I have a copy of my oldest son’s “father”‘s (again, term used loosely here since he never knew him) death certificate so that I can submit it to the appropriate agencies that we receive benefits and services from. It didn’t tell me a whole lot that I didn’t already know, although I continue to be thankful that I have it. His death was declared to have been due to blunt force injuries, which is essentially the same as blunt force trauma, and was noted to occur within seconds of the motor vehicle collision. They had to guess when his time of death was, and they presumed that he lived no longer than a minute following his injuries. Next week, I want to request the incident report if Jefferson County law enforcement is willing to give it to me, because I would like to have it for my son’s records. I would also like to have the autopsy record and toxicology screening, which I’m under the impression I’m going to have to ask that a friend in Kentucky request it because of their absolutely arcane laws about records of that nature only being open in state.

I’ll be recieving a physical copy of my son’s “father”‘s death certificate in about a week, give or take.

Now that I know the road that this occurred on, I can request the incident report. Apparently I needed to know the location of the incident to request that, and now I know that in addition to the date and time.

The hits just keep on coming, though. They keep right on coming. This has been an Extended Day.

I’ve contacted various agencies in Texas to inform them that my son’s “father” (again, term used loosely) has passed away, as not a lot of people in Texas short of the relatives that my son’s aunt reached out to know of his passing. One of the agencies that I contacted was the Austin child support office, and I suppose most of you know or remember my… previous dealings with them. At any rate, I requested deletion of my son’s child support case from their systems due to the permanency of his “father”‘s death. You can’t garnish wages or otherwise request support from the contents of an urn. Surprisingly, someone from the state got back to me the same day that I reached out to them for the third time inquiring about this… and proceeded to tell me that they didn’t have protocol for this because “non-custodial parents of minor children don’t normally die” (what?). However, the state was able to confirm his death and is in the process of deleting our son’s child support case from their systems. There is absolutely no need to keep it there, which it would have been for as long as our son was a minor, because of the permanency of his father’s death. There’s no way that wages can be garnished, or support otherwise collected, from the contents of an urn. This gives me peace.

I will find out if our son is eligible for the one-time lump sum death benefit and survivor’s benefits sometime in the middle of April. He is presumptively eligible because his father was on the birth certificate at the time of his death, as he had been for… well, his entire life. If our son is eligible for these benefits I would like him to receive them, and if found eligible, Monster will receive them for the rest of his life due to his developmental and intellectual disabilities. Meanwhile, I continue to wish that all of this had not been… thrown into my lap.