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Their trip began in California and they first headed to Arkansas. It was meant to be a special trip for the 79-year-old woman to see loved ones before she died. She was suffering from renal failure but was expected to live long enough to complete the trip. After Arkansas, the family began driving the RV toward Oregon but their grandmother died in Wyoming. However when she died, the family decided to keep driving and transported the body more than 1,000 more miles, until they reached Hillsboro. “They said a Dr. had told them, based on her condition that if she did die, they should continue to drive to their destination,” said Lt. Michael Rouches with the Hillsboro Police Department. “She had a personal physician here in Hillsboro and the idea was that the physician would have her medical records and information about her condition.” One of the family members told KGW that the grandma had told the family it was her wish to be in Oregon for her final days.
Even so, the Office of the Medical Examiner is helping with the investigation. Lt. Rouches said, “Their intentions in starting this thing were good.”
Life imitates art? (or maybe life imitates Hollywood)
Wow. That would be one awkward ride for 1,000 miles. It’s funny and sad at the same time.
That can’t be the first time that has happened! What would have been better? stopping and paying someone else to haul the corpse to the same place you’re going anyhow?
Probably happens more ofter than we know.
As RockOn said, would it have been better to pay?
Personally, I don’t believe so.
I want to know whether they stopped at drive-through fast food restaurants on the way.
This story sounds like a fabrication to me, based on the old urban legend. Why isn’t the family’s name mentioned? People get their names in the paper for far more legally suspect activities than this. Is there even a Michael Rouches with the Hillsboro police?
Grandpa said the sex was the same but he noticed the dishes were piling up.
Just about a week ago, there was something in the news about some guys attempting a “Weekend at Bernie’s” move to get money out of a bank account. Now was that a hoax too? Or have people actually gotten dumber than Hollywood script writers?
“Grandma has died of dyssentery.”
Every time I hear something like this I’m shocked — that it is so unthinkable to us for somebody to handle (in this case) death themselves without leaving it to the government or the experts. We have become so fully absorbed into the complex system of government and economy imposed on us that it’s unthinkable that we might live otherwise. Life is, in reality, much simpler than we have allowed it to become (he typed as he stared, bleary-eyed, at his computer screen), and it’s ridiculous to suggest that there is some moral or intellectual imperative for us to stop right where we are and call in somebody else to handle the death of our loved ones.
You’re not kidding. Call in the greasy funeral parlors. Scumbags.
#9, DE,
Good point.
***
I remember a case a few years ago when a Canadian and his father were vacationing in California with a pick-up camper. The father died just as they started back. The son drove the rest of the way with the father still in the back but stopped every couple hundred miles to by another bag of ice.
At first Canadian Immigration didn’t want to let the son bring the father into the country without a death certificate. The Americans wouldn’t let the son reenter the US without a death certificate either. The Canadians relented and the local coroner ruled he died of natural causes.
When the coroner asked the son which funeral home he would like to use, the son replied “None. He would drive his father home himself”. Then the local police got involved and said they could only release the body to a registered funeral home. This went on for a few days.
The son went home, got an estimate on the cost of shipping his father home and filed a suit in court against the police. The police shipped the body to the son’s front door within a week. At least in Ontario there are plenty of regulations about burial, but none about transporting a body other than it must be done in a respectful manner.
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