Father's Day 2023

It’s Father’s Day and I’m thinking a lot about my Dad this weekend.  For those following along with my emerging Pandemic Memoir, he died 5 years ago next month - and his death set off a chain of life-altering and very chaotic events in my life - some of which I have yet to make any sense of even to this day.  

I remember when he was hospitalized with a pulmonary embolism five years ago. I went to the hospital chapel and I begged God to spare him.  It is worth noting that I had not had a conversation with God in over 30 years at that point - so I wasn’t surprised when my prayers went unanswered.  In my experience, God isn’t in the habit of placating crisis-oriented believers.  In fact, most days I feel like instead, God smote, smoked and fully rebuked me - in a way that set off the catastrophic chain of events that happened in the aftermath thereto- just because I had the audacity to ask Him to save my father.  I’ve since come to learn that God doesn’t really work like that but He often certainly will upend your life just to get your attention.  And so He did…

Back then, I could not have imagined that just 3 years later I would actually be THANKING God for unanswered prayers with the death of my father.  Every fiber of my being is so glad he did not have to endure the COVID19 pandemic - because he would have stood for exactly NONE of it.  He would not have worn a mask (not because he was an obstinate old man) but because he had perpetual post-nasal drip from his year-round seasonal allergies and any mask would have been like a soiled, wet diaper perpetually stuck to his face.  He also would not have stood for having to navigate down entire rows at the grocery store just to follow the “feet arrows” on the floor for social distancing.  He would have been a giant NOPE for most of all the early COVID mandates and mitigations.  But more than that, I watched people die in a lethal, locked down nursing home during Autumn 2020 as their loved ones were kept fully far away from their side as they languished and perished  So many of our elders and disabled friends died alone, frightened and without the benefit of any family - or anyone at all - near them in our nursing homes during the Pandemic.  And I know myself well enough to know that when it comes to caring for my Dad, I would probably not have abided THAT had that catastrophe happened to my father.  I likely would have been arrested trying to climb into his nursing home windows just to get to him. Because with the few hospitalizations he did have in his elder years, I was mercifully by his bedside 24/7, advocating for his care as a trained medical-legal specialist, until he was well enough to go home.  So the idea of having to just leave him in a locked nursing home while he perished alone…I cannot even fathom such a loss that so many of my fellow Americans simply had to absorb during the pandemic.  Nor did I have to experience the unmitigated horror of my Dad dying of COVID alone in a hospital ER waiting for any hospital bed to become available in our overwhelmed healthcare system - also as so many Americans did.  

In so many ways, despite how my life skidded out in the aftermath of his death, I am so glad that he was spared a fate worse than the one he was actually dealt.  And I now thank God for unanswered prayers regarding his death back in 2018.  And as that country song by Garth Brooks regarding being thankful for unanswered prayers croons: “I guess the Lord knows what He’s doing after all…”  Indeed.          

Back then, I also could not have imagined what my life might look like 5 years later - or everything I would survive just to write my Pandemic Memoir about a deeply broken and dysfunctional government in America. But that’s another thing about God - He often picks a nobody to become a somebody right in front of everybody without asking anybody.  God is truly miraculous in that regard because when I tell you I was fully unqualified to do any of what I did during the Pandemic to survive - and to learn and to grow - I mean I was the least likely candidate God could have chosen to say “Yeah, that one there - it’s time for her to GROW through some things and become my faithful servant…”But as my Pastor always likes to quip: “God doesn’t call the qualified; He qualifies the called.”        

And because of my newfound faith on fire in God these past 5 years, death and grief - they just hit differently now.  My father’s death became “a banana peel” in my life, throwing me into a catatonic traumatic grief Season that I just could not process nor move past.  Fast forward now almost 5 years later and my oldest sister died last month.  She was devoutly religious following a born-again conversion in her 50s that lasted the rest of her life.  But NOW, I do not cry or wail or endlessly lament her death as I did with my Dad because, if I believe as she did about God, then the day of her death was the happiest day of her life because she got to meet Jesus.  And that is something to celebrate; not to be perpetually aggrieved about. And even if I chose not to believe in God in the face of  her death, she had a lifelong narcissist crack addict daughter who made her life a living hell on this Earth for decades.  So at least my sister is now at peace from that rolling trainwreck of a disordered daughter and she no longer has to deal with that unrelenting pain and anguish any more.   So, now, where there was once nothing but sobbing pain and loss with death - there is instead an inexplicable abiding peace and release in the face of death for me - and that has made a dramatic difference.  

