A valid point, iamnotbatman. To not have the space you needed is an awful thing; especially, when as you say, you know how well intentioned everyone is being. And certainly you’re not in the state of mind to ask for what you want most badly. So being aware of people’s differing needs like that is very useful advice. “How are you feeling?” is such an unfortunate question to ask. I don’t ever ask it - but people do because, as I’m sure you know, they just don’t know what else to say.
flatlined, I too am so sorry for the loss of your friend Ticktoc; and I if all that can be done for Tinker is warm thoughts and healing meditations, he’s got 'em from downunder. I feel like a jerk for not mentioning those things in my original post - but I’m glad I could help. It’s nice that something so simple can mean so much. (And thanks for the shout out, Kinki!)
As Lyn Bodini said, I think you should be proud of how good your club has become at deaing with terrible times like this. Loss and grief are the hardest things to handle. Whatever we offer has us feel so inadequate and incompetent; but really, that we are there is what people remember. They don’t remember what you did, or what you said - all they remember is how you made them feel.
That you and your club members can be the glue for those who are shattered, while dealing with your own anger and sadness, is the stuff of which true families are made.
Grief is a process. Ride with it. Somehow, sometime, it settles with a sigh of acceptance, somewhere in your soul.
You’re doin’ good, flatlined. However you’re doin’ it, is the way it should be done.
Ticktoc - what a powerhouse! Energy like that don’t just disappear.
A classmate of mine died in similar circumstances when we were 15 (he was driving his little sister home to get her gym clothes, which she’d forgotten; they were run over by a truck which “straightened” a soft S-curve). His little sister was in a coma for a while, has been depressed since.
I didn’t visit his family, but I was one of the three girls and two boys who, shall we say, defended his gf from the “caring assault” of their so-called friends who kept telling her “oh, don’t cry”. We split who’d handle collecting class notes, who let her family know she’d gone home and who went home with her; we didn’t ask for our teachers’ permission, simply left and the boys (who were charged with taking notes) informed them. We made sure she had drink and nibbles available, cooked lunch, stayed with her, gave her shoulders to cry on and patted her back, hugged when she hugged, stayed away but handy when she balled up, passed the tissues and never, ever said “oh, don’t cry”.
Both for the deaths of my father and grandfather, having someone who was clearly In Charge of Paperwork was helpful. In our case, those were relatives, but not every family has several lawyers in it (and ones with financial expertise, too). There may be people in your group who can assist with that. Trying to sort insurance is hard enough when you’re calm, doing it just after losing someone you love and with another someone in the hospital is a lousy time to be doing it.
When Mom was bedridden (and both her and Dad depressed, and me a Jr/Sr in HS, and the boys thereabouts of 4th grade), I was able to keep the house clean and the family fed and everybody showered and homework done - but I didn’t know how to cook any vegetables other than green beans. Two friends of Mom’s who have vegetable gardens and often give her excess crop (you know how it is: you put in 3 different varieties of tomatoes which are supposed to ripen at different times, the fuckers still manage to go from green to red on the same week) would bring those same veggies cooked instead of raw. A few times that they were bringing 10 portions instead of 5, they brought them in two tupperwares so I could freeze one or both.
Yeah I’ve been thinking something similar throughout this thread.
Please keep in mind that at life’s most difficult times people have a need to control what they can sometimes. Loss is uncontrollable, so instead, they turn to what they can control. They clean house, or make soup, or obsess over some other small thing. And their friends and family say, “Leave that, let me do it”, or, “don’t worry about that now!” But for some people, that busy work is keeping them moving forward in some ways. Everybody grieves differently.
The same for kids, some people need them underfoot, they find it affirming of life and need to keep them close. Myself, I would not use the paper products, because fussing with the food, doing the dishes, serving people, etc., would/has been my ‘busy work’ at such times.
I guess, I’m saying everybody is different. Having a heap of good ideas to choose from is better then a protocol that you’re following for each.
(Also, can anyone translate this, “offing a flash of the fun bags AND IT WORKING”, for me?)
Beyond being there & listening, a covered dish to start. Goffer services. (Aunt Sue is flying in & you’re in no shape to drive. What times her flight, what terminal, I’ll pick her up for you.) Shopping help…and sometimes prodding is good. If I can know what they go through, making a list & getting a few grocery bags of things can be a help.
