AUGUST 2021

Doc’s mother died on July 26th but it took a couple of days for him to get the news. The funeral was held on the 30th and Doc’s could only be a part of it by a phone call home. 

I received a letter he wrote on the 29th:

I just found out my mother had passed Monday and I sent you a letter from the kiosk right after I found out and then called my dad to get the details. He said that he kind of blames the nursing home while breaking down crying while he told me what happened. He said they were keeping her on I.V. morphine so strong after her stroke and then they found out she had a urinary tract infection and delayed getting her antibiotics for a couple of days. He asked them to take her off of the morphine because she was not responding Sunday and had nothing to eat since the day before when she wanted some vegetable beef soup, They did not have any at the nursing home so he went to the grocery store and got her some and heated it up for her and he said she ate most of it. 

The morphine kept making her more and more incoherent and she was struggling to breathe, so that was when he asked to have her taken off the morphine and to call an ambulance and they said if she did not respond after taking her off the morphine by the next morning they would call the ambulance and take her to the hospital. They told him to go home when visiting hours were up Sunday evening. They called him early Monday morning about 5 AM and told him she had passed. At least she did not suffer and I have comfort and faith knowing that she was saved and is in heaven.

I hadn’t received the letter he wrote from the kiosk and that wasn’t unusual. Many letters had been lost somewhere. Whether it was due to censorship or just glitches in the system, I never knew. 

He wrote again to me:

I am really upset about my mother and that I cannot be there to be with family at her funeral. My dad told me they are having it tomorrow, Friday at 1 PM, and at a Lutheran church that he has been going to with Hyrah and Skynnah for the past couple of years. 

The pastor was really supportive and has helped him arrange things. Today he was going over photos to show at the eulogy and to put into the funeral pamphlet of her bio. Mom when she was still of sound mind wrote a short bio she wanted read at her funeral. It was mostly a letter to my father to enjoy his life and not be sad of her passing. She wrote it as if she knew she was going to pass before him. 

Hearing about his mother’s funeral brought back memories of Samira’s funeral.

My dad told me that my niece was working day and night on a biography of her grandmother and putting a lot of her art work and paintings in the brochure and then making a DVD of her life and accomplishments to be played on a video screen at her funeral.

That is what I did for Samira and had music playing of her and her music videos and some of her favorite songs she loved playing while it went through a photo gallery of her and the girls. 

While still recovering from his mother’s death, in August, now working pro se, Doc received all the paperwork from his lawyers related to his trial. As he went through it all, he made some startling discoveries about how little his legal team had done to defend his innocence.