But in the runup to this Father’s Day and the 5 year commemoration of my Dad’s death next month, a nagging, open wound related to my Dad’s death resurfaced last week.  You likely missed the “breaking news story” this week about the Harvard Morgue bad actors who trafficked human body parts for pure profit - instead of sending them to the Academic Anatomical Gift Program at Harvard University to be used to advance medical science - as intended - by the families of the deceased.  The gist of the story is this:   

A former morgue manager (and his wife) at Harvard Medical School have been indicted for stealing, selling and shipping human body parts for profit.

There is a 5 Part Series by Reuters on the “body broker” business in America and how they profit from the unscrupulous and often shady funeral industry practices and the wildly unregulated commerce sector of human body parts for profit that currently exists in America.  If you are like I once was, you are likely shocked to learn that this is a real “thing” that is happening on the daily in America.  But that’s the thing about America: nothing is sacred in capitalism.  If profit can be extracted from you even in your death, the greedy capitalist profiteers will find a way.  And in the face of virtually NO REGULATION of this horrendous industry in America, it’s a literal free for all out there with your organs and body parts when you die - if you are unlucky enough to unknowingly choose a shady funeral home. 

Donating a loved one’s body for medical research upon their death -particularly if that individual dealt with health challenges - can help bring healing and comfort for a family, knowing that their gift may help advance scientific knowledge and discoveries.  However, unscrupulous and often malevolent actors known as “body brokers” often take ugly advantage of this familial generosity and instead they opt to covertly sell the body parts on the “open market” for a significant profit to themselves.  And the funeral parlor people take their cut from those profits too and, sadly, most Americans are none the wiser as to what has transpired with their deceased loved one.      

The details of that Harvard story are unspeakably horrifying but sadly not at all unfamiliar to me.  In fact, I have a near identical story out of St. Louis MO which began when my Dad passed in 2018.  Prior to his death, he actively CHOSE to participate in the Anatomical Academic Gift Program with Washington University Medical School.  He saw a documentary about the Program on PBS one night back in 2016 and after talking about it with me at length and after consulting our family lawyer about the Program and his priest, he decided he wanted to participate in the medical research and anatomical gift Program to his alma mater, Washington University, in St. Louis MO. He made this decision largely because he wanted to have his one last act in this life be one that might help future doctors and patients -  by donating his body to academic medical school research for student study and learning.  That is just who my Dad was - trying to look out for and help others even in death.            

  The Program works like this: the donated body or cadaver is utilized by the medical school for one full academic calendar year wherein medical students at Washington University learn dissection and different surgical techniques.  By some accounts from Washington University medical students I spoke with, they often learn the first name of their assigned cadaver for the school year and they treat him/her with friendly deference and ultimate respect given their sacrifice for their advancement and learning.  Because the medical school students are acutely aware that if no one participated in this Medical Gift Program, then they would have no real way of learning critically necessary skills required to become a physician.  As such, they do their best to properly utilize the anatomical gift throughout their academic school year and to honor it accordingly.    Thereafter, after the close of that school year, the body is returned to the designated funeral home for full cremation and the ashes returned to the family thereafter.  Sounds reasonable, right? Oh if only it actually were REASONABLE in the actual lived reality of same - for it is not.     

I contracted for this service via a local Downtown St. Louis funeral home in July 2018. My Dad even had identified WHO (which funeral home) I should contract with, when the time came, for him to enter the Academic Anatomical Gift Program.  They advise you at the outset that the Program  can take UP TO 2 years for them to be cremated and returned to the family for interment. That timeframe was okay by me because this was what my father had ultimately decided he wanted to do and I understood the serious and lengthy undertaking that it involved.   

But little did I know, at the time, that the St. Louis funeral home we chose to coordinate with the Body Donor Anatomical Gift Program at Washington University for us - is little more than a criminal fraud enterprise.  The road to hell is indeed paved with good intentions as they say…and my father INTENDED to do good but the criminals at this funeral home would prove, over time, to be less than reputable and instead, downright deplorable and covertly criminal.    

