Pat Goes to Alaska 2: Electric Boogaloo

Pat Daum's last mission in life was to make it back to Eagle Beach in Juneau, Alaska. He loved that place. Fxxker never made it though. Stupid death, being a jerk and all, cxck-blocking his wanderlust like a bxtch. Well, death and the medical examiners. And grief.

You see, they took his body and said they'd try to find family to release his body to, and if they couldn't... his body would be disposed of. It didn't seem right to me at the time, that they could keep his body if no family claimed him, but I was too in shock by his death to press any further and resigned myself to that being the end.

We friends of Daum would have a wake, share his stories, and toast him one last time. SInce he had no living family, Pat's last leavins' would be county property.

Then came Shellene, his old roomie from Alaska. She found out that Pat had died, messaged me in shock, and immediately bought a plane ticket from Juneau to Pittsburgh just to attend his wake.

At his memorial, many people told stories about how much Pat meant to them, and how much they loved him, and how much he was such a unique, funny, and loving person under all of his cantankerousness. Shellene and I shared a few stories that night as well, one of which was Pat's plan to make it back to her place one more time because he needed a break from Pittsburgh, and because Juneau was the only place he ever found a bit of peace.

She knew he wanted to visit again, but hadn't realized how desperately he needed to, and once she heard that, she wasn't going to let my grief, the medical examiners, or death get in Pat's way. She knew her mission was Pat's mission.

So long story short, Shellene did what needed to be done and what I could not do. She worked with the medical examiner's office and a local funeral home and barely beat the two week deadline to get his body released. Today he was moved to Ball Funeral Home where his body will be cremated, packed up and shipped off to Alaska so he can be spread all over the sand like an STD at the nudie beach, just like he would have wanted.

"It's this big huge beach in an otherwise rocky area," says Shellene, "Lots of wildlife congregates there because it's so open. You can see Herbert Glacier and up Lynn Canal and Admiralty Island. It's fucking beautiful. And that's coming from someone who has been all over Alaska."

Shellene fronted the cost for all of this (about $1100 total between paperwork, cremation costs, and shipping), and she did all the work to get his body released. The least we can do, as friend's of Pat, is help pay her back for doing all of this and get Daum back to Alaska one more time.

She asked if I could help set up the gofundme and Vishnu willing, I hope I got it right. It's the least I could do for a dude I loved like a brother. If you loved him too, help this wonderful friend of his make Pat's last wish come true.