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.
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| Happy Anniversary, Randy! |
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