Laughter is the Best Remedy

I want to thank all who read my previous blog post for all the kind words of sympathy and compliments on my writing skills. Writing is actually very therapeutic for me and, while I shed many tears as I wrote that blog and Randy's obituary, after I was done writing, I felt much better. And then I was able to laugh.

For those who knew Randy, you know that he was one of the most random people around and if there was ever a chance of something crazy happening, it happened to him. In that spirit, I feel it appropriate to record the events that occurred as Randy reached the end of his mortal existence. I believe he would be laughing and since he enjoyed telling a good story and making people laugh, I dedicate this blog post to him, but write it for anyone I may have brought to tears with the previous post.

To set the stage, let me first explain the housing situation. While I live in the ranch-style house with my ex-father-in-law, when Randy came here to live last year on Christmas Day,  he moved into the 2 room basement apartment. The apartment has a door on it and there is a door at the bottom of the basement stairs from the garage. Both doors have locks on them, but due to Randy's hallucinations and paranoia, he didn't trust the locks to be enough. Whenever he went downstairs, he would put a long pole between the wall and the door to prevent anyone from getting in if they picked the lock. Additionally, neither Pop nor I were aware, but he installed another hotel room style lock on the inside of his apartment door; no one was going to get in to get him without him knowing about it. Additionally, Randy's bedroom/sitting room were right underneath the living room on the main floor, so I was always able to  hear his television, him singing or talking to his dogs.

Monday evening, the 16th, Randy came up to eat dinner with me. He seemed to be okay. A little distracted, but fine. He even helped do the dishes as we talked after. Later that evening, Pop had me text him to see if he wanted popcorn. Randy declined. I told him to sleep well and he responded: "I hope both of you sleep very well!" That was at 7:58 pm. That was the last I heard from him other than a severe coughing fit around midnight due to his bronchitis.

Tuesday morning, it seemed extremely quiet downstairs. I could usually hear the TV from early morning on, if he didn't have to work. He didn't come upstairs to get any breakfast and I didn't see him outside walking his dogs. Not terribly uncommon if he wasn't feeling well. Around 3:30, Pop asked me if I'd seen or heard anything of Randy. I said no and asked him the same. Pop told me that he hadn't even seen Randy come up into the garage for a cigarette; their normal time to visit in a day. Pop said that we'd worry about it after he got back home (about 6:30). In the meantime, I tried texting Randy and then calling him with no answer. I texted Pat to see if he had heard from Randy, but he hadn't either since Monday evening. I began to fear the worst and just knew that he was gone. 

When Pop got back and found out I still hadn't heard anything, he decided that we'd wait 'til the next day and then check on him. I couldn't let him wait, knowing how I was feeling and convinced Pop that Randy must be really sick and may need our help. He went downstairs and began pounding on the basement door and yelling Randy's name while I started pounding on the floor. Eventually, Pop had to cut a hole in the basement door so that he could move the pole to open the door. Then he used the key to unlock the apartment door and had to tear the trim off the door frame to get the door open. That's when Pop found him laying on the floor, cold to the touch.He came up into the garage, told me Randy was gone and to call the ambulance. That's when the chaos began.

As I called 911, shortly after 8:00pm, I had to wonder if the woman on the other end even listened to what I had said when she asked about the nature of my emergency. I told her that my ex-husband was found dead on the basement floor. She asked if I was certain he was dead. I told her that he wasn't moving or breathing and that he was cold to the touch. 

"Is he moving?" 

          "No." 

"Is he breathing?"

"No."

"Does he have a pulse?"

 "I don't know but when Dad touched his neck, he was cold to the touch." 

Help was on the way. Within minutes, lights flashing, the paramedics arrived.Over the next 15 minutes, as a firetruck and four squad cars arrived I hobbled back and forth between the front door and the garage door to direct 2 paramedics, 4 firemen and 8 policemen to the garage where Pop met them to take them to the basement. I'm not sure if all that attention is standard protocol or if it was a slow night in Decatur.  

A little later, as Pop came upstairs with one of the paramedics to answer some questions, the phone rang. Pop answered before I could get to it.

"George, what's going on over there?" asked 

our Gladys Cravitz-like neighbor

 "My son just died!" 

CLICK!!!