Even though I knew it could take UP TO 2 years, I still called the funeral home every 6 months after my Dad died.  I called them in December 2018, July 2019 and December 2019.  They just kept telling me “Oh, no, he’s not back yet; he’s off doing so much good in the World of medical science.  Just be patient.” They even regaled me with specifics of how he was tremendously benefiting future PULMONARY patients because, due to my Dad’s participation in the Program, they had perfected a procedure wherein they can go in with a surgical instrument and physically grab the pulmonary embolism from the lung cavity and save a patient’s life from this often fatal diagnosis of a PE.  I was so happy with this news because I knew that would greatly please my Dad because, after all, he wanted nothing more than to ultimately help future medical science - and he apparently was doing exactly that. 
But then I called the funeral home for a status update in July 2020 which by then marked the maximum 2 years of his participation in the Program.  And I started getting the “but the Pandemic '' standard excuse that became fully synonymous with the dysfunction and total brokenness that the American Pandemic exposed about America.  In my experience, anytime someone just flat out failed to do their job or competently do what was required these past few years, they would always default to “yeah, but the pandemic” as their seeming automatic get out of jail free card for EVERYTHING these past 3.5 years.  And I, for one, am so tired of hearing that tired old trope.  I had no choice but to continue to fully function since 2019 - what about you?  Why do so many incompetent people now THRIVE in their incompetence simply by singing that tired old canard of “yeah, but the pandemic messed things up, not me.” This is so infuriating to the rest of us in America who somehow had to learn how to adapt to the global pandemic’s pressures and constraints - yet somehow still manage to competently and even successfully muddle through. Go figure.    

So, in July 2020 when the funeral home once again gave me the “but the pandemic” trope and they did so AGAIN in December 2020 - I had already heard that excuse from countless others in other fields and capacities- and I just accepted it.  Because what other option did the competent among us have in the face of so much exposed incompetency? We simply had to just accept that EVERYTHING was delayed by YEARS during the pandemic in America - and that’s just the way that it was.  American exceptionalism was proven to be a full fraud as the result of the global pandemic when our collective response to it measured somewhere WORSE than that of most Third World countries.    

Then the funeral home tendered the same response AGAIN to me the 2 times I called in 2021 (July and December 2021 respectively) when they then told me this long, sordid story about how “the medical schools were CLOSED for almost a full academic year due to the Pandemic so everything was just really delayed and backed up far behind schedule; but they then assured me my father would be back no later than July 2022. None of this made ANY sense to me because my father should have gone to Washington University in August 2018 for THAT academic school year in the Fall of 2018 and, as such, he would have never been adversely impacted by the Pandemic AT ALL.  But excusing the inexcusable for the past 3 years under the hat of “yeah, but the pandemic” is just what we DID as a Country.  And I try to be understanding when things go wrong - even when that “wrongness” makes no rational sense whatsoever.    

So when July 2022 rolled around and I called them and got more of the “but the pandemic delays” excuses from the funeral home, I <finally> began demanding answers from them - which, admittedly, I should have done in December 2019.  But that’s the trouble with a traumatic grief diagnosis following a death, you just really aren’t thinking and acting at the top of your game in the fog of unrelenting sadness and despair.  But now, in July 2022, I started interrogating them (and recording our conversations) because, by this point, I realized they were liars - and had been lying to me since the very beginning of this long strange ordeal.  They NOW invented this wild story of how my father was accidentally sent to the National Body Donor Program (instead of locally to Washington University in St. Louis) and was inadvertently shipped out of New York and ended up hurricane-wrecked in Puerto Rico due to Hurricane Maria.  And because of the devastation that hurricane leveled on Puerto Rico, he was then sent to St. George University Medical School for medical use in Granada.  

I’m sorry, you allegedly and accidentally sent my father WHERE? - to some janky, third rate medical school which is unaccredited and which has horrifying online reviews replete with descriptions of their cadaver lab being 150 degrees and a sweltering, humid mess where body parts are just thrown about all over the room and hanging out of drawers???!!!!  

Oh my God….Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo! 

This could not be happening.  Not after EVERYTHING I already endured as the result of my father’s unexpected death back in 2018. 

But like a waking nightmare from which you just cannot escape, this was all very much all unspooling right in front of my very eyes.  And I was powerless to do anything but listen to more intentional lies upon lies by that janky funeral home in St. Louis.    

Upon hearing this latest twist in the tale of my father’s remains, I immediately hung up on the funeral home employee and I could not stop screaming in terror at the mental images that were now running through my mind of my beloved veteran father being treated so heinously and disrespectfully.  I became so blind with rage that I could not even breathe - for hours…

But somehow even amidst my grief-stricken terror of that moment, the litigation specialist in me and my rational brain suddenly kicked in and sputtered back to life, once again, to fully function. And it was with that “sputtering back to life” that I suddenly realized something important: these criminals at the funeral home were STILL lying to me!!!!  Why? Because Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico in 2017- when my father was still very much among the living.  So that hurricane would have had NOTHING to do with his alleged haphazard landing at St. George University in Granada. (Much like the pandemic itself should have had no adverse effect on my father for he passed in 2018!)  Why were these funeral home criminals STILL lying to me????!!! And where ACTUALLY was my father???

