One year ago today.

Well, it was one year ago today that Scott texted me wanting to how our class action against the Canadian Armed Forces was proceeding.

I explained to him that the DND and the DOJ were still trying to have me disallowed as the representative plaintiff.

He asked me if he should be the representative plaintiff.

And that was the last I ever heard of him.

The next time that I heard anything about him was on August 14th, 2024 when I received a next-of-kin visit from the Vancouver Police Department at the request of the Edmonton Police Service.

What killed him?

Still don’t know.

The official cause of death is “ruptured spleen” due to a fall.

But was the fall due to a heart attack? Heart attacks are a Gill clan specialty.

Was it a grand mal epilepsy seizure? His seizures were getting bad recently.

Was it his ketamine habit?

He had been taking Ketamine infusion treatments and apparently started finding his own sources of ketamine. When I went to his apartment back in August of 2024 to give the landlord the okay to dispose of his belongings someone showed me a picture of a needle of ketamine that had been found on Scott’s computer desk where he had been right before he got up and fell.

Someone else had confirmed that Scott had originally snorted the ketamine, but then quickly graduated into intravenous injections.

Because of where I work I am more than acutely familiar with how addictive ketamine is, and how deadly this drug is when misused.

I know that people are offered ketamine infusion therapy for the treatment of major depression, but it’s not something that I would ever entertain no matter how euphoric the high is and no matter how much it promises to free me from my depression.

I know that Scott suffered from depression. It would have been impossible to live in the Gill household and not come away with mental trauma, major depression, and anxiety.

Just as the coroner wasn’t able to establish a cause of death, they also weren’t able to establish an exact time of death. Scott was discovered only after the downstairs neighbour started to complain about a putrid liquid leaking into their suite.

Even though Scott had no will as I was the one disposing of his body I also had to make basic decisions about his apartment.

When I went in to the space the smell of death and rot was still heavy in the air even though the property management company had removed the plywood flooring and sealed the parts of the framing that couldn’t be removed.

Scott had apparently bought this condo suite a few years back. But he had apparently sold the condo suite a few months before his death and was paying rent to the new owner.

The condo was apparently sold for about $80k. What ever happened to that money is anyone’s guess. There really wasn’t anything worth keeping. And I couldn’t breathe in the space. As I said it smelt like death and rot. And I didn’t have a HEPA / Carbon half mask.

As I was listed as his executor on the cremation paperwork, when the crematorium provided his certificate of cremation to the credit reporting agencies I started getting a lot of calls from creditors asking when they were going to be paid.

But here’s the funny thing.

Even though I can pay to have his body cremated.

Even though I can choose what to do with his cremains.

I have no access to anything else.

I had one of his creditors that sent his outstanding bill to a credit agency and that credit agency wanted me to make payment arrangements.

Wrote a nice little letter to this agency informing them that I had absolutely no intention of paying seven to ten thousand dollars to a court to be awarded official legal executor status when it appeared for all intents and purposes that Scott had no money, no will, and no other relations outside of me.

Haven’t heard from them since.

So, with the death of Scott that means that the Gill / Dagenais blood line is finished. I’m the only one left. Scott’s dead. Richard’s dead, I’m sure that Marie’s dead.

Now, the really strange thing was the VPD knocked on my door on August 13th, 2024.

Our stepmother Sue lived up in Morinville, AB.

Morinville is maybe 30 minutes north of Edmonton on the St. Albert Trail.

I had taken the SIM card out of Scott’s phone and installed it into my phone as his phone was locked but it was blowing up with messages and texts. By installing the SIM I was able to read and respond to the text messages coming in to his phone.

Apple isn’t very helpful in situations like this.

The one message that I didn’t expect to ever see because of the bad blood Scott claimed existed between him and Sue was Sue herself.

Haven’t heard back from her since.

And honestly I don’t expect to hear back from her.

There wasn’t a lot of closeness in our family.

Richard was a piss tank alcoholic with a short fuse and rage issues.

We grew up on military bases where dysfunctional households were ignored and shunned.

Richard kept us isolated from our relatives.

Richard made sure that Scott and I and anyone who would listen understood that Scott and I were the unwanted baggage that he was forced to endure.

But yeah, much like when I had found out that Richard had died, Scott’s death hasn’t affected me much.

There had always been so much animosity between Scott and I.

Richard had pretty well washed his hands of his parental responsibilities and expected grandma and I to raise Scott. But grandma was just as much of an alcoholic as Richard was, and in the aftermath of CFB Namao I wasn’t psychologically able to look after myself let alone anyone else.

As I said, Richard wasn’t a dad, he was a father. And a very reluctant one at that.

He never raised Scott and I to be brothers.

For the most part he left Scott and I to grow up feral on the bases.

Scott went one way.

I went another.

Scott’s death does reinforce one thing for me and that is we, and by we I mean all humans in general, don’t matter and when we die, no one outside of immediate family gives a fuck. It’s like we may as well not exist.