Life - The passing of Jeff Akers

This week has been a sad one.  My sister, Sandy, had to make the difficult decision to take her husband off of life support after he had a seizure and hit his head.

Jeff had struggled pretty much his entire life with alcoholism.  He started drinking when he was 16 and at two different times he had serious falls while drunk where he broke his neck and his back, so he had a rod in his neck and I think he also had a plate in his head. He and Sandy both have struggled with these issues, but in their own way they were good for each other because they each understood the struggles they both faced.  They complained incessantly about each others' problems, but in the end they kept each other company and filled a void in each others' lives. Now he is gone and I am not sure how Sandy is going to do.

Jeff managed to get a couple of DUIs in recent months and as part of his second sentencing the judge ordered him to go through an in-house rehab program for at least 6 weeks.  He was allowed to choose which program he wanted to go through and he chose a facility up in Liberty where he was able to stay in a cabin with a bunch of other men who were all working through the 12 step program together. I believe he chose that place mainly because it was the cheapest option, but it sounds like he enjoyed being up there and he was allowed to have visitors a couple days a week.  It was not a facility with any medical staff on hand though, and they required participants to go off of everything cold-turkey, including any prescription medications they were taking, so that meant Jeff could not have any of his medications for anxiety or pain either. He had been up there for 3 weeks and had already had two seizures and they told him that if he had another seizure then he would not be able to stay and participate in the program. He was afraid the judge would send him to jail so he really wanted to finish the program, but last Tuesday night he had another seizure while he was standing up and when he fell he hit his head. I got a call around 11 pm from Dakota asking if I could go stay with his kids so that he could go to the hospital with Sandy, and I guess my mom also went to stay through the night as well.  Dakota and Natasha got home around 2 am and said that he was basically brain dead and would most likely be removed from life support in the morning :(  The next morning McKenna and Ryan, Troy & Tonia, Jeff's son Brett, and my mom were up at the hospital and I got there just after the ventilator had been removed and he passed away.  Jeff has pretty much been estranged from his son for most of his life, but Brett came to see him a couple years ago when he was in the hospital, and he came and brought his little boy to say good-bye. 

So sad to see a relatively young man gone too soon because of bad life choices. We were unsure whether he would make it through a severe pneumonia episode a couple years ago when he had to have surgery so that doctors could clean out all of the infection in his lung, and throughout that recovery he continued to smoke.  That was another vice he could just never let go of. After seeing the toll that such habits have taken on various members of our family you would think that it would be a lesson for anyone to never go down that path, but it still draws people in every day, and too many people cannot break free from it once they are in the clutches of addiction. Sandy said he was really happy the last 3 weeks of his life though, being sober and living up at a beautiful place in the mountains. She and my mom & Kent had visited him on Easter, and the day before that McKenna and Ryan had gone up to let Parker participate in the Easter egg hunt.

The rest of this week has been filled with comforting Sandy, making arrangements with the funeral home for the cremation, and scheduling a memorial service. My mom went to her house over the weekend to help her pack up Jeff's clothing so that she can donate the items to various places like the rehab facility where he was at, the homeless shelter, and the DI.  My mom's cousin, Kathy, and her husband now live out at Westwood Village where my grandma lived for years, and they have reserved that clubhouse for us to have a memorial service next Sunday.  I don't know if Jeff's son will come to the memorial service, but I know his brother is going to come down from Washington.

Sandy will get a little bit life insurance money and we are pushing her to put it towards the purchase of a mobile home in a nice park someplace like Westwood Village. She definitely does not want to stay where she is at as she hates the stairs and would likely fall further into depression.  If we don't stay on her to do something useful with the money I am afraid it will disappear on frivolous stuff.

Jeff Akers at Evva's 1st Birthday party 2017