I next called St. George University and spoke to the Director of the Medical School Cadaver Program THERE and she confirmed that the school had been fully remote since 2019 due to COVID and that they had accepted no cadavers for the Medical Science Program in several years.  

Hitting the *record conversation button* on my phone to record the call, I again called the funeral home criminals back. (For those of you wondering about the legality of these recordings, yes Illinois is a 2 party consent State for recordings; but the funeral home is located in MISSOURI which is a one party consent State. Also, too, the exception to 2 party consent in Illinois is that you may record if you have the absolute belief that a crime is being committed. And I absolutely did for I knew these criminals at that funeral home were lying liars who just continued to lie by this point.)  So I demanded to know what they had done with my father because Hurricane Maria was in 2017 and would have had no bearing on my father.  They doubled down on their “he’s at St. George University with 9 other bodies”trope and so I told them that my family was going to pay to have him returned to STL by private transport from Granada immediately in order that he may be professionally and safely recovered.  But (because she knew my father was not actually at St. George University in Granada) she insisted the funeral home could not allow me to do that because there were “9 other unutilized bodies with my father from their funeral home that they ALSO needed to get returned to STL - and so they (the funeral home) had already arranged to have my father and the others flown back to STL at their expense that next week.”  At this point, I demanded to speak to the owner of this funeral home and she said she would have him call me that following Monday when he returned to the office.  I sighed the most exasperated sigh one can muster and I hung up on her. 

But then late that Friday my phone rang and when I answered, it was a man identifying himself as the owner of the STL funeral home.  (I had already researched his name and background and he identified himself as that very man to me.) He proceeded to tell me that he was so very sorry but that my father had never gone into the Anatomical Gift Body Donor Academic Medical Science Program and instead, he was sold out their back door - for parts - like a stolen car at an illegal chop shop.  (The funeral home employee actually used more veiled and delicate language than this in describing what had ACTUALLY happened - but that was the jist of his revelation to me.  Why sugar coat what really transpired here? )  Realizing that my father had been “gifted” to them, this greedy and nefarious funeral home simply chose to personally profit from his very marketable body parts instead, rather than send him to Washington University Medical School as per our agreement and contract.  

I couldn’t speak.  I went blind with terror and horror.  I couldn’t breathe and I just screamed into the phone, hung up and fell to the floor - sobbing uncontrollably.  

On the one hand, the truth was horrendous.  On the other hand, my life motto has always been “Tell me the worst truth vs the best lie every day of the year” and so I at least NOW finally had the truth from them - after 4 long years.  It’s hard to imagine that NONE of these shady shenanigans involving post-mortem human remains is regulated in America.  What’s even harder to hear are the stories just like mine from families who suffer tremendous heartbreak and grief when they realize their loved one has been so demonstrably disrespected and desecrated and sold -sometimes repeatedly - by unscrupulous body brokers in America.  

I was beside myself with fresh new levels of trauma relating to my father’s death upon learning this horrendous truth from the funeral home owner that day.  My Dad’s passing was like a 9.8 earthquake in my life but now the aftershocks of that earthquake just kept shaking everything seemingly even more forcefully.  It was a near-mortal wound for me and indeed an ongoing waking nightmare from which I could not escape…And I decided to call the funeral home owner back and ask more pointed questions; but when I did, I was told he was still out of town and would call me back that Monday, as planned.  So who had just called me? As it turns out, a would-be Good Samaritan employee of the funeral home had overhead them talking about the details of the dilemma regarding my father that week and he took it upon himself to call me and tell me what they REALLY do there at this funeral home with bodies “gifted” to medical science.  Like the criminal scofflaws they are, they take ugly advantage of that generosity and they simply opt to SELL the body parts on the open market for their own personal profit.  There is no defense for what they have done. None.             

And so then I started researching the topic of “body brokers” and “body parts trafficked on the illegal and legal markets” both in America and abroad.  I read the multi-part Reuters series on the topic (I strongly recommend reading that series if this morbid topic interests you at all.)  I, unfortunately, was forced to become very well versed in the topic - much to my great horror.  Turns out, body parts post-mortem are quite profitable to funeral homes in America and it is all fully unregulated so chaos and greed rule these ruthless and without conscience sales in America. 

