatalities worldwide, depending on your source. Public health agencies - including China's - are doing the right things: aggressive triaging, quarantining, pushing out as much information as possible. There are a couple of cruise ships quarantined at sea over this, and from what I'm hearing, the passengers and crew are taking it in stride. Communities are forming around social media platforms, mainly WhatsApp, and we aren't seeing the kind of freakouts that I'd almost expect to see. China has seen this before with SARS, so, while a respiratory epidemic isn't something you want to grow accustomed to dealing with, having this kind of knowledge and preparation in place is never a bad thing.

It's all darned interesting.

I believe that my Aunt Jeannie's family is just snakebit. From the obituary of my cousin's widow, Karmela (died age 50):

"Karmela Rose Adkins, 50, of Clayton, NC, passed away Saturday, December 1, 2018. She was born January 4, 1968, in Logan, WV, to Shawn and Ronald Green of Bramwell, WV. She was preceded in death by her husband, Steven Edward Adkins; father-in-law, George Lucion Adkins; brother-in-law, Frank Adkins; nephew, Robert Lane Perry; and niece, Shannon Nicole Adkins."

Stevie died in a shootout with a co-worker. Lucion ... coal miner, grossly overweight. Frankie had throat surgery, was home convalescing, had a coughing fit and part of his epiglottis tore free and he bled to death right down his own throat. Shannon was 19, driving home from work, hit by a drunk driver within sight of her home.

Linked for later.

My classmate and buddy Stephen K is a good guy. Despite nearly 20 years' difference in our ages, we've become good friends over the past year.

Stephen's older brother, Nathan, has been battling a handful of different and rare cancers for several years, and it looks like it's coming to an end. Stephen let us know over the weekend that he wasn't expecting to be in class at all this week, but would be able to work on group assignments from Lexington, where his brother is being treated. We checked in yesterday, and the reply wasn't good. A few last-ditch treatments, Stephen said, mostly to give Nathan's wife some kind of peace, and ceasing the transfusions. "After that it could be hours to days."

Nathan's not yet 30. This ain't right.

This afternoon, Glenn Frey died. In the past few days, we also lost David Bowie and Alan Rickman. Just bam-bam-bam. Enough already.

I saw the final Bowie album, Blackstar, pop up on my iTunes header and put it on a mental to-listen-to list; two days later, he was gone. Having bought and listened to the album a couple of times, my respect for Bowie has only grown. It's clear as anything a goodbye to his fans, and it is a damned good piece of work.

Rickman will always be the incomparable thief, Hans Gruber, for me. I love him as the Sheriff of Notthingham and Alexander Dane, of course, but Gruber ... just an incredible villain.

I joined a gym. HSC's fitness center is nice, but its hours and mine just don't line up all that well. Just walking/jogging for now; when I'm less huge, I'll move on to other activities.

Current Mood: frustrated

I got word Wednesday evening that a fellow from my high school class had died that morning. He was the third from the class to die since graduation (which was probably the last time I saw Scott) - one in a car accident, one from cancer, and Scott, apparently due to a blood clot embolism following surgery. We weren't particularly close, but were friends, and I remember him as a rather good guy.

I went to his visitation Friday night after work. Saw some old friends, and things ended much like I expected them to, with Brian K and Rodger M and me talking and catching up for a couple of hours. And making the obligatory promises to not wait until another one of us buys the farm before getting together again.

Yesterday's game day went really well - players (and I) had a great time with Fading Suns, and Ben's Fear Itself game got deeply enough into my head that I had a dream about it last night - D and me and CPTAAL and his GF as X-Files-ish investigators looking into the fallout from the events of this game. That doesn't happen often, and given the source material for this one in particular, I'm glad that's the case.

I'm going to let the Meetup side of our gaming club go gently into that good electronic night. There's almost no traffic through that gateway, our Facebook presence seeing much more discussion and activity. And, while it's nowhere near a budget-breaker, the organizer dues are an expense I can do away with.

Current Mood: relaxed

John Ed Pearce died yesterday.

http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/15609275.htm

Damn.

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