After answering the paramedic's questions and being assured Randy had not suffered, he prepared to leave as the doorbell rang again! Enter the deputy coroner. I directed her toward the basement in time to see the paramedics putting the EMPTY stretcher back into the ambulance. I had assumed they would be taking him to the morgue for an autopsy. Nope. Amid the previous chaos, I had begun to text family and close friends, but with all the confusion and my own stress, I was a bit blunt and uninformative, so I began to get texts and phone calls in return to add to the other chaos.

"Sorry. Can't talk now. Will get you more

info as soon as I can!"

The coroner came back upstairs and I was put in charge of answering her questions. As we were talking, firemen and policemen were in and out with questions of their own. The coroner contacted the funeral home to come pick Randy up, but kept being put on hold. Suddenly she screamed into the phone!

"You WILL find the director on duty and you

will do it now! I have a body to pick up

and if you can't find him to do it, I'll call

the owner RIGHT NOW!"

Amazingly, the director was on the phone in less than a minute and assured her they'd be right here. With that assurance, one by one all of the "officials" began to leave. We had a moment of quiet, then the bell rang again as the funeral director arrived. There were two men; one probably in his early thirties; the other late 40s early 50s. Pop was asked to pull his car out of the garage so they could get in and out with their stretcher. They removed the sheet and long stemmed red rose from the stretcher and they headed downstairs. Shortly, I heard commotion and grunting on the stairs and then I heard:

"Hey. Would you mind grabbing that side 

and I'll take this one?"

Yep. The 30-something young man really asked the 89-year-old man to help carry his newly deceased son up the stairs! What's worse? Pop directed them, on the count of three. On three, Pop lifted but the doofus DIDN'T and had Randy not been strapped onto the stretcher, he would have had another fall onto the basement stairs! Finally, they got Randy upstairs and into the van. I noticed that they left their sheet and the rose on the chair, so I asked them about it, thinking they would give the rose to Pop and express their condolences. Nope.

"Oh yeah. Don't want to forget our sheet."

And away they went, Randy, sheet and rose....

Thinking all would be quiet now, after 10pm, 3.5 hours after it all began, Pop went to pull his car back into the garage only to realize the headlights had been on the whole time and his battery was dead! Deciding he'd mess with it in the morning, he came inside, we sat and reviewed the day's events a little while and he headed to bed about 11:30. Fortunately, I was still too wired to go to bed, because at midnight the doorbell rang again! 

I got to the door and realized there were two more officers at the door! Forgetting all about our security system I unlocked and opened the door, setting off the alarm. Holding up a finger to the policemen, I headed to the kitchen to silence the alarm when my phone started telling me the house alarm had been triggered. I got both silenced, headed back to the front door only to find Pop in his pajama pants coming down the hall yelling "What the hell is going on now?!?" Gladys Cravitz struck a second time! As she saw Pop's car sitting in the driveway, totally out of character for Pop, she decided she needed to call the police to do a wellness check on him! Learning of the situation, the officers offered to push the car into the garage for Pop and hook up the charger. Until they couldn't cuz his fancy car locks up and you can't push it if there is no power!

End of Tuesday, December 17th

Begin Wednesday, December 18th

A fairly quiet start to the day. Pat arrived from Kentucky a little after 10:00. He went to greet Randy's dogs, cleaned some things in the basement and went with Pop and me to the funeral home at 1:30. That was a fairly routine venture until Daisy, the director assigned to us, asked if we had a POA. Pat pulled it out and gave it to her.

"This is a financial POA."

"Yes. Isn't that what you need?"

"We need a medical POA." 

(3 faces just stared back at her until Pop says what we're all thinking)

"That's not gonna do us much good now, is it?"

"We need a medical POA to authorize the cremation.

Did he have any children?"

"5"

"I'll need their names."

"ALL OF THEM?!?!"

"Without a POA we need authorization from all 

surviving children."

"Can we do it through email?"

After providing Daisy that information, we finished up the business transaction, I texted my kids to watch their emails and get the authorization back asap. We left and hit a couple different auto places to get a new battery for the Lexus and then headed to get some dinner. Going through the drive through, Brandon and Sami called to report on her surgery and let me know there was no email yet. Told them I'd call back when we got home. 

We walked in the door, I began to unload the food and the phone rang. You guessed it! Glady Cravitz insisting she talk to George to give him her condolences and tell him what a wonderful young man his son was, etc. I refused and hung up on her too. As I continued to put out our food, the doorbell rang! I went to answer the door to find an Amazon delivery for Randy! Dog treats for the dogs! Thank heavens they arrived before Pat took them back to Kentucky with him. As I returned to our food (Pop and Pat were eating by this time) my phone began ringing again; Brandon!