How horrendous.  How truly and utterly horrifying.     

But because I am a trained litigation specialist, I then called around to the various St. Louis MO body brokers who actually BUY these “organs and parts” for sale on the “body broker market” and I learned just how much my father was worth to those funeral home criminals in death.  That funeral home profited roughly $10,800 from parting my father out like a stolen car in their illegal chop shop. There was $1000 per limb and $1000 for his head but with an added financial enhancement of $500 extra dollars for digging his eyeballs out of his skull and selling them to a different broker. You get the idea….

How horrendous.  How truly and utterly horrifying.  

I then contacted a really good lawyer who specializes in this area of litigation in Maryland - because I quickly discerned that NO TOP TIER LAW FIRM in St. Louis handled such specialized cases - much to my annoyance.  And the Maryland lawyer told me to immediately draft an email to the funeral home and tell them not to tamper with my father’s cadaver in any way because my family was going to have professional and proper DNA testing completed when he was (allegedly) returned to their funeral home from Granada - prior to any cremation of him.  So the lawyer essentially advised me to “call their bluff” at the funeral home on the whole lie of “we’re transporting your father (and 9 others) back from Granada next week”  that they were steadfastly and unwisely sticking to in their ongoing false narratives to me.   

And I did exactly that the next morning and within 15 minutes of receiving that fax from me the Director of the funeral home called me and (I recorded it) said: “Oh, we are so sorry we just NOW received your fax about preserving your father’s cadaver for professional handling elsewhere.  Unfortunately for you, we received your letter immediately AFTER he was just cremated by us.  It’s too late now….” Her voice trailed off.

So, in case you are not picking up what I’m dropping for you here: the funeral home engaged in unlawful evidence destruction the very minute they were informed that they were going to be held accountable and their ongoing lies would be fully and scientifically PROVEN and exposed using DNA analysis.  So, knowing that DNA analysis of cremated remains is nearly impossible without sophisticated technology, especially when forensic countermeasures are undertaken by the funeral home to ENSURE that same is impossible, they now had committed the additional felonies of willful evidence tampering and obstruction of justice on top of the already existing felony they committed in trafficking the stolen human remains of my father in the first instance.

I then called her bluff COMPLETELY and told her that I knew she had been lying to me since the very beginning.  I also told her that one of their disgruntled employees, pretending to be the owner with knowledge of the relevant facts herein, had already called me and told me what REALLY happened to my father at their funeral home. How sad it is that their obviously more honorable if disgruntled employees are far more willing to tell the truth FOR them - when the owner simply isn’t man enough to do so himself.  

I then told her I had retained a lawyer and that I was going to  file a police report and see that they were prosecuted criminally for their crimes herein.  In that moment, she then FINALLY admitted defeat and she had their insurance adjuster call me.  It’s worth noting that under the terms of the proposed settlement they were ALSO required to fully apologize for LYING TO ME for 4+ years regarding what actually happened to my father at their funeral home - an apology which they never did and continue to fail to perform TO THIS DAY in an ongoing breach of our agreement.  As such, I consider any such agreement formally entered into by the parties fully null and void and I am now naming this bad actor funeral home in St. Louis MO: It is St. Louis Cremation on Chouteau Avenue in Downtown St. Louis.  Also of note, they thereafter gave me a pittance of a settlement check which my bank flagged as a fraudulent check.  Those people truly are sordid criminals, through and through, and you are wisely advised to AVOID THEM at all costs.  When someone shows you who they are, BELIEVE THEM.  These people are criminals. 

