Went to do a welfare check on a friend and found her dead on the couch

So awful to read this . You’re a good man to check on a friend and to care for their dog. So sorry for your loss

 

Thanks

It was more my girlfriend Amanda than me. She has a sixth sense when it comes to this sort of thing. In February, Amanda’s birth mother passed away in her apartment and was not found for five days. She lived about an hour away, and driving out to do a welfare check was not convenient. This is still fresh in our minds, and Emily only lived 15 minutes from my house so we were not about to have a repeat. Amanda’s mother also had two elderly dogs, who fortunately had water and were also able to survive by eating garbage, and Hannah (Emily’s dog, now Amanda’s dog) was another part of the equation that influenced our decision to go out in a nasty storm. Because of Amanda had a bad feeling, Emily was dead less than 24 hours and we possibly saved Hannah’s life!

 

Is your dog a Chocolate Lab or a Red Lab?

 

Was military for 26 years, and you need to seek some professional help. Its good to talk with friends, but if youre in a place you cant function, you need to find some help. PTSD isnt just a "military" thing. and i do know youre Neurodivergent, so please, if this keeps bothering you, find a professional to help. I talked with my friends for years about the shit we've done and seen, and it wasnt until I sought out professional help, did I honestly start to be bale to REALLY put things behind me. I am sorry for this experience you have to have, but you and Amanda did what all friends should do. I am truly sorry.

 

I'm talking to my longtime therapist regularly, as is Amanda, and he is helping Amanda to seek out a more specialized therapist; Amanda was diagnosed with PTSD on account of stuff that happened to her years before we met. I am honestly improving, at least in terms of sleeping better and not having vivid flashbacks. My therapist, who I trust deeply, believes that the memories of finding Emily will fade a lot within two weeks; I do not think the memory of finding Emily (and seeing her dead on the couch) will 100% fade.

That said, for two nights after finding Emily, I was worried that I'd wake up at night and see a dead body in my dark bedroom. We found Emily on Saturday night, and I did not sleep well Saturday into Sunday or Sunday into Monday. On Monday night, I slept a lot better and continue to sleep better, and as does Amanda. The fear of seeing a dead body in the dark (Emily or otherwise) has subsided.

Amanda has been on medical leave for almost a week and returned to work tonight (she works 9pm-9am Sunday into Monday, and 11pm-9am Monday through Thursday, with Friday and Saturday totally off).

The memorial service for Emily's friends will be on May 19th, and my boss has already given me approval to take the whole day off; I believe that this will give Amanda and me a great deal of closure. My parents have been very supportive through all of this, and encourage me to tell them whatever's on my mind with regards to Emily's death.

 

So glad to hear you have help and so does she!! I wish you the best and closure as you stated.

 

Hannah, Emily's dog who we have now officially adopted, has been a huge help as well; Dogs and cats make excellent therapists, and they don't even realize it!

 

On another note, at this point having found Emily dead is more surreal than traumatizing to me; it took over a day for it to sink in that I'd been banging on a window and screaming at a dead body...

 

she is a chocolate !

 

At one point, there were three Labs in all three original colors in my family! One aunt and uncle had a Chocolate Lab named Maddy who was born in 1989 or so and had to be put to sleep in 1999 due to cancer, our Black Lab named Molly was born in December 1994 and we put her to sleep in December 2009 due to failing health, and another aunt and uncle had a Yellow Lab named Sandy who was born in July 1995 and had to be put to sleep in January 2009 due to failing health.

 

Maddy, Molly and Sandy ! Love those names.
This is Nuka, after Nuka-Cola from the fallout universe. We also have a cat named Pip

 

Amanda has a cat named Pierce, and we would never be able to afford Hannah without the help we are getting!

 

@ColoradoTJ

The time and date stamp on my dashcam is off, but I watched the video again and counted roughly 1 minute and 25 seconds between the time we got out of the truck and ran up to Emily's condo, and when I came running back to the truck so I could get my phone to call 911; I called 911 at 8:40PM, so that puts our approximate arrival at around 8:38PM. Police and EMS arrived at about 8:46PM, and I called my dad at 8:49PM to tell him what was going on. That call lasted two minutes, ending when the cop came out to tell us that Emily had passed away, which means we found out the tragic news at about 8:51PM. So, this started somewhere between 8:05PM and 8:10PM, when Amanda expressed concern that she hadn't heard from Emily in two days. I texted Emily at 8:11PM and called her at 8:13PM. We were probably in the truck by about 8:22PM and pulling out of my driveway; I called Emily a second time at 8:32, while we were on our way, and left a voicemail. We arrived at Emily's place at around 8:37 or 8:38...

So yeah, we went from simply a feeling that something wrong to finding out that our friend had been dead for almost a day in barely over 40 minutes; I hope I never have another Saturday (or any day for that matter) like this ever again!!!

 

By this time next week, I will have been to six funerals in less than four years, with three of them being for people under the age of 45!