"Can I call you back?"

"Yeah, but just a minute.

We got the email."

"Okay... sign it."

"That's the problem. It's not a cremation authorization

and it's not for Dad. It's for Jacqueline ___

and it's got all her personal information! Even her 

Social Security Number."

So, as I sat and watched Pop and Pat feeding their faces, I called the funeral home to talk to the director and explain what happened. This unconcerned man got on his computer and said that he saw what he did and started to explain himself. I'm like, "I DON'T CARE! Just send another email with the right paperwork to my children so they can get it taken care of!" In the meantime, my other kids were finding their emails and sending me texts asking who Jacqueline was too!

What a zoo!!! Fortunately, the chaos calmed down after those first two days. I'm certain that it doesn't sound nearly as bad as it was to live through, but I hope you do recognize how appropriate those two days were considering the way Randy did EVERYTHING in his life. If it was possible to have a glitch, he'd find it! I think instead of Murphy's Law, I'm going to begin calling it Randy's Law!

It's still been a rough week, especially considering today (Dec 23rd) would have been our 41st wedding anniversary and it's also the 5th anniversary of his mother's passing.Today Pop brought Randy back home and he'll stay here until one day this spring when we do a small memorial for both him and his mother. His spirit, we know, is in a better place where he can be happy and smile again. AND, Megan and I are pretty well convinced that he was greeted at the "pearly gates" by our good friend, Susan, who probably had a "Welcome Home" party planned to greet him. 

Happy Anniversary, Randy!

How do you say good-bye to a guy named Randy?

How do you say good-bye to someone who's been a part of your life for 45 years? How do you pay proper tribute to the person named in the title of your blog? What do you say about the most exasperating person in your life when that person is also the one who gave you everything that is worth anything in your life: 5 wonderful children, 23 grandchildren and the gospel of Jesus Christ? How do you stop wishing that his demons hadn't taken over his life so that he could have recognized and enjoyed all the blessings he forgot he had?

One of my very best friends died yesterday. He was my friend and constant companion for years before we married. After we married, he took on more of the role of my best friend; he was the one that was present and shared my joys and sorrows. We did everything together. Many believed that we were the perfect couple with a perfect marriage. In some ways we were.

But internal conflict and genetic mental illness combined with prescription drugs and drug abuse took its toll on the spontaneous, creative, fun-loving guy that I knew I would marry before we even went on our first date.

Randy loved me. I know he did, but not the way he should have to marry me. He only asked me to marry him because he had seen me dating another guy and didn't like it AND he knew how badly I wanted children. Since he didn't like seeing me with anyone else and he knew that I would be actively looking for a man who had the same goals I had, he decided to do the "right thing" and proposed. Perhaps I was naive, but I believed he was proposing for the "right reason;" that he loved me...like that. 

Thirteen years into our marriage, he dropped the bomb and told me he was gay. I offered him a divorce immediately, but he didn't take me up on it. He wasn't sure if that's what he wanted. When we finally divorced four years later, he told me that he still didn't know what he'd do if he ever saw me with another man.

After our divorce, Randy dove headfirst into everything he apparently felt he'd been missing. He had several different sexual partners, he began using drugs and was an obligatory father to our five children. He loved them in his own way, but his expression of love was polar opposite to the love my kids were used to getting from me. But, they were used to taking his expressions of love and loved him in return.

A few years after our divorce, Randy met a great man, Pat, and they became committed partners. I love Pat. My kids love Pat. Grandchildren who know him love Pat. And Randy loved Pat. But somewhere along the line, Randy contracted HIV and has been on HIV medications for years. As I understand it, over time, HIV medications begin to take a toll on the mind. 

Randy had a pre-disposition to mental illness, inherited from his mother and never sought the real help he needed to control the illness and its control over his mind and his life choices continued to grow. Eventually, Pat couldn't take the mood swings and abuse any more. He left and Randy hit rock bottom. He turned to serious drug abuse and began having severe hallucinations; believing people were out to get him, trying to kill him and drugging him. He BELIEVED terrible things of many different family members and his paranoia began to control all of his life actions. His demons were ever present in his life.

