Ed 'mohs' Arnaud thread - Closure

Good Morning,
I figure the best way to tell this story is in sections, I don't know what you know or what you don't know so if some is redundant my apologies:

Ed's family tree, Ed was the fourth the child that our parents Remo and Elaine had (I saw where your group was able to find my mother's obituary) his siblings are my sister Norma (73), she has Cerebral Palsy, lives in a group home, 15-minutes from my wife and I, Raymond was the oldest brother, he died of a heart attack Nov of 2009, Richard (69), Ed who would've been (67) in June and yours truly (65) yes I'm the youngest, baby of the family! Our dad passed away in Dec of 2000, Ed was with him, our Mom passed away Oct of 2017, I was with her.

Childhood, being a family of 5-children one with Cerebral Palsy, my dad was the only one that worked, our mom stayed home with the boys and her mother (Yes, my little Italian Grandma) came to live with us, she helped take care of my sister. Big Italian family of 8 in in a two-bedroom house that was expanded over the years to a four-bedroom house. For awhile the four boys live in one bedroom me and Ed had bunk beds and my other brothers singles. Growing up Ed and I were close as we were the two youngest later on Ed and and Ray became closer as did Richard and I but as long as my mother was alive we were a pretty tight knit group. My sister and mother were inseparable, and my mother cared for Norma 24/7, 365 till pretty much the end. We didn't have allot but we did have a very loving and happy childhood. Were you to look at old movies of us you'd have no problem spotting Ed he was always a little different!

Growing up, as we all got through grade, high school and beyond, remember our parents raised four boys in the heart of the Vietnam war and the 70's, luckily my oldest brother Ray had Asthma so bad he didn't get drafted, Richard never got called up and the war ended before Ed and I had to go. We weren't perfect but none of us died in Nam, no drug overdoses, nobody got anybody pregnant, I remember at my parents 50th wedding anniversary up in Show Low telling my parents all-in-all not too bad considering the era we grew up in. If you didn't know Ed was married twice, divorced both times. Ed's first marriage to Patty didn't last long, his second one to Mary (who had four children from a previous marriage) lasted much longer and Ed helped raised her four kids, he was pretty broke up when Mary divorced him, I know he loved those kids. Through Facebook I was able to stay in touch with two of them and they know about Ed. When my parents retired, they moved up to Show low with my sister on a piece of land that they, Richard and Ed all owned. That's where Ed spent allot of time with Mary and my parents and sister. Which is why originally, I thought of spreading his ashes up there.

Back to the valley, after our dad died my mother and sister moved back down to the valley, and into an apartment two miles from my house. Ed now divorced moved back down as well and that's when he probably started in with your group. In your post to me, you said always spoke favorably about his family, especially his Mom, well Ed and mom were extremely close, and Ed would spend almost every weekend over at my Mom and sister's apartment. After he moved down here however, Ed started to distance himself from his brothers, he stayed closer to Ray until his death, but pretty much after that it was my Mom he was closest too. Richard and I had our families and were raising our kids, Ed was single and had my Mom.

Mom's passing, after our Mom passed Ed pretty much pulled away from Norma, Richard and I, I tried diligently to keep him involved. He lived with Tom, Richards wife's brother but the only way I communicated with him was e-mail, to my knowledge he didn't have a phone. I would try a few times over the year to reach out to him, he would always respond but while we did have a couple of lunches with him, Richard and I, he stayed to himself. Every e-mail I wrote him ended the same, "I love you big brother, you are always welcome in my home, love to see you, Norma would too, praying for you". He never availed himself of those invitations that was his choice, no bitterness towards him, I don't know if it was because of his meager means or he was embarrassed or just the way he wanted but it wasn't the way I wanted it, but I respected his choices.

Ed's passing, because of the situation above I/we were totally unaware he was sick and didn't know he had passed until the County did a background check on him and found out that even though he listed himself as having no family, in fact he did. All three siblings and my daughter got certified letters informing us of his death. The biggest thing that broke my heart, besides his actual passing was he died alone, and didn't have too; I promise you I would've been there in the hospital as well as hospice had I known. Our brother Ray was alone when he died of a massive coronary, his wife was out of town and found him dead on the floor, and then I find out Ed passed away in a hospice unit from throat cancer, alone. That started the tedious legal and paperwork issues of dealing with County to get his family status changed and be able to take charge of his remains. I have worked for the past two months to do that. We were able to utilize a program whereby we were able to have him cremated for $1200.00 which the state paid for utilizing my sister as the person on a fixed income, so I understand your group took up a collection, which is unbelievably kind of all of you when you all didn't know about us, please make sure to thank all the group for that generosity on behalf of all of us, it's incredibly kind!

Final disposition, since the cremation is taken care of (financially) and I'm in possession of Ed now what I would've love to have done with him was place his ashes in my parent's grave when Norma passes. We have a very rare triple vault to have my sister with my parents, but the Catholic Cemetary won't let me do that, they say it's against the rules. I know he'd loved to be with my mom but that's not doable. I was able to get a very long detailed report from both the hospital where he was diagnosed and the hospice unit where he eventually passed. I also spoke with the Hospice nurse who was with him when he passed and while it breaks my heart that he was alone, from a family perspective, she was with him and he went quietly and in no pain, so I thank God for that, the Hospice people are an amazing group. I've gone through several emotional stages with regard to Ed passing besides losing another brother, from pissed off that he did what he did, to understanding that maybe he did it to try and not be a burden as he didn't have any life insurance and he figured if he listed himself that way the County would just take care of his final arrangements. Since finding out and reading the majority of your groups posts I'm rethinking taken him up to Show Low. I see several mentions of the Zoo (didn't know about that) and some your group maybe even did some rock hunting with him here in AZ and may have some ideas of his favorite places to do that in and we could place him there? If you would help me with that, I would be very grateful, if not I'll take him up to the mountains in the fall. Because of being somewhat estranged from Ed we hadn't planned a formal service, we figured we do a family thing when we spread his ashes in the fall and maybe do a Facebook post something of the nature of Pam and I would open our house up for a few hours on a Sunday and if you want to stop by please do so, mostly because up until finding out about your group, Ed kept to himself. I know you all took up a collection I don't know how much that is or what to do with it as there's no funeral service to pay for and his cremation cost is covered, I've seen something of a marker or brick at the zoo or maybe something else of that nature, that your group has suggested but I'm not sure and would love some impute from all of you.

Well, I know this was extremely long and maybe more than you needed to know but after reading all the posts in the various threads I thought you all deserved some sort of recap of how we all got here, including Ed. There's no way to sum up someone's life in a few paragraphs but I want you all to know how happy I am that Ed had a group like yours to relate too, I'm sad that it wasn't with us but grateful and blessed that he had all of you. If you haven't surmised it, I'm a Christian and my prayer is that all of you are blessed for your friendship and love of Ed and that Ed is walking hand in hand with his beloved Mom in heaven, I'm glad the cares of this world are over for him and that he is out of pain. We won't do anything final till we are here some thoughts from your group, we are not in a big hurry as it's too damn hot to do anything till the fall, there is nothing in this that you can't share but I wanted to reach out to you first and let you decide how much of it to do so, again thank you all so much, Michael...