I am sad to say that Emily wasn’t the youngest. The youngest was mine and Amanda’s old teacher’s son, who was killed in a car crash in January 2024 at the age of just 21. The most recent was for Amanda’s mother a month or so ago, and we still haven’t gotten the autopsy results nearly three months after her death!!!

The first one was my neighbor, who had breast cancer and had a bad reaction to the chemotherapy that ultimately killed her in September 2021 at the age of 41.

My friend Jim Aldredge died in August 2022, when he bled to death internally following surgery to remove a cancerous section of his lung; Jim was 75 years old, and I was spared having to see his body.

Seeing my teacher’s kid go into the ground made me cry, not because I knew him particularly well, but because he was only 21.

The last one I went to before Amanda’s mom’s was in the summer of 2024, when a family friend of Amanda and her parents lost her battle with cancer; I had never met this person in my life and went purely to support Amanda. The body was cremated in that case.

In the cases of my neighbor and my teacher’s son, they were both open casket. I’ve been to probably half a dozen open caskets since I was 18, and it didn’t bother me because I knew what I was in for. Even with my grandpa, it didn’t bother me. This was because the bodies had carefully prepped by the funeral home to look like they were merely sleeping.

 

What still gets to me about Emily is that Amanda and I both thought she was alive for more than 10 minutes after arriving. As stated before, the illusion that she was still alive was promptly shattered once the lights were turned on in the condo. She was only illuminated by the front porch light and the lights from my truck. Even if she had been alive, it would have still been obvious that something was wrong. We probably arrived at around 8:37PM, and while Emily being in her pajamas would have been normal at this time, the fact that the TV and seemingly all of the lights were off was not.

Emily hated sleeping with the lights on, according to Amanda, so this also added to the illusion that she was merely unconscious. She was known to fall asleep on the couch, but it was rare. We think that she decided to sleep on the couch because she may have been too sick to move to her bed, and one of the top theories is that she had a medication-induced seizure while sleeping and aspirated on her vomit.

I somehow missed the vomit even after the lights came on, but Amanda said she saw it off to the side. Another thing in this whole ordeal that really gets to me is whether Emily was asleep when it happened peacefully, or if she was awake and largely aware of what was going on. We may never know this. She was lying on the couch as if she’d passed out, and her eyes were closed, but that doesn’t necessarily mean she was asleep.

I just thank God that we found her after less than a day, and that she had the A/C on. For some reason, I remember the cop telling us that she been gone for at least a day and maybe more, but Amanda’s estimate is somewhere in the range of 14 to 18 hours before we showed up. If Amanda is right, this would put her actual time of death sometime between 2am and 6am.

 

Really sorry about your friend Charlie, that's an awful thing to come upon but you both are good friends for initiating the check either way. That is a cute pup too, I'm sure she's happy to be with some people she knows.

 

@ABA180
@ColoradoTJ
@shakerhood
@steelcity2
@TnShooter

Yet another thing that really gets to me about Emily is how young she was. We went to high school together. She was only four months older than me and had turned 36 in November 2024; I turned 36 less than two months ago!

She wasn’t healthy, but we didn’t expect her to die before her 40th birthday! Emily’s age at the time of her death is probably what gets to me the most…

I am overweight myself, and don’t have the healthiest eating habits. However, I’m not totally sedentary and I don’t exclusively eat junk food. Since we found Emily, I have really eaten a particularly unhealthy food. The day after we found Emily, Amanda and I went to Walmart to get food and supplies for Hannah. Now that Easter is over, Walmart is one of many places that has a surplus of marshmallow Peeps; I love Peeps! Walmart had them for 75% off, and I passed up the opportunity, because sugary food likely didn’t help Emily…

 

Totally dig that. I think we talked before about the start of 2021 and how much it sucked, to the point I said I'd rather go through 2020 again (you know what I mean). Eight days apart lost 2 dear friends I'd known since my teen years.

A little comfort food at the moment is okay, man. But I see what you mean about it. Similar reasons when I turned 40 got me to change some of my ways.

 

@ColoradoTJ
@shakerhood
@steelcity2
@Stitchgirl90
@TnShooter

We all die. It's literally a fact of life. I'm going to die. Amanda's going to die. Everybody reading this is eventually going to die. One thing that's bothered me for as long as I can remember would be what happens after we're gone. I like to think that our spirits live on; I also like to think Emily has been restored to the healthy avid horseback rider she was a little over a decade ago, and that she is up in heaven with Declan (the horse she is seen riding in the pictures) looking down on us as she goes on an eternal ride with him. Based on how we found Emily, we don't think she suffered, and that she just passed on in her sleep...

But that's where things start to bother me. Did she basically fall asleep and never wake up? Is she in a never-ending dream? Is her spirit still hanging out here on earth wondering what the hell happened? Emily likely knows what happened to her, but she wanted to make sure Hannah was safe before she crossed over to the other side; I am truly beginning to think that Emily's spirit beckoned us to her place that night for the sole purpose of rescuing Hannah. She was likely in my bedroom when Amanda got the feeling that something was wrong, I'm pretty sure she was with us in the truck as we hauled ass through the storm to her place, and she was there with us when we discovered her body.