An anguished additional trauma to me in this whole ordeal was the fact that more than receiving any monetary compensation, I wanted to STOP THESE CRIMINALS from intentionally harming another family by having these monsters prosecuted CRIMINALLY for what they had done to my father without permission - as what they did violated SEVERAL criminal statutes in Missouri.  However, the now disgraced and forced out Circuit Attorney in St. Louis, Kim Gardner, who then had jurisdiction over this criminal matter, refused to press charges against them in August 2022.  She told me that because of who I am (yeah she looked me up first to see IF she would help - so do not tell me this wasn’t premeditated & malicious FAILURE TO PROSECUTE and get justice for my veteran father.) It is worth noting that thereafter, when her and her Circuit Attorney’s Office came under fire for incompetence, legal malpractice and failure to do the basic functions of her job in February through May 2023, I therein learned that Ms. Gardner and her family are themselves in the funeral home business in St. Louis MO.  So in March 2023, I additionally learned that another cravenly corrupt act of Ms. Gardner’s tenure as Circuit Attorney in St. Louis was to run cover for St. Louis Cremation as a professional courtesy to them -  you know, one criminal funeral home family to another criminal funeral home family in St. Louis.  Add to her long list of covert crimes while in office  - the failure to get justice for my veteran father - in order to protect and serve her own selfish personal and family agenda in the STL funeral home industry.  And for that she should be criminally prosecuted - for she used the cover of her office to willfully aid and abet known criminals in STL.  Or, as they like to say in St. Louis, just another corrupt day in the Office of the failed CAO Kim Gardner in St. Louis.    

I sincerely hope that perhaps the NEW CAO, under the leadership of Mr. Gabe Gore, who - to my knowledge has NO <conflict of interest> ties to the STL funeral home industry - will maybe read this testimony herein and just perhaps see his way to doing right by my family and for my father in this matter, at long last.  But I am personally not optimistic about this possibility  because, in my opinion, “the legal machine” in STL seems to be fully broken and CAO Kim Gardner was just a symptom of a much larger malignant and cancerous disease there in the legal system of the City of St. Louis. I hope that I am ultimately proven wrong in this assessment but I have my pressing doubts about that. .  

This case and the Harvard University case just like it evokes pain, suffering and disgust - the 3 most powerful negative & draining human emotions. And because of that, I worry not so much for my father and my family because what is done is now done and it obviously cannot be undone; and unfortunately, what is known cannot be UNKNOWN.  But I worry that so many other families were given cremated remains by St. Louis Cremation that were not even the actual remains of their cremated loved ones.  Because that’s the thing about a criminal enterprise like St. Louis Cremation unlawfully and without consent selling body parts out of the back door of their crematorium to the highest bidder: what they tried to get away with doing to my family hoping we would never be the wiser, they also did to who knows how many other families - for profit - in the Anatomical Gift Program. It’s literally a case identical to the Harvard criminal case now unfolding in the Northeast.  It’s also not entirely out of the question that they routinely sell the body parts for profit and simply cremate whatever is “left over” after the body brokers have all picked over what they want from the corpses - and the families are none the wiser to a crime having occurred with their loved one at St. Louis Cremation.  Because if all you ever get back is a box of cremated remains, how would you ever learn that they parted out your loved one for profit PRIOR to the cremation of your family member?  I mean, honestly, who would ever even think to question the AMOUNT of ashes you are given allegedly representing the FULL remains of your loved one - when in actuality, it is your loved one minus several organs and a few limbs with some fine sand thrown in to weigh it all down? Answer: almost no one would think to question this and that’s what allows them to continue to plunder and profit from this criminal conspiracy to defraud the unsuspecting and unknowing good people in St. Louis MO.     

And in a synchronicity that can only be defined as “God’s Perfect Timing” I later came to learn that at the exact same time that I was dealing with this whole horrendous matter last Fall, Congress was proposing a law to FINALLY regulate this wildly unregulated area of “commerce” in America.  The law is known as The Consensual Donation and Research Integrity Act and is being sponsored by Senators Chris Murphy (D-CT) and Thom Tillis (R-NC) and you can bet your buckets that I am NOW at the forefront of advocating for this critically needed law to our legislature.  With the introduction of this law last Autumn, the Senate took a significant step toward bringing meaningful change to the largely unregulated process of whole body donation.  It is also worth noting that in a bold move by Missouri Republicans that surprises literally no one who is actually paying attention- the Missouri GOP led congress actually tried to pass a law this Spring to make it EASIER for these funeral home criminals to continue to egregiously profit and haphazardly transport the desecrated remains of your loved ones.  The Missouri Republicans are nothing if not consistently disappointing on such matters.  

So if  you are inclined to want to help on this issue, please write to your own senators and ask that they work to see that this CDRI Act is passed to safeguard future families who also unwittingly become entangled in this nefarious and sordid criminal body broker enterprise in America. Because as it stands now your loved one can be stolen for profit for their body parts, without consent, by bad actor funeral homes AND there is little Federal or state oversight to stop them.  Worse still is the fact that almost anyone, regardless of expertise, can dissect and sell (or lease) human remains and bodies, generating substantial profits, prior to cremation.    And that must change.  Because truly, if no measurable reform and oversight of this horrendous industry practice is implemented, then it really is true: NOTHING is sacred anymore in America.  Not even the honorable and respectful interment of our cherished veteran soldiers.   You know the funeral home lobby is already beating back our Congress with bribes and payoffs to discard this vital legislation.  We need your voice to counter the common corruption in Congress and help be a catalyst for change.  Please join me in ensuring no other families ever have to endure what my family has had to endure these past 5 years.  Contact your senators today.  If you don’t know how, reach out to me and I will help you draft a letter or make a phone call to your senator.       

