Wrongful Death Complaint

wrongful death complaint

Living Life After the Death of Loved One

I miss my mom. It’s been twenty-seven years since she died and not a day goes by that I don’t think of how my life would be different if she were in it.

It was about a month after my sixth birthday when there came a knock on the front door that very early Sunday morning. I stood on my tiptoes to peer out the side window and saw a man holding a clipboard and wearing a very solemn expression. I opened the door and said “hello.” He asked if my father was home. At first I shook my head because I’d been trained to guard my father’s whereabouts like he was a CIA operative but something about the man’s face, made me change my mind. He said it was important that he speak to him so I told him to wait a moment. I padded down the hall to rouse my father from his drunken stupor and he very grumpily got out of bed.

My sister and I sat in the kitchen while my father talked to the strange man. She told me I shouldn’t have opened the door. I ignored her and waited for my father to finish talking to him. The expression on my father’s face was a mixture of shock and horror as he came around the corner. I had never seen him cry before that day and now he wept bitter tears as he told us my mother had taken her own life.

I’m thirty three years old and I have never gotten over the loss of my mother. My sisters and I struggled to lead normal lives after that but it was hard. Suddenly, we were very different from the kids that had both a mom and dad. To add insult to injury, the local newspaper ran a story that told the whole city exactly how our mother had died. There’s a hushed stigma that comes along with suicide. There’s a shame that your loved one’s death was both unnecessary and preventable.

Recently, I’ve read stories about ten year olds who have taken their own lives after being mercilessly teased by their peers. A beautiful teenage girl hung herself after she was tormented by fellow students. Young lives full of promise and hope – were brutally shortened. Their temporary problems were solved by a permanent solution.

How do we move on after such horrible losses?

I remember my great grandmother’s funeral when I was 12. She was my favorite person in the world and someone who had always loved me unconditionally. Looking up at the sun, I wondered how it could continue to rise each day without Grandma Emma in the world. Going on without her, just didn’t seem possible.

Grief is the worst emotion I have ever experienced. It can knock the wind out of your lungs and reduce the strongest of us all to nothing more than a weeping pile of humanity. Death can be the cloud over your head that never fully dissipates. It can make you feel like tomorrow doesn’t matter and today is just something to be endured.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. There are positive ways that we can push through grief and become stronger for the experiences that we go through. Here are some suggestions on how handle to life after losing someone you love.

Take time to grieve.

When my father passed away I was twenty-three years old. I had just been laid off and I wasn’t in very good health. My life was lonely and losing him only compounded all the turmoil in my life. I was taught to “suck it up and walk it off”. In other words – don’t cry, don’t feel, just keep moving. Not having been allowed to grieve for others had only prolonged my grief and pain so when my dad died, I sat in my bed and cried for 24 hours straight. In the days that followed, I cried whenever I felt like I would drown in the pain of it. (Keeping in mind – I did this in the privacy of my own home.) Crying helped to release my pain and let out a lot of pent up emotion. It also shortened my period of grieving.

Be angry.

Once you’ve cried until you wished you’d bought stock in Kleenex, get mad. Now if you’re one of those “I don’t get mad” people, pretend that you are for a day. Death feels unfair and unjustified most of the time.  So get angry! Close your bedroom door, turn on some loud music and yell it out. (If you have neighbors, use discretion. No sense adding a noise complaint to your frustration. ) If you have access to a punching bag – punch your heart out. If you belong to a gym, hit the machines and physically workout your feelings.

I heard a story years ago about a housing development on the east coast that was built over an old junk yard. Tons of tires were buried deep in the soil and the developers figured they were deep enough that they’d never rise to the surface. They were wrong however and one day the happy new homeowners were struck by the sight of tires rising up their new yards.

A wise man once told me that feelings are like tires – no matter how deep you bury them, they’ll eventually rise to the surface. Acknowledge your feelings and work them out.

Let it go.

Once you’ve gotten past the crying stage, let the pain go. Don’t torture yourself with thoughts of “what if” or “why didn’t I” or “how could this happen?” Questions like these will only cause you more pain. Holding onto the pain of loss is a choice. Sometimes it’s a choice that you’ll have to make hourly, sometimes daily but gradually it will lessen.

Focus on the good.

You lost someone you loved and there were good reasons that you loved them. My relationship with my father was problematic at best. Instead of dwelling on the issues we left unresolved, I focused on the good things we shared. I recalled the long conversations where he told me about his youth and about my mother. Those memories comforted me on my wedding day when he wasn’t there. The bad doesn’t really matter after you lose someone so if they’ve taken themselves away from you, let go of unfinished business and questions.

Forgive.

I was in my twenties before I forgave my mother for leaving me and it was a hard thing to do. Forgiveness is a process and something that happens over time. If you’ve carried your anger and grief for a long time, consider getting counseling to assist you in moving past your loss. A good therapist can help you to come to terms with all of your emotions (you’ll feel a lot of them).

Talk to your friends if you’re uncomfortable going to a professional. Seek out people you know who have experienced the same sense of loss that you’re struggling with. There can be great comfort in knowing that you aren’t alone. There are online chat groups as well if you prefer to talk anonymously about your feelings.

Give it time.

A friend of mine was recently widowed after only a year and a half of marriage. There was a tremendous sense of unfairness about the situation as she had waited a very long time to get married. Co-workers asked me for advice on what to say to comfort her and I replied simply – “There is nothing anyone can say that will make this better.”

I wrote to my friend and told her how sorry I was for her loss but I knew my words would do little to ease her pain. Speaking from experience, time is the only thing that eases the pain of grief.

There will be days when the world seems cold, lonely and unfair. On those days, don’t hide, don’t self-medicate and don’t focus on your regrets. Get up and go out into the world. There is beauty and hope all around us. You just have to look for it. There are also people in the world who need help. Giving service to others is also a positive way to get outside of your own emotions.

My friend will find love again and I hope to see my parents again someday. We owe to those we’ve lost to keep trying and to keep living. Death isn’t the end, it’s just the start of a new chapter.

About the Author

Civil Lawsuit & Service?

If i am serving a lawsuit on a number of parties in CA and one of those parties is now a resident of another state outside of the court’s jurisdiction and became a resident prior to the compaints’ date of filing what legal recourse do I have if and when I win a judgement? I ask this because of what we all have seen with OJ Simpson. He lost his wrongful death suit, but moved to FL prior to the complaint being filed and was able to protect the lion-share of his assets and the Goldmans never recieved a dime until the court ordered the rights of that book to the goldman estate?

Ask your attorney, but basically you would need to get the judgment (in California) domesticated in the state where the defendent lives. Usually, that is not difficult, sometimes as simple as filing CA’s judgment with the other’s state’s court. Then your judgment is a valid judgment in the other state and you can do the usual tp collect on your judgment against that defendant (i.e./ file garnishment of their wages and/or bank account).
If the defendant answers your complaint citing lack of jurisdiction, you would need to probably file the lawsuit where the person lives. But, I would at least name them as a defendant and serve them in the CA suit. You can always drop them later if you want. Check with your attorney and s/he will give you the best course of action.

City death action, the city of Cleveland, Cleveland, and two police officers are named in a lawsuit Jermaine faces $ 25,000,000 for the unlawful killing of 30-year-old Williams, 23 July.