A man's legacysteemCreated with Sketch.

in life •  7 years ago  (edited)

My father in law died about 2 weeks ago. If you feel a lack of emotion in my sentences it’s mainly because I never met him. I won’t go into the whole detail so you will just have to take my word for it … he was not the best man, husband or father. So I guess I am not surprised he was found dead by the neighbor’s in his apartment building. Already laying there for over a week, so the stench gave him away. After all I do believe in karma. You reap what you sow.

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Ljubljana, 8.8.2017

So here I was today. In his apartment. I do not know exactly how I felt digging through a dead man’s stuff … In my rubber boots and gloves, sliding through remaining fluids that were left on the floor, still there, still wet, though they removed the body a week ago. The maggots and mainly dead flies didn’t help with the general impression. My sense of smell is quite poor and my stomach made of steel … so at least that wasn’t an issue and hence I made the perfect candidate for this specific service. We needed the identification cards for the funeral. Though at the end the smell wasn’t “so bad” so all four of us dig into it.

Oddly the head print and some left over hair on the kitchen cabinet, where he probably hit his head, didn’t faze me so much as digging over his jeans pockets looking for the wallet. Like I was expecting for the pants to be still warm or something. Knowing it was probably the last thing he wore and just left on the floor, the wallet and pocket change still in them. It just felt … wrong.

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Ljubljana, 8.8.2017

We gathered all the papers we could find and waited for the fumigation man to come around. The cleaning crew comes tomorrow. And this is it. All that is left at the end. A bunch of papers, a pool of body fluids, an unknown number of children, a bunch of resentment and practically zero empathy or sorrow.

What a legacy to leave behind.

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This was a rough read. I hope you find yourself at peace, and whatever he did in his life I hope he finds peace too. If I've taken one thing away from this it's to try and be a kinder person to those in my life. Hope this comment doesn't come off as weird, it's difficult to know how to reply to something like this. All the best xx.

Yes. I am a bit sorry...was thinking of puting nsfw tag since i know this isnt the gentlest post to read and honestly i wasnt expecting any comments.

try and be a kinder person to those in my life

That was my whole point...I thank you on kind wishes. :)

"When someone dies, it isn’t just a corpse they leave behind. That’s actually the smallest part of their remains. The nucleus, certainly, but not the whole. Everything they did with their life which left behind some sort of tangible evidence that they existed...the choices they made, what they valued, what they were trying to accomplish spreads out from that nucleus like the spiderweb which remains long after the spider perishes.

Like a fingerprint. Or a puzzle. A baffling, convoluted mess of clues left behind which made perfect sense to the deceased, but which must be painstakingly deciphered by anyone else. Like trying to reconstruct from fossilized remains how the original creature looked, sounded and behaved. "

I know of one thing he left behind...the abuse and damage didn't slide by. He left his fingerprints on people he met and he lives on in their behaviour and patterns. I was more or less a bystander ... but couldn't shake the feeling....you could call it a thought or just a simple question...what kind of legacy will i leave behind?

  ·  7 years ago (edited)

Hvala za pomoč,brez tebe mi nebi uspelo, res hvala.
Ty for help,withovt you i woudnt make it,ty so much.

There but for the grace of God , go I.

I think life is a hard thing and affects everyone differently. There are no doubt bad men and women in the world but we all started out pretty much the same I think, with the potential for both good and bad, with our surroundings, environment and life experiences playing a greater part in who we become than we might realise or be able to control.

Don't judge him too harshly @atopy, especially now that he is gone and hopefully at peace. You may not know the true extent of what he himself suffered and what caused him to be the way he was. This is advice for myself as much as you.

Very honest post my friend!

.....he has his peace. But the living he left behind broken might never have it. Some people never get over it. I do apreciate your comment and I took it to heart. But this is me and i have had my share of "bad people". So no worries on my behalf. I do like to look at life as a big learining experience and I can say im an optimist enough to see something good come out out of everything. But the rest? Time will tell.
Ty for taking your time! :)