#traumatic death

[psychoslvt6]

Watching someone I love die up close was so traumatic and I don’t know how to even begin recovering from this.

[putnamcapital]

Loving Queer from the Afterlife

CW violent crime, death, bereavement

This week marked the first anniversary of the death of a friend, Jen. She was many things: an anarchist organizer, an entrepreneur, music critic, prison abolitionist, publisher, zine writer, baker, hiker, friend, partner, lover, daughter.

She was killed in a robbery that went wrong. After several days in the ICU on life support, her organs were donated to the benefit of over 70 people.

Jen continued to organize, lead, and love even as she was brain dead, and even after she died. I say this because Jen did what so few of us do: she planned what would happen if she died. She had a living will that stated her wishes clearly and that explained who would be tasked with making the most awful of decisions. She had a will that defined what to do with her assets and who would execute her affairs. She made sure the people she was bound to were seen, legally recognized, and cared for as well as she was able. Doing so in a will ensured that the law’s definition of ‘who mattered’ didn’t matter at all.

I am writing about this here, in this community, because Jen’s death taught me so much about queer love in the afterlife. Jen loved deeply and widely. Her relationships were unconventional. She was a central node of her polyamorous community. Her partners were connected to her in a multitude of ways, none of which the law or society are equipped to respect. By writing a will and a living will, she made sure that all the people she loved would be seen, not just by the law, but by the community of bereaved, as people who had suffered an unbearable and unimaginable loss.

So, as a small gesture to honour the splendor of Jen’s life, cruelly cut short, I am on here tonight asking you all to write a will; asking you to think about being organ donor if you can; asking you to think about who needs to decide what happens to you if you can’t decide for yourself; asking you think about what kind of support your loved ones will need to be able to walk that path and make sure they know how to reach each other.

You’ll say: But i’m young ... But i don’t have children ... But I don’t own a house ... But I am close to penniless. Jen was all those things. And yet she thought of how the people she loved would face that unthinkable day, and she decided to love them, even then, even after, so they would be seen the way she saw them.

i was going to tag this #notyoungroyals but i frankly can’t think of anything more Young Royals than a traumatic death throwing all your relationships into new light, and some people being taken to count more than others.

Here is a link to a song she loved.

[dellb1969]

12/12/20

It's shortly after the hour that my big brother left this world two years ago, dying of Covid-19 while incarcerated in South Dakota State Penitentiary.

Leading up to this event, he three-way called me one October evening and with his wife on the other line made us promise that he would not be placed on a ventilator or any life saving devices when he became sick with the virus.

It was as though he already knew. He said, 'I don't want to be a vegetable.' I was listening with half ears as I thought that he was just being overly dramatic. He spoke louder and was annoyed with me.

'Ok. Ok. I hear you', I responded to him.

I was trying to reassure him that he wasn't even sick and that we didn't even know what was happening with the virus, yet. He talked about daddy's death a few months earlier and how he told mom that he would come home to take care of her. Again, I tried to reassure him that things would be fine.

He spoke of his daughter, Jordyn who passed on the year before from cancer. It was so sudden and devastating for him. If he could be with her, he would go.

While in prison his entire wing contracted Covid-19, including my youngest son who was his cellmate.

My son would later tell me the story of how they all became sick and moved into a smaller unit where the sickest inmates were left out in the day area. He told me of checking on my brother when he became unresponsive after a day or two.

He told me of how the fellow inmates began to call for help by banging on windows and walls, of how when they finally came several hours later my brother no longer conscious and they sat him in an office chair where he dangled there, in a long hallway with no one to assist until an ambulance came to take him away.

My brother predicted his death and like anyone facing it, he became fearful too. He begged his wife to drive the two hours to the hospital and take him home, he would be waiting by a side door. I did my best to talk sense into him.

Five weeks. Five weeks he was on a ventilator fighting to live or die. The signs were so touch and go, we waited to see how treatments were working for him, with each passing day his quality of life becoming worse and his fears being realized. We waited on family, on beliefs, for prayers to be answered. He wasn't religious, I believed that in these five weeks he was somewhere in atonement, of communicating with loved ones and doing what it took to stay there with all of them.

I was failing him in allowing him to suffer, I gave him my word.

I set out for Sioux Falls on Dec. 11 to say goodbye and to show him some mercy and compassion like he’d made me promise, to talk to him once more and tell him that I loved him and what he meant to me.

My mother has a sixth sense about her oldest and beloved child, they had that bond and it was like she was aware. When arrived in Sioux Falls, she was there, with him that Friday night. I picked her up from seeing him and we went to dinner, it was there that she said, 'He's already gone.

The next morning I called Rochelle and my mother to let them know that I was going to spend the last hours with him, and I went. I walked in and he was in a fetal position with hoses and wires all over him. I sat next to him and held his hand, I talked to him, told him stories, played some of his favorite music through my phone which I placed on his chest. I played him daddy's favorite Christmas songs. I let him know that it was ok to go on his big journey.

They came in to take all the tubes and wires off of him and then stepped out. I sat next to him as his body went back into a normal position and through his open eyes he shed these BIG tears, I ran my hands across his face and through his hair. I said, 'It's ok, we're going to be ok. We'll sure miss you, but we understand, brother.' I wiped his tears away and smiled at him without letting him know that my heart was breaking wide open.

I thanked him for being the best big brother.

As I kept my eye's upon his face I could see a light or figure at the foot of his bed and I tried not to look directly at it. When he was taking his last breaths the light moved directly across from me and through my own tears I stared directly at it and I said out loud, 'that better be you.’ Though I am not sure who it was that I was talking.

They left together a second later and I broke. I looked to the nurses and they both shook their heads in agreement that he was gone.