You’re welcome!

To all who read this, I am about to give you a gift. If my presence on the ‘net is not enough, if the words I offer aren’t sufficient to fully enhance the lives or warm the hearts of all who sup at the generous table I lay out whenever I feel like, I’m about to take another unselfish step. Here goes: If you are planning to die suddenly and unexpectedly and you’ve got some stuff stashed you’re not particularly proud of, like in your underwear drawer, your car, at work in your desk, locker or any other such space, get rid of it—and right-fucking-now. Jesus can show up at any time to bring you Home. You don’t want anything laying around that may give Him second thoughts about setting you up in His neighborhood. I’ll now offer an example.

I was called to a residential death in an upscale apartment building. The decedent was a guy, fifty-three years old, and was found by a friend. He was laying dead in the hallway between his bathroom and bedroom. The guy was naked, save a bath towel. He was obviously very fit. Not an ounce of flab on him. The friend who found him explained he was there to pick him up for lunch, and when the door wasn’t answered at his knock, he assumed our decedent was in the shower and walked right in. This was not unusual, routine even. The friend further explained that the man was in even better shape than he appeared. He had run over a dozen marathons in as many years. He had, in fact, been training for his next one on that very day. When they’d made arrangements for lunch, the friend told us the man had said, “I’ve got to get eight miles in today. How ‘bout we schedule it for (whatever time, I can’t remember.) I can get my miles in and take a shower in plenty of time.” He also reported the man had never smoked, drank maybe three light beers over the course of a weekend, and had the type of diet you’d expect from a hard-core runner.

Which brings me to my standing in the hallway, scratching my head along with the patrol cops. While this appeared to be a natural– if wildly unexpected– death, I haven’t the convenience of leaving it at that. I cannot just pack him up and let the docs sort it out though, essentially, this is what appeared as to how it’d all shake out. Nope. I’m both compelled and obliged to do a bit more snooping. I’ve more than once been to the quaint residence of a septuagenarian grandparent and walked out with not just a corpse, but bindles of crack and a scorched glass tube, or a half-empty bottle of freshly prescribed vicodins. Things are not always what they appear to be.

So, I poke around. No painkillers in the medicine cabinet or a kitchen cupboard. No bottles of booze tucked beside the couch or secreted in a desk drawer. I was making a last casual recon in the bedroom, probably the most popular area to hide stuff from prying eyes, when I had a “what have we here?” moment.

It would have been obvious to a blind man that the box on the closet floor, half hidden by a pile of running shoes, didn’t contain a few pounds of heroin or any other means of self-destruction. But, I am a nosey-body by mandate and had a closer look. It was a human pelvis. This was not the trophy of a twisted serial killer. It was a facsimile of the hips-and-buttocks region, anatomically correct in every way imaginable, casted in life-like silicone in the exact proportions of one of the “hottest stars in adult film.” That’s what it said on the box. This claim was supported by a photo of the young lady, and it could arguably have served well against accusations of false advertising.

As I pondered the relevance of such a discovery, one of the patrol cops walked into the bedroom and informed me the friend had contacted the dead guy’s daughter. She was on the way to the apartment. He added she was insisting on seeing her father before I hauled him away—if such a thing were possible. When I told him it was, I noticed he was also apprising the XXX package, which I was holding in my hands. He looked at me, smirked and said, “I suppose you need to take that with you.”

My answer was something to the effect that I would, but only to save him the embarrassment of missing a 9-1-1 call because he was taking a crack at it in his squad.

In truth, I was considering it. With his daughter on the way, I was uncomfortable with the possibility that she might see what Dad had stashed in his closet. These situations are anything but scripted. There was no way I could be sure there might have been something else—presumably less scandalizing—in the closet, an object of deep sentimental value she had to have immediately. I couldn’t let her rush into the bedroom in a state of overwhelming grief only come face-to-ass with a meticulously crafted representation of some porn-slut’s moneymaker.

I told the cop—after casually tossing the rubber butt back into the closet—that she could see her dad if she showed up in a reasonable time. He said she was about twenty minutes out. I said I wanted the dead man to be in a more presentable state when she came into the apartment. If she showed up before I could do that, I asked him to stall her outside until I gave him an all clear. His professional face was back on. He assured me he and his partner would handle it, and he added they’d already made a call to the police Chaplain. He promised they wouldn’t let her in until the minister showed up.

The driver and I put the dead marathoner on the cot, tucked him in, shrouded him, and wheeled him into the living room. I immediately raced back into the bedroom in a mad search of what other implements of self-gratification our dead guy might have cached. All I could find were a few skin mags and a jar of balm. I stacked all of it on the bed along with the prosthetic pelvis, and wondered what might go wrong in the course of making a frantic dash with this crap out to the hearse. I had just decided to swipe a pillow case to conceal it before leaving the room, when I heard a fresh voice. I looked out to see another man, one dressed in construction garb, talking to the other patrol cop. The officer turned away from him and saw me standing down the hall. “It’s the son-in-law,” he announced.

I am not a religious man in any traditional sense. However, I have been in enough situations where I could not ignore what I have now come to deeply believe are moments of Divine Intervention. I interrupted whatever exchange the cop and our newcomer were having with a spastic gesture directed at the son-in-law, one that could only be interpreted as “Get your ass over here now!”

He complied. Before I let him into the bedroom, I made him confirm he was married to this man’s daughter, and that she was en route.

He nodded. “She called me before she left work. My job site’s only about a mile away.”

“I’ve got a few things in here I’m pretty sure she doesn’t need to see,” I told him. When he entered the bedroom and got an eyeful of what I’d laid out on the bed he turned to me, gaping but leaving no doubt he and I were in complete agreement. I offered him the pillow case and left him to do what he felt was best. In less than a minute, he squeezed his way past the policeman and I, scrambling out to the dumpster in the parking lot. The daughter arrived just a few minutes later, just ahead of the Chaplain.

The driver and I departed with the deceased (that afternoon his cause of death was determined to be the result of a massive myocardial infarction). We left his devastated daughter to find what comfort she could in the arms of her husband and with the kind counsel of the Chaplain. I left with the solid belief that things had gone better than I could have ever have planned.

More to cum…

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Not enough? Hey, how could it be? You should really check out the Ebook:https://www.amazon.com/Lunacy-Death-perspective-developed-investigation-ebook/dp/B079DWFH9T/ref=redir_mobile_desktop?_encoding=UTF8&keywords=lunacy%20and%20death&qid=1521179907&ref_=mp_s_a_1_1&sr=1-1