Kindness

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

So now we are up to 16 deaths in a week and a half. When Ed said that Fremont County was busy I never imagined this. However, this is not normal for this area so please don’t get the wrong impression. Today was supposed to be my day alone in the office to just work on catching up on paperwork. However, just when I was getting started I was called out to work on a call that I believe will be of interest to Aunt Micky because the person that passed away was living in Des Plaines, IL.

Last night there was an accident in Togwotee Pass, the stretch of highway that runs between Jackson and Dubois. There were 4 occupants in the car, three males and one female. The driver fell asleep and woke when the car was close to the side of the road. He awoke in time to over correct, causing the car to roll 4 times off the road. Two of the individuals were not wearing seat belts and those are the two currently in the worst conditions; one is dead and the other had to be life-flighted to Casper Medical Center and won’t be getting out any time soon. While I was not on the scene today as it was handled by the deputy coroner in Dubois, we did work trying to help the family make necessary arrangements.

We began by first driving to Lander where I learned that the female, who was wearing a seat belted and consequently was in the best condition, had been released from the hospital after x-rays and an analysis of her bruises. The town really stepped in to help her, with the Best Western giving her a free room for the night and they were willing to give it to her again for the tonight, and the police helped by driving her to the hotel. We met up with her at the hotel in Lander and drove her the 90 minutes back to Dubois where the accident occurred. Now this is not a usual practice but this situation is a bit different in that the woman is the fiancee of the man that passed away. That does not mean she is the next of kin, and neither is his ex-wife or his adopted daughter. Instead the next of kin is his parents but they live in the Ukraine and they don’t speak a word of English. So we needed her to help contact everyone. The problem was the contact information was in the cell phone which had been left in the vehicle. So we were driving her to Dubois to get the property figured out.

This woman was a God-sent because she had a very positive outlook on the situation and did not fall apart. Instead, she immersed herself in the things that needed to be done. On the way up she answered all of our questions and even asked a few of her own. When we got to Dubois she separated out all the property and began making phone calls, both on her phone and that of her deceased fiancee, to get information, which was important because we don’t know anyone that speaks Ukrainian.

This was a horrible situation for this woman to have to go through. She's in an unfamiliar place where she knows no one, she has to get her fiancee’s remains taken care of which meant conversing with his parents for control of the situation and which was made doubling difficult in that she had to go through the man's ex-wife because she hadn’t even met his parents yet! She also needed help to take care of the other two men who were still in the hospital. Needless to say, we helped her out a lot. We drove her to the hospital to check on the man who had stayed there, went to fill prescriptions for when he got released, went to a travel agent to get prices on flights for both her and the man in the hospital to leave Riverton to their perspective homes, to the funeral home to make arrangements, and the airport to get a rental car.
While this could be considered part of the coroner job, to an extent, Ed definitely went above and beyond. He and Roni invited both of the individuals to stay at their house for the night. Roni even picked up the man at the Lander hospital and drove him to Riverton on her way back from work. Roni and I made dinner for everyone and did special things to help the man with the condition he was in. Roni calls their house a Bed and Breakfast for that reason. When asked why, she responds with the simple explanation, "that if this occurred to her or Ed in another country, she would hope the same would be done for them." Both of the visitors are amazed with how open Roni and Ed are but for me this is just another example of the love they have shown to me and so many others before me. They are both just very open and care people and Ed and Roni are loved by many because of it.