And thus and so, I don’t really know what to make of any of this, friends.  Why did something so terrible and horrifying happen to my father when all he wanted was to do one last selfless act in this life to benefit future patients and doctors upon his death?  Ultimately, it’s because profit and greed currently fuel America.  I do know that my father’s planned gravesite currently remains empty and that not having ANY of his actual cremated remains for 5 YEARS certainly did not help my traumatic grief relating to his death. I also have no “site” or “grave” to visit where he is solemnly secured in the Earth on days like today, to remember him on Father’s Day - and that is an ongoing private anguish I will just always now have to carry with me. 

I’m far better today than I was 5 years ago in terms of his death but I don’t know how anyone is ever supposed to make sense of the nonsense that became of his highly undignified, desecrated and demeaned post-mortem experience.  There are some things we just simply do not get over in this life and this sure seems like one of those things.  Furthermore, this matter, left unadjudicated with no justice for my father and my family, is an ongoing black eye for the new City Circuit Attorney Office in STL because if nothing really changes in STL except the figurehead appointed to lead that office, then nothing ever changes in St. Louis - and that is a profoundly ugly legacy to perpetuate.  So, if you believe in justice and in God, please pray for my family that we may FINALLY see justice in this matter either from the new circuit attorney in St. Louis or the Feds - since this, like the Harvard case, involves interstate and international trafficking of stolen human remains for the National body broker market.  And if you have ever used St. Louis Cremation for death-related services, you may want to investigate whether or not the remains you were given by them are actually that of your loved one.  Because I have it on good authority that they often actually use the ashes of unclaimed homeless cadavers to give to those customers who pay for full cremation of their loved one at St. Louis Cremation; yet whose body parts they instead traffic and sell for profit without your knowledge or consent. It’s as horrendous as it is entirely predictable given the shady and secret nature of so many funeral homes.  And if this matter now adversely affects your loved one and your family, too, due to your use of St. Louis Cremation in the interment process, please know that I am so so sorry that I had to be the messenger who FINALLY told you the truth.  I fully realize that this truth is a burden no family ever wants to be forced to acknowledge.  Every day I wish my experience had gone the way it was supposed to and that I was simply given the cremated remains of my father (or someone in his place) by St. Louis Cremation after 2 years of allegedly being in the Anatomical Gift Program - and that I was none the wiser for it.  Because to learn ALL THAT I HAVE on this topic is an anguishing ADDITIONAL emotional burden that I simply did not need heaped on top of my already traumatic grief in connection with the death of my father.          

But in spite of all of that, on this Father’s Day, I choose to focus on the positive.  They say the greatest gift we can give to those who have passed before us is to live more fully in their place.  Lord knows I have tried my level best to do exactly that.  In so many ways, I have become someone unrecognizable to even myself during these past 5 years.  For if you had told me 5 years ago that I would become this fierce advocate for tenant rights and for our unhoused neighbors, and for massive criminal justice reforms and for DV victims and the need for safe homes away from the violent congregant DV shelters and the uninformed staff that too often works therein and for our cherished elders languishing in nursing homes which have been hijacked by private equity to profit off the poor and for legislation protecting future families from what I have endured with my father, I would have laughed at you.  But nevertheless, here I am killing it every day. I exposed that “regulatory capture” existed at the janky nursing home that nearly killed me in 2020 (and DID kill over 100 others) and I finally was able to have their wretchedly uninformed and sociopathic Administrator fired from that Facility.  I have worked with Governor Pritzker on his Home Again Homelessness Prevention Plan and I have written my forthcoming Pandemic Memoir to bring voice to so many of these broken systems in America - so that necessary change can then be made possible for us.  I spend at least 12 hours each day trying to work on all of these very real and often fully ruinous social problems in America and I do so silently and without acclaim - simply because all of these things MATTER GREATLY to me and to so many other families in America who are relying on me to BE THE VOICE who says: Enough. Please help us.         

