Running from Grief
I’m not entirely certain that this is my story to tell. I can’t refrain from writing it as the experiences are searing scars in my flesh and they are there to see. If I’m stepping over some sort of line, I offer my apologies in advance.
Synopsis: Meet Don Hall, a casino manager from Las Vegas during the 2020 pandemic shutdown, and his wife Dana. When Hall gets a late night phone call from his niece about the death of his nephew, the stage is set for this story of grief, crematory logistics, and a spastic pug hellbent on crippling Hall’s mother on Mother’s Day.
Police investigating body found in west Wichita
Wichita Police are investigating after a body was discovered in the 200 block of S West St.
Police said a body was found in a vehicle in a restaurant parking lot just before 6 p.m. Tuesday. Wichita Police Officer Wheeler said, at this point, no foul play is believed to be involved, and investigators are trying to find out what caused the death.
The person who died is believed to be a man, but Ofc. Wheeler said the body was "too far decomposed" to tell any other details before an autopsy.
If you’re the sort who combs the news for these sorts of blurbs, this was right there to see. No foul play so it doesn’t get any viral videos online. The description that the body was in the full force of decomposition to the point that the sex was almost indecipherable is grisly but couched in language that tamps down the horror.
This person, found in his car dead for days, was my nineteen-year-old nephew.
His mother, my only sister, knew he was missing six days prior. We all knew. A missing persons report was filed. His older brother, older sister, and I jumped onto his media accounts and tried to see if any one of his friends had a bead on him. No one did.
We constructed hopeful fictions. He was high (he smoked a lot of weed and dabbled in other drugs) and was sleeping it off. He decided that his life in Pandemic Wichita was too much, hopped in his car and was en route to Vegas to hang with his uncle. He lost his phone and his car was stolen. He’d been arrested and was too embarrassed to call anyone.
The thing about hopeful fictions is that they turn out to be just that—fiction.
The truth was harsh. My nephew had called off work and hung out with friends. On the way from one place to another whatever drugs he’d taken made him sleepy enough that he pulled into a parking lot of a restaurant closed by COVID, fell asleep, and never woke up.
My niece called Tuesday night. I was at work, staffing the empty casino as management, and her wavering, tearful voice (“We need you here. He’s dead.”) was all I needed to move my ass. Dana and I were on the first flight out of Vegas, COVID be damned.
When we arrived, we headed over to my sister’s home. I felt like tits on a bull. I didn’t know what to say to her that wouldn’t feel like an intellectualizing of death or trite self-help pablum. Losing a child has to be on the far end of tragic and I have no experience in parenthood and little when it comes to death. Grief is an alien presence. I’m like my mother—in lieu of dealing with our emotions, we want something to do.
So I waited.
Eventually, once done adjusting to the strange pattern of what felt like normal conversation doing normal things broken up by one of us stepping on a landmine of grief, bursting into hot, angry tears for a spell, then returning to the faux normal again, the doors began to open. I could see tasks in front of me. I could be of use.
HOW TO CREMATE YOUR NEPHEW
There’s an odd disconnect between dealing with legitimate grief and typing “budget cremation wichita” into the search bar.
Turns out that the average price for a basic cremation (transport of the deceased, alternative fiberboard receptacle, simple cleaning of ashes of things like shirt buttons and buckles, basic plastic box for completed service, and copies of both the death certificate and coroner’s report and release) runs about $3,000.00.
After a few hours I found a reputable service that would do it for $1,100.00. I called, explained the situation (“Oh. That was your nephew? I read about that.”) and booked the service. For a bit of time I filled out the online form for the death certificate. Some basics and then the out-of-left-field birthplace of the father question and his Social Security Number that I had to then call my niece to fill in the blank fields.
All in all, this was an essential and very clinical start to my avoidance of the feelings.
As I got on the phone for the forty-five-minute call with the crematorium, Dana and my mom decided to go for a walk to my sister’s place. My sister was still in a deep sleep so Dana grabbed her six-month-old spastic pug to give him some pooping time.
Twenty minutes later, my phone indicated Dana was trying call me. I couldn’t answer as I was in the middle of cremation speak. She called again. Then she ran into the house. “Your mom broke her leg!” And she grabbed keys and bolted.
The dog got under my mother’s legs and she dropped like a wet bag of cement, fracturing both her right leg and left wrist. 911. An ambulance. The hospital that, due to COVID, allowed no visitors.
When it rains, it pours.
My sister was still in a place of disbelief. Her son was gone but she hadn’t seen his body. She spoke about him in the present tense. She wanted some visual confirmation but the only photographs of him were taken after five days of decomposition by the police. She wasn’t going to see him. Even if she desperately needed to.
“It’s like the people who died on 9/11.”
She wears his clothes. She sleeps. She picks out and orders an urn for him that she thinks he’d like (“I just want him home.”). My niece and older nephew drove down to stay with her. When she sleeps, her face is full of tension and her mouth is fixed into a hard frown. The nephew has to go back to work but my niece is staying for a bit longer.
