h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

On TV, the investigation seems to take about a week, tops. The lab work is finished in a couple of hours. Try a couple of months in reality. In the meanwhile, the only death certificate you can get says that the cause of death is under investigation. The local newspaper did not print the obituary till the day of the memorial service, and then I only had two choices--"the family chose not to disclose the cause of death" and "the cause of death is under investigation." These are exactly the kind of comments that generate a plethora of questions, and suspicious looks; even from your in-laws. And the newspaper omitted the nation where my husband was born. This caused confusion because my mother grew up in a local town of the same name. Oddly, the editor responsible for the ommission had never heard of this town, even though it is less than a 45 minute drive from her office. All the news that's fit to print...

In the meanwhile, relatives will call you regularly asking for news. Especially when you lie down for a much-needed nap. When you do get information, you will explain it to each of them a number of times, but they will be incapable of understanding any of it. So you'll repeat the activity often. If you don't pick up the phone immediately, they will call four or five times in a row. You may decide to send e-mails so they can refer back to the information at their convenience, but they will be ignored. What they really want from you is to be their secretary; to handle the awful day-to-day details about his life without inconveniencing themselves.

You can relay the information verbatim, but that won't be good enough for them; they will call each official, each doctor, each person he worked with, to re-live it over again.

You may even find yourself listening to them complain about how this effects them more than you could possibly understand. There may be one-upmanship in a sort of contest where everyone wants the prize for suffering the most. And suddenly, he was a saint. He could not possibly have had any consumer debt, he never kept his things in a cluttered fashion, and he took impeccable care of himself, and they will TELL you this despite the fact that you have lived every day with him for over nine years.

You go through a fairly normal process of self-doubt, where you constantly wonder if there was something you could have done differently, would he have followed through on the sleep study if you'd nagged ONE more time, should you have stayed up with him that night (and every night), was there something important that you failed to notice... and you can be sure they will ask you all of these things, too. Repeatedly. Tactlessly. Don't worry about the questions the police will ask you, his family will interrogate you for at least six months.

His family will essentially come to the conclusion that it was YOUR job to "make" him go to the doctor. They couldn't have themselves. And besides that, why didn't they teach their son to take proper care of himself? Isn't that what parents are SUPPOSED to do?

Consider getting a new, unlisted phone number. Lock your doors, they may invite themselves over at any time it's convenient--for them. They may even expect you to maintain your home exactly the way it was until they can "stand" to come through, as though you are running a museum.

They will ask questions, and not be ready to hear the answers. They will ask things you've told them you don't want to talk about anymore. Since you're already thinking about it and feeling crummy, it is tempting just to answer them; the damage is done.

Relatives can sometime be THE worst.

When my own father died (this was ages ago, back in '92), his sister decided to ring my mother no more than 3 months after his funeral and the cow had the AUDACITY to say the following:

'I know he just died a few months ago, but I wanted to ask you, are you SURE you did everything you could to save him??'


(in fairness, though, she always hated my mother)