Identifying a body is not

a pleasant thing to do. It was something Middle Cat had to do yesterday. As a retired physiotherapist and because it was someone we both knew rather than a family member it was less disturbing than it might have been. Still, despite all the problems he represented, we both felt saddened by the death of this person. 

S...was morbidly obese. His death at the age of sixty-four will not surprise anyone. Middle Cat and I are actually surprised he did not go at least ten years ago.

My association with his family stretches back to my time in teacher training college. I knew his sister there. She was one of those students "everyone" knows. Her lovely Greek name would have been enough but she also had (and still has) a lively personality to go with it.

I met her father later, one of the many "old" Greek men in the district. He was the sort of man I greeted in Greek, not English. He spoke English but a sort of politeness dictated I use the Greek "kalimera" in the mornings. 

And then, still later, I met S...  Middle Cat sent him over one day because I was having computer problems. 

"S... should be able to fix it. He's very, very good at fixing that sort of thing. I will just one warn you though, he's very overweight." That was an understatement. How Middle Cat managed to get him to visit us is something of a mystery. He avoided strangers. He shopped at the very beginning or the very end of the day. There had to be as few people around as possible. The rest of the time, apart from visits to the doctor or his "computer mate", he hibernated at home. He did on line courses to keep up his Centrelink payments but the reality was that nobody would consider employing him. He was on and off "sickness" benefits and alternated them with "unemployment" and occasional "disability" benefits.  He would do a bit of remote work from time to time...and he would come to visit me and the Senior Cat. 

We all tried to get him to diet but nothing worked. He had no will power at all. His eating habits were wild and unpredictable. His sleeping patterns were equally unpredictable. Knowing I would be up (and almost certainly working) he would phone me at six in the morning. He would eat breakfast with us. I would restrict him to just two slices of homemade bread.  He would accept this, do whatever he had come to do or wait for me to read the seemingly endless forms he had to fill in.  Those things done he would hoist himself in to his beat up old car and go again until the next time. In between he would phone me with questions about things which were worrying him.  Yes, he was distinctly odd. 

Last year and the year before he spent time in hospital but it did nothing for his weight. He phoned me from there one day as the afternoon tea trolley was going around and complained there were no biscuits and no bananas. Once home again he was back to old eating habits.

His clothing had to be made for him. His sister, who lives in another country, would order it for him. 

The house was, and still is, full of things he would order on line. I am not tidy but Middle Cat says are homes look sterile compared with his. You had to negotiate your way through. 

Yesterday my BIL was on his way out when he saw the police cars there and an ambulance just arriving. Knowing the other neighbour who has done so much to help was not home Middle Cat went over to say she was one of the people S... used. She was asked to identify the body lying on the floor. Hopefully it was a quick death but there has to be an autopsy. At least his sister did not see him like that. 

I thought back to the last time we talked. He had, as always, phoned me at a very early hour. I had told him what he needed to do and left it at that. Now of course I wish I had spent a little longer listening to him. He was a lonely man, a very lonely man.