On June 13 he was discovered deceased in his motor home at a campground near Las Vegas. He had entered on May 31 and was due to leave on June 7. When he didn’t leave by June 13, maintenance checked and called authorities. Clark County Coroner’s office took the body, locked up the motor home, and declared it a bio-hazard.
I’ve learned quite a lot in the few days since I was told of his passing. Identification was obtained through fingerprints with the California Department of Justice and a photograph from me wouldn’t help in the ID. He died of natural causes and was sitting on the floor when found.
So my memories and grief about Tom are mixed with business realities. I have a will. I am named executor. If I don’t want to proceed then my understanding is Clark County Public Administrator can take over.
At one point I called my own local attorney who said I needed answers to two key questions prior to making that decision: What was his legal residence, and what are the assets and liabilities?
So really, I had to become Sherlock Holmes and try to ferret out information. From my photos and a picture from last year, I had his vehicle license plate...registered in South Dakota. I eventually learned his mailing address was in South Dakota. Probably his driver’s license but I don’t have that yet. I know he had $134 in his wallet and 6 credit cards, didn’t owe anything to Thousand Trails, and had a bank account and an online trading account in 2007 when the will was made. People and various entities won’t tell me more until certain documentation is presented. I asked around for advice. Some said I needed to go to Las Vegas, go into the motor home, and look for evidence of assets/liabilities, etc.
Then I learned it wasn’t advisable for someone my age to go in, even with protective gear, because of the toxicity. One trauma clean-up service estimated the bill to clean up could be $8-10,000; the motor home in good condition would be worth about $14,000. Gradually a picture began to emerge, and I needed to answer the question: Do I go proceed with the responsibilities of the will or let Clark County Public Administrator take over?
All this has been very stressful, amidst the grieving for a brother who has now disappeared. He was very much a loner and very alone in those final moments of his life. I contacted my younger brother and we reminisced about Tom. I thought about the trajectories of our lives. My other brother and myself led traditional lives with long-term marriages, reasonable prosperity and children who became upstanding citizens. Tom, a very intelligent guy, took a different path.
But he was a good brother. I was reminded of one recent event, where he agreed to escort me to the Center Gala, and bought a very nice suit, shirt, tie, shoes -- the whole works -- because it was important to me.
In my recent research I learned about the RV lifestyle and the different strategies RVers use to get mail forwarding, pay bills, have bank accounts, health and vehicle insurance and more. They are a free-spirited group, often living off the grid without the encumbrances of mortgages and 9 to 5 jobs. Freedom is important to them. I had new respect for the life and lifestyle Tom had chosen. It worked for him.
So for Tom, as with others I have known and lost, I think of the poem, “And That is Death,” where the author stands on the seashore watching a ship disappear over the horizon. Someone says, “Look--he’s gone. “Gone where? Gone from my sight, that’s all." But at that very moment, others eagerly watch his approach and call out, “Look, he’s coming.” So I imagine my mother and father eagerly waiting to embrace him on that other shore.
As Ernest Holmes says, “You and I are born out of God, and just as we are born out of a divine urge that creates, so do we die. It is all creation. It is all evolution.”
And so it is.
