dianeseattle
Member
Most of you feel like family to me. This group has always felt like a family. I wanted to share something with you yesterday but I didn't. I've been sort of stepping in and out of surreality today and it's time for me to tell you what happened.
About a month after I moved into this apartment, a big African American woman named Sonya moved into the apartment next door. We became fast friends and she always thought it was funny how much I liked black music when she would hear me blaring Marvin Gaye out of my car stereo. She knew almost nothing about it.
She was carrying way too much weight and smoked a lot of cigarettes and was an alcoholic who drank all day in her house and all night. It was usually beer during the day and then harder stuff at night. And a few months ago she was diagnosed with congestive heart failure, which my father and older sister also had died from.
She didn't keep her doctor appointments and she didn't quit smoking or stop drinking or try to improve her health in any way, but she seemed just fine. Until yesterday.
Her boyfriend came home from work and after dropping the groceries off on the kitchen table he saw her on the floor in her bedroom, not breathing. He ran to my door and yelled "I think Sonya's dead." I practically flew off my couch and into her house and I could see that she wasn't breathing but I still dialed 911 and babbled on the phone to the operator who wanted me to do CPR. I couldn't have done CPR on her if she had been alive because she was too big for me even to roll her over onto her back and there was no room between the bed and the dresser where she had fallen out of bed onto her face. But Antonio and I figured out pretty quickly that she was already in rigor mortis
We spent the next six hours trying to find a place for her to go without being able to contact any of her family members because she was estranged from them. We called everybody in her phone contacts and nobody knew anything. The police came and eventually the medical examiner's van arrived and one of the cops and the medical examiner assistant wheeled her out.
Antonio stayed over in her apartment. He didn't really live there but he was there most of the time. I went to my apartment and just felt so weird. So Antonio and I got together to chat a few times during the night until it was bedtime. I took her kitten home with me because she had nowhere to go. The kitten was just so hyper she kept me awake most of the night and by 4 a.m. I was up and went outside and send a text message to Antonio to come out and talk. He had to go to work and leave at 5:45 a.m. so I knew I was in the zone.
It's just keeps getting more surreal. She and I were really good friends and we always shared food when we cooked. I'd bring a plate to her or she'd bring a plate to me. But whereas it would take me a day or two to eat a plate of her food. She didn't have any problems with large portions because she was already overweight by about 50 or 60 lb.
I think the reason I'm feeling so weird about it is that the evening of the 23rd I went to my son's house because it was his birthday. It's unusual for me to go out at night and I stayed out until about 9:30. When I got home and started to walk to my apartment I saw that her door was slightly ajar and I tiptoed past because I just didn't want to have a conversation with her that late at night and I didn't want to lose my buzz from the wonderful time I had just spent with my son and his girlfriend, watching a movie. So I didn't stop and say hi. And of course I never got another chance to do that.
I'm wondering if anybody here can share with me anything similar that has happened to them. I have never seeing a dead body close up and I have never seen a friend dead on the floor of her apartment. The entire experience was horrible beyond description. But I just shifted into Problem Solver mode which is what I'm really good at and I made things happen and I helped Antonio focus and I was able to talk to the police and the medical examiner about her history and generally add to her story. And today I called medical contact she had on cards in her wallet. Most of them were cardio Pulmonary Specialists at various hospitals. But that is just a facade I put on to keep everyone from seeing that I am screaming inside. Once I finally got to bed alone with nobody to talk to I just can't tell you the feeling I was having. I feel like the world has ended in a way. And 2020 has been such a weird horrible year that this was actually kind of the straw that broke the camel's back for me.
So I'm reaching out to anyone here. You can respond on this thread or you can message me privately. I have already talk to everyone in my family and they just didn't seem to think it was that horrible, or maybe they just didn't want to expand emotional energy on it right now.
I hope that you won't be that way. If you have something to share with me, please do. I placed her cat with a neighbor today and have been helping Antonio take things out and put them in boxes. He's going to stay in her apartment for the rest of the month because the rent is paid. I actually had to do some intervening with the building manager here. I wish I had never told her that Sonya had died. She could not care less about that. She was such a bitch to me. All she could talk about was that Antonio wasn't allowed to be there he isn't on the lease and that she had called the Housing Association to let them know and she had absolutely no sympathy for him. I really wanted to punch her in the nose. In addition to being Sonya's boyfriend, Antonio was also a caregiver to her, running errands for, buying things for her, being there for her. I went back to my apartment instead.
I know this is the kind of situation where your friends are really sorted out and you know who is good and caring and who is wrapped up in himself or herself and could not care less. I'm just having a really hard time with it. I keep thinking of Sonia, downtown in that cold morgue, all alone.
