The "D" Word

[Baron]

This is a bit heavy so don't read onward if your in a light-hearted mood.


     I was playing hockey late last night; first game of the season.  It's a church league, pretty gentle stuff with mixed ages (20s-60s).  It was getting towards the end of the game and I was getting pretty tired.  I accidentally put the puck over the boards and was just a little upset at myself for doing so.  The goalie called out to me casually "Better out there than in the net."  We got a new puck, and I went to the bench for a rest.  Not a minute later the goalie went down -heart attack.  He was one of the younger guys out there -early thirties.  My age.
     The guys closest to him quickly determined what was happening and ripped off his helmet and chest protector.  I ran to the arena foyer and called 911 (blunted my skates really good doing it, too).  The ambulance showed up in four minutes because the hospital was only two blocks away -pretty lucky.  By the time I got back to the ice sheet one guy had the rink defibrillator out and was giving him a shock, while another waited for the all-clear to start CPR (again, I supposed).  I took a CPR class four or five years back and it really seemed like these guys did everything right -call for help, check airways, AR (artificial respiration), CPR, defibrillation if available.  The paramedics were there shortly after I returned.  They didn't seem to move as fast or as urgently as my teammates, but I guess they know their business and to be fair we were on ice.
      The guy never moved, except when he was being zapped.  He turned kind of blue, and then paled again, and just stared vacantly at the roof through half-slit eyes -the kind of look that's on the dead rodents that my cat brings in.  It's a horrible thing, but that's all I could think of -maybe it was the hockey equipment holding his arms up, but he even had the dead rodent pose.  Oh, and I also couldn't get out of my head how trivial his last words were -yes, I am a terrible person.  Anyway, eventually the paramedics wheeled him out and I heard this morning that he had been pronounced DOA.

      Well, this has been therapeutic for me to write this all out, but I'm wondering if anyone else has encountered a sudden death first-hand and fixated on these less-than-profound details.  Am I cynical, or just plain shallow?  Or is this just a stage of disbelief that the creator's of Eternally Us missed out on?  (Yes, that is how I've learned about the grieving process -I'm an adventure gamer, after all).

[Dualnames]

I have this thing regarding deaths. I can't cry. In fact I barely feel sad anymore. When I was 10 or so one of my grandfathers died, and I cried a lot. Then my Italian teacher died when I was 19 and I cried as well. But since that my other grandfather died, my brother's godmother, my grandma, and there I am in awe with myself for not shedding or feel like shedding a tear...

[Alun]

I wasn't actually present for the death, but some years ago a close friend of mine died at about that same age (early thirties).

I and a few other friends were supposed to meet him at his place one day, but when we knocked there was no answer.  Which was strange... he was usually a reliable guy, and it wasn't like him to not be home if we'd arranged to meet him.  So later one of us called his landlady (I think -- not sure how she found her number), who was also concerned because he hadn't paid his rent (it was near the beginning of the month), and, again, that wasn't like him; apparently he always paid his rent on time.  So eventually the landlady used her key to go into his room and found him dead in the bathroom; as it later turned out, he'd had a heart attack.

It was an especially unusual circumstance because, as far as we knew, he didn't have any family.  It turned out later he did, but hadn't been in touch with them for years... apparently he'd had some psychological issues that had manifested themselves mostly in hostility toward his family (which is maybe why he'd led us to believe he didn't have any).  But anyway, since they weren't around (and weren't even contacted right away, since no one knew about them at first), it fell to his friends to try to make funeral arrangements.  When his family did eventually find out, they were obviously upset about his death, but were at least glad that his last years had apparently been relatively happy ones; not having heard from him, for all they knew he'd been living on the streets or he'd died long ago, and they were glad he'd at least been living a relatively good life and had friends.

Most of his stuff was moved temporarily into my apartment, there being nowhere else to put it at the time.  Or at least, I thought it was going to be temporary, but when his family didn't want most of it, it ended up staying there, and, well, since there was nothing else obvious to be done with it, it ended up just being left with me.  What was formerly his comic book collection is under my bed right now.

Oh, another weird detail I remember about the whole thing... when we were trying to get together a list of his other friends who should be notified about his death, we wanted to get into his e-mail account, but didn't know the password.  Until it occurred to me that I did know the password he used for Papa John's online when he ordered pizza... maybe he used the same password for his e-mail?  Turned out he did.  (I don't remember it now... logan13 or something like that.  Something to do with Wolverine, anyway; he was a big Wolverine fan.)

But anyway... don't know if this really has much bearing on your question, since I didn't actually witness the death.  I did think afterward about the fact that presumably when we were knocking on his door that day, he was already dead just a few feet away, on the other side of the wall.  But this wasn't really creepy or disturbing to me, just sort of... odd to think about.

[kconan]

 
  Early 30s is too young for a heart attack...Sorry to hear it.

  I travel a good bit throughout Asia and have seen some pretty rough things, but only once did I see someone go right in front of me.  About 15 years ago I was working out in a gym and an older guy who appeared to be in his 80s was working out on a Nautilius machine (some kind of upper body movement, don't remember which) maybe 20 feet away from me.  Out of nowhere he slumps over, and then the gym staff were all over him.  Paramedics were there pretty quickly and he was taken out...Sadly I later heard he didn't make it.  What made it especially heartbreaking was his son being there and, understandably, freaking out the whole time.  Pretty much everyone in the gym stopped working out, and moped around for a while afterwards.