And if you had told me 5 years ago that I would become a devout Christian in the face of all that I have witnessed first-hand these past few years, I would have laughed even harder at even the suggestion of that. Yet I can’t help but see God’s goodness in so many things that have happened in my life these past few years.  Every time life sends me a much needed “helper” when I most need one and my back is against the wall and I’m all out of options and fully out of resources, I see God in that person and believe they are an angel sent here to help me.  So all of you “helpers” who have come to my rescue again and again these past few years from all corners of America on social media, I again thank you deeply and repeatedly.  My family thanks you.  And my veteran father thanks you.  Truly, I owe you a debt I can never repay but I intend to try and repay that debt by giving these pressing social issues my constant attention and unrelenting focus and legal skills.  I will not stop until things are made better for EVERYONE in America.  You have my solemn vow about that.     

I believe God chose me because he knew that I have my father’s heart and that I would, if called, step up and become the voice of the voiceless and the one person who can always be counted on to do the RIGHT thing - and to be someone who will always intervene to help the oppressed.  I am not proud to admit that I wasn’t always this person. For I spent a large part of my adult life content with the status quo of complete dysfunction in America. But I have been remade in the fire and trials of life and I have emerged undaunted and determined to make things better for everyone. We deserve at least that much, my fellow Americans.     

I sometimes think about it all and I reckon that while the body brokers may have hijacked and bargained away my father’s desecrated body parts; I still kept his heart.  Because on so many days, I feel his heart beating in tandem with mine and I feel his heart inside of mine - cheering me on - all the way.  I like to imagine him polka dancing in heaven while drinking root beer floats and telling his friends: “See that kid - she’s mine. Look at her go, would ya?!  I never knew she had it in her to literally try and change the world.  But that’s my girl - and I’m so proud of her.”      

Because that’s the one thing I recall most vividly about his last day alive.  He told me “In the event that I don’t pull through this, know that I couldn’t have asked for a better daughter or friend than I have in you and I’m so proud of you.”  I told him to stop talking like that because he was going to be just fine.  Because he just always was… 

But he would die just 6 hours later - after that very prescient conversation he tried to have with me…  

And I would remain frozen, in the paralyzing darkness of grief, for YEARS thereafter, wondering what I ever did to make him proud before he died.  But somewhere in that darkness, I decided to meet these arduous life moments and challenges and become someone I know he COULD BE  proud to call a daughter and a friend today.  And THAT is what has made all the difference in my recovery from the traumatic grief.  And I can now joyfully carry him with me through all of the remaining days of my life and remember that love does not end just because he is gone.  In fact, his LOVE has only doubled and compounded and manifested within me before being freely given away by me to so many others I have tried to help since his death.  And I have my FAITH in God that goes with me every day as I fight to change these broken systems in America.  And I finally, finally have HOPE again for a brighter future for myself as the result of my forthcoming Pandemic Memoir.  And The Bible tells us that these 3 things abide: faith, hope and love.  But the greatest of these is love. And I will never stop talking about you Dad and telling people how proud I am of YOU and how much I love you.  Because you deserve to be remembered with so much love. You’ll always be my greatest hero, Dad. And as God as my witness, I will now go forth and live in the sunshine of your life instead of the dark shadow of your death.  Happy Father’s Day, Dad.

“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power. Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of the dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground. Stand firm then with the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, your feet fitted with readiness that comes from the Gospel of Peace. Take up your shield of faith with which you can extinguish all the arrows of the evildoers. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit which is the word of God. Pray also for me that whenever I open my mouth, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it fearlessly as I should.” {Ephesians 6:10-20}

ADDENDUM: If you would like to buy me a coffee or an edible or an ice cream soda, my CashApp is $ladyjustice314.  

I also have a GoFundMe fundraiser currently going for my ongoing needs which exist outside of my very limited income and exorbitant housing costs. My GoFundMe can be found at this link:    https://gofund.me/78f6b23d

Thank you all for carrying me this far.  I know that I stand on the shoulders of you giants, and unsung heroes who have gotten me this far and who remain dedicated to crossing the finish line with me when my Pandemic Memoir finally publishes in November 2023.   And as that cheesy 90s song from Celine Dion sings: “You were my strength when I was weak, you were my voice when I couldn’t speak, you were my eyes when I couldn’t see, I lost my faith you gave it back to me and you said no star was out of reach.  You stood by me and I stood tall amid the most humbling of life circumstances - all because you loved me.  And now I give all of that love right back to you.  Thank you.