And, if after time has passed, helping the survivor separate the things of the deceased into mementos & keepsakes, things that have value & ought to be sold, things that could be donated (clothes?), and things that just plain need to be thrown out (toothbrushes, old prescriptions, etc)
I think I posted this once before, but in the past few years I have found that giving the family a roll of stamps (e.g., 100 stamps in whatever is the current first class postage rate) always seems appreciated. There are so many things needing to be mailed following a death, and this gives them one less thing to add to their list of chores.
We usually bring food, in the form of frozen meals that only need to be heated up, i.e. frozen meatloaf, frozen lasagna, etc., with the instructions on a post-it note on top. (Simple instructions, i.e. “Bake at 375 for an hour.”)
When Whatsit Jr. was in the hospital as a baby, friends of ours got together and just brought us dinner every night for a week. Some nights I’m pretty sure they’d just made extras of whatever they had for dinner themselves, and then put it in Tupperware and dropped it off at our door. They didn’t stay to chat or socialize; they just rang the bell, left the food, and went on their way. I appreciated this more than anyone will ever know. It was the only thing that kept me from living on the all-Twinkie diet for a couple of weeks.
Something else you might offer to do is to bring in their mail and sort out the junk. They may not want you to do this if they are private people, but one of the things that went by the wayside when I was in a similar situation was the mail. I forgot to bring it in from the mailbox for so long that the mailman actually started rubber-banding it together and leaving it on the step because the mailbox got full. It’s one of those things that you just don’t think about and then there’s a huge pile of it to deal with.
I read this before I left home this morning. I’m not too good with kids, I don’t understand them. A couple of the young male club members came with us to the park and roughhoused with Ticktoc’s grandkids. We tossed frisbies and fed them hotdogs. I think this was the best suggestion so far for this family. Thank you.
Thank you. We do try to give people space if we think they need it, or if they ask. While I was at the hospital, Tinker’s daughters didn’t seem to want to talk or interact with us. We were ok with that. We are strangers to them, and strangers who could be considered scarey for non-bikers. We told them to ask if there was anything they needed and then sat apart from them and talked about Tinker. After a while, they came to listen to our stories and seemed to understand that we do love their father. When the oldest one said she would like a shower, I was happy to drive her (in a car) to her motel room. I learned that one of the guys had given both of them pre-paid cell phones so they wouldn’t get roaming charges. Another thing I will remember for next time.
“How are you feeling?” is such an unfortunate question to ask. I don’t ever ask it - but people do because, as I’m sure you know, they just don’t know what else to say.
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Sadly, we have been doing this long enough to know that is a stupid question. They hear variations of “I’m so sorry. What can I do?”
Thank you so much for your kind words and thoughts. Tinker is showing improvement today. He had back surgery and is able to respond somewhat to commands and can move his toes.
As Lyn Bodini said, I think you should be proud of how good your club has become at deaing with terrible times like this. Loss and grief are the hardest things to handle. Whatever we offer has us feel so inadequate and incompetent; but really, that we are there is what people remember. They don’t remember what you did, or what you said - all they remember is how you made them feel.
That you and your club members can be the glue for those who are shattered, while dealing with your own anger and sadness, is the stuff of which true families are made.
Grief is a process. Ride with it. Somehow, sometime, it settles with a sigh of acceptance, somewhere in your soul.
You’re doin’ good, flatlined. However you’re doin’ it, is the way it should be done.
Ticktoc - what a powerhouse! Energy like that don’t just disappear.[/QUOTE]
This made me cry grateful tears. I’m not usually an emotional mess. We try hard to not cry in front of the families. They are already a mess and shouldn’t feel as though they need to comfort us. I will remember your support and understand for a very long time. Thank you.
Holy cow. I am SO sorry. You were wise and sensitive and caring. Not a lot of school kids would have thought to do what you did.
Oddly enough, while we have a club Preacher, a bailsbond man, medical personal and cops, we don’t have any legal people. This might be something we will need to look for in prospects. Lips (our Preacher “from your lips to God’s ears”) is helping out with funeral arrangements and probably knows how to help with insurance. I’ll ask him when I can. This is probably pretty sensitive to a lot of people and we are basically strangers to the families.
Your highschool years sound like a nightmare and you sound like a wonderful person. A lot of people that age would have just given up. I’m really sorry you had to go through that. Your neighbors sound wonderful.
