Avron’s Last Days

July 2012

When you find a dead body in a bathtub the government bureaucracy shifts into the high gear we'd like to see all the time.

After discovering my brother Avron unresponsive, I reflected for a moment, mumbled to him briefly, assessed the situation, considered alternatives and did nothing, although there were things I could have done to change the scene. Then I called 911.

Emergency services arrived fast. I was ceremoniously escorted from his apartment. I didn’t see him again until the funeral. I sat in the lobby for three hours questioned and comforted by the EMTs, the police and the coroner.

Bodies found in bathtubs are suspicious and must have autopsies. Avron was taken into custody for the procedure and subsequent transfer to the funeral home. I had to watch while police searched the apartment. They were looking for evidence of foul play. Pills, knives and bottles were examined. Some were taken.

Neighbours questioned me about what was going on. I told them the main details. Dead. Don't know why. Bathroom. Coroner. Reaction ranged from sincere regret to anguish. Avron was popular in his building. He had helped the super and her family thru a crisis. She was crazy for him. As were many others.

I found Avron about 9 a.m. on Friday the 13th in July 2012. He hadn’t shown up for our usual breakfast or answered his phone. I had keys to his apartment. That was the obvious place to check. He was 70, suffered from worsening bipolar disease and had recently had a minor stroke.  

He died in a way to be avoided. Never married. No children. He did have my family, me, another sister, nieces, nephews. And he had another. An adopted family that he was very close to. He had started babysitting for them 55 years earlier. That family included 11 ersatz grandchildren.  

We had been having breakfast most Friday mornings for the last decade. He had moved back to Toronto from Arizona when his nest egg got decimated in some hedge fund melt down. At first he bought an expensive condo then moved to a really nice two bedroom rental with a downtown view and finally to a sad small studio, too small to have a bathroom door. 

He was trying to remake his life. He had made a few million dollars in the 70s and 80s buying up merchandise from bankruptcies and retailing it. It grew to a chain of poster stores which he sold in his early forties, in the mid 80s and retired.

We were not close when he lived in Arizona. We talked. We shared concerns for our aging mother. She lived alone on Venice Beach. In her 80s she needed frequent visits from her four children and her grandchildren. Everyone lived a plane ride away.

I never visited him in Arizona.  I took my small kids to LA to visit their grandmother but not to Tucson to visit their uncle. I was jealous probably. He was a bachelor in paradise. It looked pretty good from afar. Silly me.

When Avron returned to Toronto with his declining fortunes his bipolar disease was emerging, addressed medically, but getting worse slowly. He had probably suffered manic depression, as we used to call it, his entire life. I recall that in his late teens, he had dropped out of high school and tried to escape into the army. There was some trouble. I was too young to be in the loop.

Our long series of breakfasts were important. He was fighting depression trying energetically to get new ventures off the ground. My economics and stability were a counterpoint. He had an extensive network of friends and genuinely earned loving admirers, who mostly knew him when he was up. People helped as they could but it was not enough to revive his success. My role included supporting him when he was down. Like a shoulder. He in turn was a shoulder for many others. He was generous to a fault. Which is stressful if you're short of cash.

The two days leading up to the funeral were busy and eventful. I carried his phone to access his address book. Not a few times it rang and I had to tell a shocked and saddened caller why he didn't  answer. The number of women who called him as part of their regular routine was unexpected but not surprising.

His funeral was crowded. It's best to die young if you want a big funeral. My daughter Amy gave a moving eulogy which expressed the feelings people had for Avron. It's on YouTube at Avron Shore's Funeral.

The day after the funeral I met a police detective at Avron’s apartment. His job that day was to return my brother’s myriad pills. They had been examined as part of the coroner’s work.

The walls in the apartment were crowded with pictures. My brother liked to assemble photos on poster size boards. A collage. Many of the pictures were family related and many more were of attractive acquaintances, girlfriends and others posing with my brother.

As I spoke with the Police Detective he mentioned the decor; ‘your brother seems to have been very popular with women’. I replied ‘yeah, your wife would have liked him’. The police detective raised his head, then squeezed his eyebrows and said ‘he would have really liked my wife’. Which was true.

Several months later the autopsy results arrived from the coroner. I had been worried that Avron's death would be ruled a suicide.  The bathtub scene included a few questionable items including  a knife and an empty liquor bottle. But the coroner said heart disease. That was a better ending.