For many years I’ve known that my next visit to Dad’s house would be the one after he had passed away. Acquired in 1997. I had only been in the house once; shortly after he had purchased it. The house is small; a main floor that has a kitchen and a living room, stairs that go down to a bathroom in the basement and stairs that go up to a bedroom. That’s it.
By mutual unspoken accord any visit to Pittsburgh since my first visit to the house was arranged at a neutral site. I think Dad knew that the family wasn’t going to work out in that space and I knew from the one visit that it would never be clean enough that I’d willingly bring anybody in there.
One of the big discussion points on Monday night and Tuesday morning as Kevin and I drove down to Pittsburgh was what would be awaiting us there. I’m fearing the worst….I am sure it won’t be very clean but with the knowledge that he was probably dead for several days before being discovered I’m worried that there will be a nasty odor and mess on top of everything else. Spend $50 on cleaning supplies at Meijer Monday night before Kevin and I head southeast in the morning. I’m probably jaded by the maggot—nastiness of JWH Jr’s demise back in the 80’s……but this isn’t a trailer in the Tucson sun.
Kevin says Tuesday afternoon that it isn’t as bad as he thought it might be. I agree on some parts.
Monday afternoon the medical examiner called; they had examined the body and report that he died of natural causes (but I’m not going to get any answers on what of a myriad of things was the determining cause). They had arranged for the funeral home to collect the body…and that was that.
We arrive around 11 am after a stop at the police station to get the key to the house (I had one, given to me long ago, but there is no way I could lay my hand on it now). His car is parked on the street where I remember it would be. We walk down the steps to the house and hesitantly open the door. I’ll eternally thankful that we were not greeted with any funky-ass smell. So, that is pleasant surprise #1.
Sadly, the house is even more dirty than I would have thought. The kitchen…the counters and the sink…heck, I’m not sure how long they had gone without seeing any kind of effort to wipe things down. Tell Kevin we’ll start here with trying to sort through things and work our way through the house.
Kitchen: I start in on the paperwork on the dining room table and bookshelf while Kevin works on cleaning out the cabinets and stuff. He interrupts me periodically with updates on what he has found (spices with purchase dates as far back as the 1980s) and other interesting facts. I’m busy trying to sort through what is junk and what I might need to get Dad’s affairs in order. One of the first orders of business was to try and figure out exactly when he passed away; the death certificate lists December 15th but it is obvious that it was earlier than that. Looking at the newspapers he had opened up (but not read) the Post-Gazette on Thursday morning. Friday’s paper, and all subsequent papers, were still in the plastic wrap. So, sometime between the early morning on December 11th and December 12th.
A neighbor comes over and says hello as Kevin and I are unloading the cleaning stuff from the car; she had called the police once the papers started to pile up.. Said Dad was pretty regular in his routine; out the door at 8 am to Shop-N-Save, over to the Legion, back by noon. I know from trying to get a hold of him that he was often asleep by 4 pm…..almost always awake by 4 am or 5 am. She said he seemed to have a lot of trouble with the steps on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Pleasant Surprise #2 is the startling revelation that for as messy is this house is that Dad’s financial records are decidedly not messy. He has everything filed away neatly, checkbook meticulously balanced, every pertinent record that I will need to lay my hands on are found in the first 10 minutes of being at the house. Surprised to see he has a subscription to Entertainment Weekly. Not surprised to see he has one to Playboy.
There will be a lot of JWH posts in the future with some of the stuff I found; old driver’s licenses, voting registration cards, etc. The debris of the past. Kevin’s still cleaning out the kitchen cabinets. The stove seems to be in decent shape (and I think from conversations with Dad, the only appliance regularly used…my impression is that most meals were Stouffer’s frozen pizza). The freezer is empty; the refrigerator has 10 cans of Old Milwaukee and some leftovers that Kevin and I didn’t bother to figure out. Maybe next trip. The microwave….well, Kevin’s description was that it looked like he had tried to cook a squirrel!
Living Room: I’m not even sure Goodwill would take any of the household items in here; maybe the entertainment center, maybe the couch or the other chair he didn’t sit in. That’s about it. I had thought Dad had a nicer TV; it is easily 10 years old and I know has no value since it is not a flat screen. He does have about 200 records; Kevin is uber-geeked about this discovery and starts planning a listening event with best-buddy Drew. We grab the electronics (there is a record on the turntable…Commodore’s Greatest Hits. Side 1 Track 1? Brick House! She’s mighty mighty!) Everything I’m looking for is in the cabinet under the TV; US Army Medals, pictures, notebooks, etc.
Bathroom: The washer and dryer look to be ok (note to self: run them the next time I’m there to make sure) and the bathroom is a total disaster.
Bedroom: A large sense of dread as I head upstairs….but Pleasant Surprise #3 is that it was almost hard to tell that the end had come here. There’s a dresser here but no clothes are in it; just stacked on the floor everywhere. Have to go through 5 or 6 pairs of jeans before I find his wallet and money clip. Nothing more comes out of this room (I may take some pictures of the ancient clothing I found there though!)
We leave here after two or three hours to head over to Blawnox(!) to the funeral home. We scarf down lunch in their parking lot, and head inside. It is about as straight forward as it is going to get; nothing but the cremation. They inform me that Dad is in cold storage in the basement but they won’t cremate him until the permit application for Allegheny County is complete (an aside, Pennsylvania has some screwy requirements for this situation!) They ask a bunch of questions for the death certificate; the only one worth discussing here is the relatively new addition of ‘primary occupation’ to the form. My first thought is computer technician; it is what he did in the Army and his twenty-plus years of work after the Army. But I’m sitting there thinking that this doesn’t cover it; a computer technician describes some Geek Squad schmoe who fixes sound cards and various Windows related problems. Dad repaired computer boards when nobody else did that (part of the reason he stayed working so long with his various lifestyle problems was the there was literally nobody else that the company could hire to do what he did…and they needed that skill).
Ended up going with Computer Systems Operator.
Kevin and I head back to the hotel; he sleeps while I look through the bin of documents I have collected. We’ll hit some of that in the next post.