Thank you. I’ll never forget Ticktok. Not only did she save baby birds and keep us on time, she was a kind and caring and giving person who once stopped us on our ride so that someone could take a stranger’s wheel an hour in the other direction and get a new tire mounted. Stranger was broke and broken down, so she passed the hat to get money for the new tire, then gave the extra money to the broke stranger.
That’s why I started this thread. I want a heap of good ideas for next time and knew I’d get good ones from the smartest people in the world. We try to be as considerate as we can be. All we really want to do is help, but as you so wisely pointed out, everybody is different and some people blame the bikes/club/floozies for the death. In that case, we will accept the abuse, say how sorry we are and leave our offerings on the doorstep. (That only happened once, but it was so sad. We knew it was just grief and rage speaking, nothing personal)
I’m not sure where you are from, so hopes I don’t sound condesending, but “flashing” means showing flesh quickly. Opening and closing vest or pulling tshirt up and down. “fun bags” = boobies. “IT WORKING” means that most hetro guys will do almost anything to get a fast look at boobies. Again, we are bikers. We live in our own world. Its perfectly acceptable during a run for a stranger to come up to me, in front of my sweet baboo and 20 other people and ask me to show my teats. If I do, everyone pays compliments. If I refuse, nobody is upset or offended.
This is really the hardest part. I’ve done it in the past. It seems like such an invasion. Its also necessary. We try to get into the home before the family so we can remove porn/bongs/dildos, etc. Yes, our lost ones are adults who are allowed to have such things, but having Mom open a nightstand to see her daughter’s sextoys really isn’t a good thing.
I thank you for bringing it up. And for being so tactful about it.
Another good idea. I wouldn’t have thought about this either.
You have wonderful friends. That was so thoughtful of them.
I didn’t think about the mail before reading this. I was at the hospital today, so suggested it to the people who were helping Ticktoc’s family. They are going to bring it in, but not sort. One of us will go to Tinker’s place and grab the mail daily and bring it to his daughters. They can sort it, or we can.
Tomorrow, we (club) are going to go to Tinker’s place and clean out his fridge. We will also put any private stuff in a box and store it for him. If/when he goes home, we will give the box back with no comment. Tinker has been on a couple of clean up raids, so while he’s in no condition to think about it now, I do believe that if/when he does, it will comfort him to know that we are looking out for him.
Again, thank you everyone for your kind words and great suggestions. This will never get less painful, but having plans helps a lot.
Once it backfired for me. Mom went to her mom’s house. Before Mom got there, her mother died (not unexpectedly) and her father called our house. Pop left me at home alone to go be with Mom and her father, but he didn’t say anything to me. The backfiring part: Before I even knew that my grandmother had died, i.e., less than two hours after the call, there was a church lady at the door with a casserole in hand. That is how I found out my grandmother died. Not the best way. I was 12. I have always wondered if that church lady kept some casseroles in the deep freeze just for those occasions.
A cousin of mine who had just lost her mother said that if one more person brought a bucket of fried chicken she was going to scream. Please vary the menu.
I like the idea of the stamps. I would suggest a couple of boxes of “Thank you” cards. I mean, you are supposed to send thank you notes to people who leave food, flowers, and such, right?
An aunt of mine did a lot of ferrying people to and from the airport for a wedding. I will keep that service in mind for funerals, too.
I am sorry for your loss. Remember the good times. And the love, always the love. Best wishes for Tinker too.
He was, Baker. Sadly, I’m so jaded that I’m guessing its because hitting 850 lbs of Milwalkee iron did enough damage to his Nissan that he couldn’t drive away. The good thing is that it was a new car…so he probably has some insurance. At 22 years old, he probably doesn’t have enough insurance to cover the emergancy room costs. If he’s human, his life has been changed in a very bad way. If Ticktoc’s family or Tinker sues him, they will get a judgement…but you can’t get money from someone who doesn’t have any.
Mostly, all I know about him is that he hasn’t contacted anyone with expressions of remorse. I did hear that the EMT’s were mad at him because he thought his bloody face needed instant medical help (airbag) no matter that Tinker was going to die on the street while he got his nose attended to, but that is third hand gossip. I wasn’t there. Our bailbondman has read the police report and says that the responders were very disgusted with his actions, but I haven’t read that so I can’t say.
