My brother David died yesterday. We was 64. On May 14th he’d been hit by a car while riding his little motorcycle and broke his leg. They put in two rods and some pins and told him to rest up for two weeks.

He did the opposite of that, doing many many things; I think he thought he would be OK and he didn’t need to rest. He had always been active, swimming three times a week, riding his bike all over the place, and doing lots of manual labor. He was thin and active and healthy.

He was desperate to keep working because he was self-employed, working for power wheelchair companies that sent him all over the state and beyond to fix/deliver different kinds of electric scooters.

After doing too way too much, he finally had a bad couple of days. He texted me a couple of days ago to say that he’d fallen twice in the night.

I was going to go to his house yesterday morning, and he sent me a text at 6;:30 a.m. asking me to please unlock the door and come in because he couldn’t get out of bed and both he and his cat needed water badly. I didn’t get the text til 8:30 and went over and he was lying on the floor, dead. Not something that will be easy to get out of my head.

It was such a surreal experience; after I called Kevin he said to call 911 and suddenly there were about a dozen rescue people – firemen, paramedics, cops – in David’s tiny living room. I’d known that he was dead because I’d gone in and felt his pulse, but I guess that’s what they do; they were doing CPR and other stuff and they didn’t say he was gone. They took him to the hospital and I got to ride in a police car because Kevin thought it wouldn’t be good for me to drive. He was going to stay in the house and get the cat and take it home.

I have to say the back seat of a squad is very uncomfortable. All plastic. The windows did open, though, which surprised me, but I guess they did because there were bars over them. I got to the hospital and Mom came in and they made us go sit in a “quiet room” and I figured he had to be dead, and a chaplain came in and said nice things, and then a doctor came in and said he’d died. They didn’t know the exact cause of death and will do an autopsy. We’re speculating that he could have had a blood clot that went to his brain and killed him. It’s all too new and horrible to think about right now.

His little kitty is in our upstairs kitty guest room. Kevin is sitting with her, because she’s scared and in the closet. She’s only three and very sweet and I’m sure she’ll eventually enjoy being a part of our ever-growing pack of cats.

Yesterday was a horrible day and today is pretty bad. I think I’ll take a nap.

Ok then,

G.