ON SLEEPLESS ROADS THE SLEEPLESS GO

   

The headstone in a cemetery never lies. 

Today is the third year of the horrific day, June 21, 2008, that you were cruelly killed at the age of 30, your life brutally stolen from you, your family, friends, me.

I posted the other pictures above of my son Steven because they are some of my favorite ones and also he is so real, alive in them, and for a second, he seems to actually be here.

I cannot believe that my son Steven would lie buried in a grave so young, me dreaming of things that he was and might have been.

I never said the traditional Mourners Kaddish prayer for Steven because it's words are meaningless.

Today I wrote my own Kaddish for Steven because his pain and loss need to be honestly described in real words, that accurately reflect my true feelings.               

MOURNERS KADDISH FOR:

Steven Nathaniel Wolkoff, Shmuel Nacham BenYaakov,  Samuel Nathan, Son of Jerry.
                      
September 23, 1977- June 21, 2008

I am sorry that you are dead.

I am sorry you suffered so painfully, on that awful day, as you fought to stay alive.

I am sorry for the agony you felt, I see it in your eyes, face, and body from horrific evidence photos. 

I am sorry for the fear, terror, unimaginable pain you felt in fighting for your life, as they killed you. I know the truth of your courage in being able to fight so bravely.

I am sorry for you because you were not killed by accident, but instead by the senseless, stupid, careless, actions of so many others who could have saved your life, but instead, each in their own way, miserably failed you that day, never realizing or even considering taking responsibility or accountability for the consequences of their actions, inactions, indifference, and incompetence.

I am sorry you died not due to fate, nor randomly, but were instead killed by the cascading chaos of connected, dysfunctional, defective entities and others, all who caused your preventable death.

I am sorry for you about the DUI, drug impaired, unlicensed driver, speeding out of control, who didn't care about your life.

I am sorry about the inept, credentialed, qualified medical first responders who had no idea, not a clue, of what they were doing medically to you as they killed you.

I am sorry for you, that cowards who know the truth, but have no conscience to speak, remain silent, lie, omit, and cover up the facts that they all contributed to killing you.

I am sorry that you died in spite of the true facts that show you should be alive today.

I am sorry for the evil ones who have tried to defame you and erase you ever lived.

I am sorry that life is so cheap and yours has no value to those who killed you.

I am sorry that the Legal system is weak, corrupt and I have not been able to obtain real justice for you.

I am sorry for my failing as your father to keep you from dying.

I am sorry you did not leave the beach 1 second earlier or later to return home.

I am sorry that I was not there to protect you.

I am sorry that I was not there that day to comfort you, hold you, ease your pain.

I am sorry that I don't know the last thoughts in your mind before you died.

I am sorry that you died alone, with strangers, and no one even held your hand.

I am sorry that you died lying on a hot highway pavement in a place unfamiliar, in the middle of nowhere.

I am sorry that no one had the decency to cover your right arm and both feet as you lay dead under the blue tarp.

I am sorry the medvac trauma helicopter was delayed in arriving there by 4 minutes, too late to stop the first responders from touching you.

I am sorry that I was not even able to protect your dignity in death.

I am sorry that your soul and body were desecrated in death.

I am sorry that it was you and not me.

I am sorry that I had to bury you and that you didn't bury me first, as it should be.

I am sorry you cannot cry.

I am sorry you cannot scream.

I am sorry you cannot laugh.

I am sorry you cannot smile.

I am sorry you cannot feel.

I am sorry you cannot talk.

I am sorry you cannot breathe.

I am sorry you are silent forever.

I am sorry you are deep inside a cold, dark grave, rotting away, alone.

I am sorry you are blind and will never see again.

I am sorry you will never experience the rest of your life, nor remember the wonderful life you had until that final second before you died.

I am sorry you will never be able to realize your dreams.

I am sorry you will never feel the joy of being a father, husband , uncle, grandfather, great grandfather.

I am sorry you will never have another birthday.

I am sorry you will never again feel the experiences and potential of your incredibly gifted skills.

I am sorry you will never again be happy.

I am sorry you will never again feel the warmth of the sun.

