Wednesday, June 20, 2018

June 20

John died June 8, 2017.

He was almost 29 years old and he died horribly of malignant hyperthermia--he died in a third-rate emergency room handcuffed to a bed, cooking to death from the inside out. He was brought there by local cops who thought his frustration and agitation at being pulled over yet again was a sign of drug use. Late on June 3 he was brought in and given the wrong sedative and his body reacted by savagely killing itself. And no one checked on him until it was too late.

He was helicoptered to the nearest trauma center--only a mile from my own house and I likely saw the lights heading down Grand--where university physicians worked on him for 4 days before letting him go.

My friend in Portland, Jan, saw a random post on Facebook while looking for him, wondering how he was doing, having read my blog in which I chronicled my time together with him 2013-2015. She sent me a message on June 20. A year ago.

Between June 8 and June 20 are 12 days in which he was already dead and I didn't know.

I met him when he was 11.

I lost touch with him when he was nearly 13.

I found him again when he was 24.

He lived with me when he was 25.

It's a lot of numbers and it's a year now and I'm still playing math games and looking for Cooper's Hawks*.

And the worst of it is I still feel like I don't deserve to grieve.



*His last name was Boedeker, which is Dutch for "barrel maker". Cooper is the medieval profession term for barrel maker. I see Cooper's Hawks all the time, around my old house and my new. More than red-tailed, more than crows, more than any other large bird.

7 comments:

  1. I am really sorry, Bridgett I read your blog about this for a while, but misplaced the link. I know how much you tried help him. You deserve to grieve.

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  2. Don't deserve to grieve? I'm having trouble wrapping my head around this. And isn't this feeling its own form of grief?

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  3. Oh, how horribly tragic (and what an example of medical neglect/negligence). I remember reading those posts, and admiring all you were doing for John (and was it his son?). I hope you are able to grieve, and deservedly so.

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  4. Absolutely you deserve to grieve. You did so much for him. And most importantly, you provided him a safe space and comfort. That was huge, and you should never underestimate that.

    Just because you had lost touch at the time of his death, that doesn't mean you didn't deserve to grieve. You're grieving the child, the man you knew, the man you had hoped he would be, and the man you knew he could be, if circumstances could be different. That's a lot of grieving to be done.

    Show yourself the same compassion you showed him, and allow yourself to grieve. And allow yourself to acknowledge the good that you did, the good that you were, in his life as well.

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  5. This is heartbreaking. Of course you deserve to grieve.

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  6. Thank you all. I had a long conversation with a friend last night about all of this. And it helps.

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  7. Unlike the others, I did not know the backstory to this, but even without it, your writing cut me to the bone. Beautiful and unbearably sad. I'm glad you have a friend to help you navigate, and all these blogging friends as well. (We have broad-shouldered hawks, mostly, but one day a Cooper's hawk landed on a tree next to our deck, and stayed for a long while.)

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