HOW TO DISPOSE OF A VEHICLE CONTAMINATED BY DECOMPOSITION
There was some discussion about his car. My sister thought she could give it to her eldest son or sell it but it was locked up in an evidence impound and was a serious biohazard. I called AfterMath, the nationwide company law enforcement frequents to clean up crime scenes.
Four thousand bucks to remove all the parts of the automobile contaminated plus whatever it would cost to replace those parts. Keeping the vehicle was not an option. Despite this, it was in my sister’s name and we were responsible for getting it out of impound before she was saddled with liability.
The National Auto Charities deal with this sort of thing. I arranged for a tow a few days later, transferring a salvage title for a tax credit and removal of the car. We guessed the title was in the glove compartment because no one could find it but I used a bill of sale to verify ownership. The charity will file for a duplicate title.
Having to explain, over and over, how he died and the circumstances of the vehicle have a numbing effect. I am successfully avoiding grappling with the grief that sits under it all, like a viper waiting to strike but biding its time. Grief is biding its time until I’m done doing things to distract. It wants all of my attention. It wants to cripple me.
The plan was to hold a memorial in the park for family on Saturday but with my mom in the hospital and effectively hobbled, my sister decides to hold off until his grandmother can be there. She asks if I can make a memorial video for the future service and AirDrops hundreds of photos for the task.
HOW TO MAKE A MEMORIAL VIDEO OF YOUR LOVED ONE WITHOUT CASCADING INTO A NON-STOP FIGHT WITH CRUSHING SADNESS
You can’t. Or at least, I couldn’t.
The dispassionate focus on the timing of the pictures in sync with the three songs chosen held me for a bit. Expanding or contracting transitions, using the Ken Burns Effect on faces via iMovie, using quotes Dana found to transition things. Very technical. Very distancing.
But, in order to complete things in the pieces necessary, the filmmaker (using that title loosely and with some irony implied) has to go back and preview things. And the first look at the first ten years of his life took my legs out from under me. My face clenched like a fist and I tried to bar fight the tears and lost.
Of everything I found myself doing to run from the well of despair and horror, this ten-minute video was the most difficult. I’d argue in this moment it was one of the most difficult tasks I’ve had to do in fifty-four years. I’ve heard the phrase “gut wrenching” but never understood it until now.
One of the unrealistic things my mother tried to instill into my evolving psyche was what she called the Three Days Rule. The idea is that no matter what befalls you—death, the loss of a job, a divorce, whatever—you have exactly three days to grieve, mourn, piss and moan. On day four, get up offa your ass and get back to Life.
As unrealistic as it sounds (especially in the Age of Victimhood and Social Media Therapy) the lesson tends to stick. It also creates a strange barrier within me that prevents the grieving from commencing until long after the tragic circumstance.
What occurs to me is that my experience, my sister’s loss, the labyrinth of strange tasks associated with the death of a loved one, are all incredibly common. According to the internet, 150,000 people die globally every single day; 150,000 mothers deal with loss, 150,000 uncles grapple with cremation or funeral arrangements. While each death is highly specific to the people most affected, living through death makes no one unique or special.
See what I meant when I mentioned the intellectualizing of death...?
I frame my nephew’s passing as death by misadventure. The drug thing is so laden with blame and rage but, at its heart, drugs were his way of recreation. Really no different than alcohol, gambling, sex, playing football, working out, or rock climbing. If he had been rock climbing and accidentally fallen to his demise, no one would seek revenge or accountability. Death by misadventure. No judgment.
Dana found a box in mom’s basement marked “Don.” It was filled with crap from my senior year in high school and freshman year in college. She wanted to go through it and I had no interest. Eventually, I did go through it with her and I realized why it seemed so odious to even consider. These were photos and effluvia from when I was my nephew’s age. These were old college IDs, prom pictures, a self-made time capsule of me before I really started to experience life.
He would end just as I was beginning. I took some time looking at myself at eighteen and nineteen years old and pondered all the life I would have missed had I inadvertently died in my car six months before my twentieth birthday. While life is short, as they say, it can be full. My life has been incredibly full and the gratitude I feel for the opportunities to make mistakes, love, lose, work, create, and bathe in my small corner of humanity is astounding.
Unlike the mourning of someone who has had that fullness, the mourning for someone so incredibly young has a different flavor. It doesn’t taste of the tried and true, but of the life unlived. The memories of him are brief and each has a more pungent quality for that brevity.
I am reminded of a scene from the film Minority Report. A child has died early, his father and mother unable to move past the grief. A character with pre-cognitive abilities takes a moment to describe the boy as he grows up and becomes a man, lives his life, giving the parents a moment to see in some way the possibilities.
I see my nephew’s future in a similar way. Accomplishments never realized, love he will never feel, birthdays, holidays, and experiences he will never have. My sister tells me there is a hole in her, a vital piece of her that is gone. When she tells me this I understand that most of the tears I have angrily shed are for her.
As for my grief (because I can’t write about the mourning of my sister, his siblings, my wife, my mom and dad with any expertise), I suspect that while the landmines will thin out some, I’ll still find myself stepping on one from time to time and being overcome.
The thing about running from grief is that it is patient and will always catch up.
