What I Know So Far

For those of you who didn’t know him, Stan was the man who lived with my mother for maybe 20 years. They never married, so he’s not officially my stepfather – but he is the only Grandpa most of my nieces and nephews ever knew.

He passed away sometime this past weekend, either late Saturday night or early Sunday morning.

Since it was what they call an “unattended death” the police are treating it as a homicide, even though they really don’t consider it to be one. They just have to treat it as such until they can prove otherwise.

All we know is that at some point he went outside. He wasn’t dressed to go anywhere, so we can assume he planned on going right back inside after doing whatever he had planned on doing. We think he fell and hit his head. We think he managed to crawl back to the front door, but had unknowingly left his keys back where he fell so was unable to get in. That’s pretty much where he was found, near the front steps.

His neighbor is the one who found him. She had gone over to give him a plate of food, as she has done numerous times in the past. Her husband called my Mother, who called my Brother and then headed over to deal with the police. I’m not sure who called my sister, but she ended up over there as well, along with the pastor of our church and his wife. All of them stayed till the wee hours of the morning till finally they were able to head back home.

The medical examiner took his body back to Anchorage and will conduct an autopsy to determine actual cause of death, but has said that it will take some time – like maybe a week or so. Meanwhile, the police are gathering evidence and putting together their reports.

We are all, slowly but surely, contacting everybody who needs to be contacted – although we’re having no luck getting hold of my cousin up in Fairbanks. I’ve got a few numbers to call to talk to my other cousins down in Montana; maybe they will have better luck reaching him from there.

The house is going to need to be cleaned up, since it is for sale. Rob and I are heading out there on Friday/Saturday to deal with a bunch of stuff. Mother and Stewart have been over there a lot these past few days, and are getting things done bit at a time. Stan’s sister Sonja has come out as well to help organize all of the paperwork that needs to get done.

We don’t know yet when or where the memorial will be held – but I’m fairly certain there will be one. He had a lot of friends who will want to pay their respects.

There are still a lot of unanswered questions:


What exactly caused his death? Was it the bump on his head? Had he broken his hip? Why didn’t he use his cell phone? He knew where the spare key was – why didn’t he use that? What does the flat tire on his truck have to do with anything? How long did he lay there till he was found?

We may never know for sure…