She was only 53 years old.
About a month after I moved into this apartment, a big African American woman named Sonya moved into the apartment next door. We became fast friends and she always thought it was funny how much I liked black music when she would hear me blaring Marvin Gaye out of my car stereo. She knew almost nothing about it.
She was carrying way too much weight and smoked a lot of cigarettes and was an alcoholic who drank all day in her house and all night. It was usually beer during the day and then harder stuff at night. And a few months ago she was diagnosed with congestive heart failure, which my father and older sister also had died from.
She didn't keep her doctor appointments and she didn't quit smoking or stop drinking or try to improve her health in any way, but she seemed just fine. Until yesterday.
Her boyfriend came home from work and after dropping the groceries off on the kitchen table he saw her on the floor in her bedroom, not breathing. He ran to my door and yelled "I think Sonya's dead." I practically flew off my couch and into her house and I could see that she wasn't breathing but I still dialed 911 and babbled on the phone to the operator who wanted me to do CPR. I couldn't have done CPR on her if she had been alive because she was too big for me even to roll her over onto her back and there was no room between the bed and the dresser where she had fallen out of bed onto her face. But Antonio and I figured out pretty quickly that she was already in rigor mortis
We spent the next six hours trying to find a place for her to go without being able to contact any of her family members because she was estranged from them. We called everybody in her phone contacts and nobody knew anything. The police came and eventually the medical examiner's van arrived and one of the cops and the medical examiner assistant wheeled her out.
Antonio stayed over in her apartment. He didn't really live there but he was there most of the time. I went to my apartment and just felt so weird. So Antonio and I got together to chat a few times during the night until it was bedtime. I took her kitten home with me because she had nowhere to go. The kitten was just so hyper she kept me awake most of the night and by 4 a.m. I was up and went outside and send a text message to Antonio to come out and talk. He had to go to work and leave at 5:45 a.m. so I knew I was in the zone.
It's just keeps getting more surreal. She and I were really good friends and we always shared food when we cooked. I'd bring a plate to her or she'd bring a plate to me. But whereas it would take me a day or two to eat a plate of her food. She didn't have any problems with large portions because she was already overweight by about 50 or 60 lb.
I think the reason I'm feeling so weird about it is that the evening of the 23rd I went to my son's house because it was his birthday. It's unusual for me to go out at night and I stayed out until about 9:30. When I got home and started to walk to my apartment I saw that her door was slightly ajar and I tiptoed past because I just didn't want to have a conversation with her that late at night and I didn't want to lose my buzz from the wonderful time I had just spent with my son and his girlfriend, watching a movie. So I didn't stop and say hi. And of course I never got another chance to do that.
I'm wondering if anybody here can share with me anything similar that has happened to them. I have never seeing a dead body close up and I have never seen a friend dead on the floor of her apartment. The entire experience was horrible beyond description. But I just shifted into Problem Solver mode which is what I'm really good at and I made things happen and I helped Antonio focus and I was able to talk to the police and the medical examiner about her history and generally add to her story. And today I called medical contact she had on cards in her wallet. Most of them were cardio Pulmonary Specialists at various hospitals. But that is just a facade I put on to keep everyone from seeing that I am screaming inside. Once I finally got to bed alone with nobody to talk to I just can't tell you the feeling I was having. I feel like the world has ended in a way. And 2020 has been such a weird horrible year that this was actually kind of the straw that broke the camel's back for me.
So I'm reaching out to anyone here. You can respond on this thread or you can message me privately. I have already talk to everyone in my family and they just didn't seem to think it was that horrible, or maybe they just didn't want to expand emotional energy on it right now.
I hope that you won't be that way. If you have something to share with me, please do. I placed her cat with a neighbor today and have been helping Antonio take things out and put them in boxes. He's going to stay in her apartment for the rest of the month because the rent is paid. I actually had to do some intervening with the building manager here. I wish I had never told her that Sonya had died. She could not care less about that. She was such a bitch to me. All she could talk about was that Antonio wasn't allowed to be there he isn't on the lease and that she had called the Housing Association to let them know and she had absolutely no sympathy for him. I really wanted to punch her in the nose. In addition to being Sonya's boyfriend, Antonio was also a caregiver to her, running errands for, buying things for her, being there for her. I went back to my apartment instead.
I know this is the kind of situation where your friends are really sorted out and you know who is good and caring and who is wrapped up in himself or herself and could not care less. I'm just having a really hard time with it. I keep thinking of Sonia, downtown in that cold morgue, all alone.
She was only 53 years old.
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