Again…this is too common for us, so we keep money in our treasury for funeral and family expensives. I know that its crass to be thinking about money at this time, but the families often don’t have much and suddenly buying plane tickets and hotel rooms and a casket adds up really fast.
Today, I learned that Ticktoc was an organ donator. I’m not surprised at that. What does tick me off is knowing that her family is expected to pay the cost of harvesting her parts. Again, I don’t know the whole story, but I was told that everything that happened to her dead body after the EMT’s came is now being billed to her.
TexasDriver I’m now on an old laptop at Starbucks. For some reason I can’t quote you and I really don’t feel like figureing it out right now.
That was HORRIBLE. You were old enough to have been told what was happening. I’m so sorry that you had to go through that. Offers up a big sloppy biker hug.
I’m sure that church lady was trying to be kind. If the food was warm, she probably cooked it as soon as she got the news. If it was frozen, its very possible that she gave you a meal that she had been planning to eat herself. She wasn’t trying to be the first one with the bad news for a kid, she was trying to be kind.
I didn’t think about Thank You cards either. Another good suggestion. I do know that a couple of the ladies take names and phone numbers. I don’t know what happens after that. We work as a family and trust that everyone is doing their part and doing it well.
I’ve gotten past the grief and am now angry. Well…I’m sad and very mad. This happened because someone got a new car and was speeding and didn’t care how he impacted other people. I hope his financial life is ruined forever. I hope that he will have nightmares about blood on his windshield forever. I’m very happy that my brothers and sisters are more rational than me because at this time, I want to go visit him with a baseball bat and take his knees and balls out. I need my idiot cat to walk over my keyboard and let me cry in his fur, but idiot cat is 60 miles away.
Nah, more like “royally pissed off at our classmate’s so-called friends”. The only thing which kept them all from being defenestrated was that we’d been told there weren’t any novels in prison’s libraries.
A coworker put it well one time she was completely angry and our boss and another coworker were telling her “oh, take it easy honey, don’t get angry!” “First I can not ‘not get angry’, I already AM angry! And second, you’re not worried about me, it makes you uncomfortable that I happen to be angry and you can both piss off!” The rest of us applauded.
Let me put it this way: when I hear people talking about “going back to their teens”, my “hell NO” rattles the windows. But hey, it didn’t kill me.
I was at the doctor yesterday; since I’m new in the area, the videos they play in the waiting room are new to me, so I actually got some entertainment out of watching them. There were two on donations. One of them featured the father of a donor, saying “if you give in to this black-hole moment and you have a heart, you will eventually regret it; if you raise over the pain and anger, it will not make the pain go away, nothing can, but it will make the sunrise a bit sweeter.”
If this happened it was an error on the part of the hospital and should be corrected. In the US the recipient pays the cost of harvesting the organs. Sadly it does seem to be a very common misconception which dissuades people from being donors.
Cooked meals that can be frozen and reheated with minimal difficulty and loss of flavor. That is why Athena gave us casseroles.
And you don’t use any dish you care about getting back, either. Either a disposable aluminum dish or a glass/ceramic number you can say goodbye too. Asking for the dish back is simply not done in civilized circles.
flatlined, I didn’t say this in my earlier post, but you and your friends have my sympathy. My thoughts are with you all and Tinker right now.
Unfortunately, you are right about getting too used to hospitals and funeral homes. As someone who occasionally still rides and still has a whole mess of friends and family who do, it happens far too often.
My condolences, flatlined. There are no sufficient words.
When my dad died, one of the offers I appreciated most was a friend who told me I could come over anytime if I wanted to get away from everyone – I had open license to tell everyone to piss off and leave me alone if I was there.
Another thing that can be very appreciated is to take care of mundane chores like lawn mowing, dishes, and the like. If possible, do it when the family is gone taking care of other stuff.
That’s one of the things which, as other posters mentioned, really really needs knowing the family so you can tell whether it will be well-received or viewed as an intrusion/taking away a mindless job the family would rather do themselves. Visitors offering to help me may find themselves dusting - but getting home and finding my key-holding relatives there saying “honey, we did your dusting” would lead to “give me your keys to this house, now.”
I’ll second this. When my wife and I got off the plane from Russia with the Firebug, my sister was there to greet us with a large pan of frozen lasagna. Having real food on hand that we only needed to reheat made our lives much easier as we adapted to suddenly being parents of a toddler.