I didn't mean for this post to get dark, but it is the darkness that dominated his life for the past few years; cutting him off from most who loved him. His demons have been part of my life for the past year as he came home to Decatur to stay with his dad. There have been good times over dinners together or working on small projects, like assembling the new snowblower, laughing at our own ineptness, it was like old times as we were always good at laughing at ourselves. It was wonderful being able to discuss concerns over his Dad's health or share frustrations when we were scolded as if we were three-year-olds. But then his demons would come back; the hallucinations took over and he'd barricade himself in the basement apartment, certain that "they" were after him again.

In recent years, Randy alienated a lot of people; our children most of all. He said terrible, hurtful things to those who loved him the most all driven by the demons he couldn't chase away. To all who have been hurt by him over the years, I ask that you try now to focus on the good, fun Randy that you used to know; the one that you shared laughter or a project with; the one who was creative and spontaneous, because that Randy was still in there. 

I pray that my children can focus on the dad who would pack up the family and take us on an unplanned adventure to Niagara Falls; or fall victim to his own DIY projects and fall through the attic floor, hanging into the garage below; or even the dad who taught them how to work hard hanging drywall, stapling insulation or running electrical wiring which have enabled them to be able to complete home improvement projects in their own homes today.

I pray that they can focus on the dad who cried at the sight of his baby laying helpless under a bililight; the dad who slept under his daughter's crib in the hospital for weeks so she'd know she wasn't alone; the dad who loved the special hugs from the little girl that insisted on sitting on his lap to watch TV in the evening; the dad who made special arrangements to get his boys into the best preschool and traveled hundreds of miles to attend their high school performances. This was their REAL dad. This was the man I loved. This is the man who will ALWAYS hold a piece of my heart. Whatever his reason, this is the man who gave me the best gifts of my life and for that I will be eternally grateful and will never forget the good that we had. 

In closing, I pray that he is now free from his demons. That he knows HIS reality was NOT reality. And that he will recognize that the love we have always had for him IS REAL. I love you Randy. Rest in peace.

For other blog posts specifically about my relationship with Randy, see posts from 31 Jan 2013, 15 Mar 2013, 22 May 2013 and 31 Jan 2016

Welcome to the family #23, Rocky!

Getting stabilized

He has red hair!
That's a first for a Sloan/Zielke!

Daddy says he looks like Emily,
cuddling her body pillow!

I began calling him Rocky early in his mother's pregnancy. "Rocky" was an underdog who became a world champion boxer in a movie by that name. The character was a tremendous fighter who kept persevering even though no one thought he could do it. This is how our little "Rocky" came to be. He beat all the odds. He wasn't supposed to exist. His mother, Emily, had been given no better than a 2% chance to conceive on her own. Each of Rocky's siblings came to the family through fertility specialists, but Rocky? He came on his own. Emily's pregnancy wasn't an easy one and it seemed that her body wanted to miscarry. She was assigned to strict bed rest at times and Rocky held on. If he could just hold on for six months, he'd have a "fighting" chance! And fight he did! Until the night of Dec. 6, 2019. The family was at their ward Christmas party and Emily began to have pains. Barton took her home, got the family settled and began watching a movie. For two hours, Emily suffered through contractions that were three minutes apart. When she began to bleed, they knew they had to head for the hospital! A neighbor came to sit with Abigail and Millie until Emily's parents could get there and around 12:19, Bart & Emily left for the hospital in Riverton, UT. Amid a great deal of screaming, commotion and urgency, Emily's water broke, she was finally given permission to push and little Rocky was born "around' 12:41!!! Unable to breathe on his own, they rushed him away and called to have him life flighted to a hospital better equipped to handle his needs. All day, fog had prevented the life flight helicopter from going out, but the fog cleared in time for them to fly to Riverton from Salt Lake to help Rocky. As soon as they landed, the fog rolled back in. Our Heavenly Father had cleared the fog long enough to enable these specialized nurses to get there in time to get Rocky ready to transport. As the fog had come back in, and Rocky was doing better, they opted to take him to Intermountain Health Center NICU by ambulance. Daddy Barton followed in his car and took a short video of the trip there. Bart was told he'd be in the NICU for two months; around the time of his due date, Feb 10. It is less than 16 hours later that I'm writing this memory and at this time, Barton has told us that he's almost breathing on his own, he's eaten and all his "numbers" look good! With God's blessing, maybe his stay in the hospital will be much shorter than two months! Barton and Emily haven't given Rocky his official name yet; there's a slight battle. Emily likes the name Jack. Barton likes Hinckley after the LDS prophet, Gordon B. Hinckley. To this very proud, happy and humbled Grandma though, he'll always be Rocky.

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