Today would have been my brother Scott’s 77th Birthday. He lived for the past decade-plus in Hilo, Hawaii, and contact had been reduced pretty much to emails at birthdays and cards at Christmas. Last year at this time my other brother, Paul, and I sent emails as usual. When neither of us got a response, Paul decided to investigate. We learned, gradually, that Scott had died a month earlier; his ashes were sitting in a local mortuary labeled Unclaimed.
Since Paul has more family responsibilities than I, including grandchildren, which I do not, it became my task to go to Hilo to deal with his belongings as well as his remains. The fact that, by the time the apartment management got on the case, Scott’s wallet and cell phone had disappeared led to interesting complications (and of course we could not find the password to his computer).
I had visited Scott in January, 2023, and knew that he would have nothing to do with doctors. His recorded death date is the date the police found his body; the cause was determined to be a heart attack. While I don’t believe he chose the date, I believe he died as he wished, in his apartment, without any fuss, without involving anyone who might have made things more complicated.
What I don’t know is what made him so very much a recluse. Ours was never a close family, but we do all have friends. The only people who seemed to know him in Hilo were his landlords; their office was next door to his apartment. And they didn’t know him well enough to find us until we reached out to them.
He was very smart, had a number of jobs in computer software, was interested early on in AI, its possibilities and its dangers, enjoyed reading philosophy and writing. He was someone worth knowing, and our visits with him before he settled in Hilo were good times.
This September we will scatter his ashes in the ocean which kept us so far apart.
freethoughtandmetaphor 