Aidan: I need to take these jammies off. They're freaking me out.
Mommy: Freaking you out?
Aidan: (taking off said jammies) Yes, see (showing me the jammies). They freaked me out.
Aidan hurt his finger yesterday. He was closing a door while his hand was on the floor. The bottom of the door scraped his middle finger. Boy was he pissed. It hurt and he cried and cried. As I comforted him we had this sweet exchange:
Aidan: Mommy, my finger is so sad!
Mommy: How about some medicine, that will help the pain.
Aidan: No mommy, my finger doesn't have a fever.
I've been slacking on my tales of woe. It was a really bizarre week where bad things kept happening. Where we last left off, I had just lost my horrible job and was looking for another one. My parents were visiting me from California which eased the pain...
So, my parents drive home on Saturday. Aidan was sad, well devastated is more like it. He was teary all day. He loves his Nonna and Papa a lot. It was a dreary day all around. We picked up Ratatouille at the video store as a pick me up. So Aidan's watching the movie and the phone rings. I NEVER answer the phone, but for some reason I did. (names are changes to protect the scary):
Me: Hello
lady: Hi, are you Karen Smith?
Me: (reluctantly) yeeessss
lady: Hi, my name is Jessica and I work at the County Assessors office in Santa Barbara County.
Me: Okaaaayyyyy.
Jessica: Do you have a relative named Ronald Smith?
Me: Noooo, oh wait.
I do have a relative named Ronald Smith. It took me a few seconds to remember it. He's my scary uncle. Now it's my theory that everyone has a scary uncle, well Ronny was mine. He's kind of my double scary uncle. He's my dad's brother and he was also married to my mother's sister. Weird stuff. My father was never fond of his brother, so they never spent much time together. Ronny was a loud, fat, drunk and boorish man. I never spent much time with him, but when I did, I was very uncomfortable. He could be funny and nice, but he always seemed like the crazy was about to explode out of his brain. He had two kids and I liked my cousins, but I never saw them. I don't even remember them being at our house and I think I was at their house once. The only time I saw that family was on Thanksgiving at my grandmothers house. Our sole relationship was passing the turkey.
Me: Oh wait, I have an uncle named Ronald Smith.
Jessica: Are you aware that he has passed away?
Me: No, I didn't know that.
Jessica went on to verify some personal information just to be sure we were talking about the same Ronald Smith. We were.
Jessica: Well, the reason I'm calling is that he passed over two months ago and nobody has claimed the body.
Me: Excuse me? Nobody knows he's dead?
Jessica: That's right. We're trying to track down his next of kin. Did he have any?
This is so weird. Uncle Ronny died within 20 miles of his children, his sister and his nieces and his nephew. He was geographically close to the bulk of his family, but nobody knew.
Me: How did you track me down? I can't imagine my name is associated with his on any document. (Did he use me as a reference on a boat loan?)
Jessica: I did a search on the last name with association in California and your name came up all the way in New Mexico.
Me: Weird, so you weren't able to find family in California?
Jessica: No, does he have any?
Me: Well his two kids and his sister live nearby. Also my dad is his older brother and he's in California as well.
Jessica: Oh that's great. I need to get the family informed so we can figure out what to do with the body. It's been at a mortuary for 65 days.
She wanted my dads number, so I gave it to her. She said she would follow up with him directly. Fine with me. I had no intentions of claiming the body.
That was one of the weirdest phone calls I'd ever received. So now I have to call my dad to tell him that his brother is dead. I wasn't sure how he was going to take this. They weren't in contact and I personally hadn't seen him in over 10 years, but you never know. But before I called my dad, I talked to every public agency in Santa Barbara County to try to learn the cause of death. Being the niece, I'm essentially a nobody. No one wanted to give me the information. It wasn't until I called the morgue that I learned what happened. My Uncle Ronny died (at age 60) of septic shock brought on by pneumonia. He also had a heart condition and a destroyed liver due to alcoholism. He was in the hospital for a couple of days before he died and no one knew that he had family around. He clearly wasn't close to any of his family, even his children had no idea he had died.
Now laden with information, I had to call my dad to break the news. He was in the car driving home to California (an arduous 12 hour drive). He took it in stride. He wasn't particularly moved by the information. He thought it was sad that his brother died alone, but it was a situation that was created solely by the actions of Uncle Ronny. He wasn't a great guy. He was a criminal and treated people badly. I don't blame people for not wanting to be around him. But still, it's sad to die alone.
That's my Scary Uncle story, probably not worth the wait, but I must purge my tales of woe. Up next...Rattlesnake.