I am sorry you will never again feel the wind on your face.

I am sorry you will never again feel the rain, snow, water.

I am sorry you will never again listen to music.

I am sorry you will never again play music on your Fender bass guitar.

I am sorry that you will never again enjoy reading books.

I am sorry you will never again ride your bike.

I am sorry you will never again play Ultimate Frisbee.

I am sorry you will never again play softball.

I am sorry you will never again play basketball.

I am sorry you will never again swim.

I am sorry you will never again be able to express your kindness and caring for others.

I am sorry you will never again explore your genius ideas that changed technology.

I am sorry you will never again experience the excitement of your life.

I am sorry you will never again be creative with your ideas, hands, and brain.

I am sorry you will never again discuss with passion the things that you believe in.

I am sorry you will never again write, expressing the magical beauty of your words.

I am sorry that you will never again feel love. Never.

I am sorry that you will never again be with those close to you now and in the future.

I am sorry for you that life is unfair.

I am sorry because you didn't deserve this to happen to you.

I am sorry for you that there is no answer to " WHY, WHY YOU"?

I am sorry for you that there is no god.

I am sorry for you that there is no heaven, just a dark, cold grave.

I am sorry that you cannot rest in peace.

I am sorry that you cannot wake up from this nightmare, that all this is real, irreversible, final.

I am sorry for you that time has stopped forever.

I am sorry that some people have forgotten about you.

I am sorry that the world said nothing, heard nothing, saw nothing about the injustices done to you.

I am sorry for everything that I forgot to say now, or cannot and did not say here.

I am sorry for YOU because you are not here, you are NO MORE on this earth.

More than anything, I am sorry that you didn't have a chance to say goodbye.

I will always honor you, remember you, miss you, keep you in my heart, preserve your memory in lovingly telling future generations about you, and love you forever. Your brother, sister, mother, family, and others who love you, will do the same. We will never forget YOU, never stop loving you, our precious beloved Steven. NEVER.

Steven, I can only say, I am SORRY, SORRY, I am so SORRY. 
 
  -Amen. Love, Dad.
 

 

Take Your Broken Wings, Learn to Fly Again, Learn to Live Free.

Oh Steven- I have been thinking about you even more than usual lately.  I see you everywhere I am, mixed in with the unbearable pain that I feel, was a smile today when I thought again of the Mr. Mister, Broken Wings story about you.


Makes me feel good and so proud of you when I think about this story and your passion for what you believe in.

This ones for you my Steven, I miss you and love you so very much.


" Don't understand. Why we can't just live long to each other's hands. This time might be the last, I fear. Unless I make it all too clear. I need you so. Take these broken wings and learn to fly again, learn to live free".


My Steven, learn to fly again, learn to live free, my son.
Love-Dad.

HE CANNOT REST IN PEACE

Samuel Wolkoff- June 6th forever etched in my soul. My father was gruesomely murdered on this day many years ago, at the age of 42. I was 10 years old. 

Certain facts in this blog post and also in the book "Blood Relation" have been deliberately edited to protect myself and others. To learn more information from the book, YOU CAN CLICK ON THIS LINK, and also CLICK ON THIS LINK.

Cause of death, 5 hours of tortured Murder By Strangulation. Hold your breath for as long as you can, then wait 40 more seconds, exhale, that will give you a tiny sense of the horrific way my father felt for 5  consecutive hours, a rope tied as a noose, was alternately tightened, then loosened around his neck, while his hands were tied behind his back. Death, when it finally came, must have been a merciful release for him.

The autopsy showed that my father struggled so bravely to live, that his eyeballs eventually burst, and he finally stopped breathing. His body then deposited at a desolate gas station, in the middle of the night, thrown out onto the ground, as a piece of garbage. Hold that entire scene in your mind forever, it is I can assure gruesome, and haunting in its profoundly graphic endless replay, over and over in my mind.

Oh, as an aside, his sister learned about his murder on the radio news, she immediately dropped dead of a heart attack in front of her four children.

Justice not served, justice not given, nothing complicated, nothing new, an innocent, good person, a human life has always been cheap. I did the best I could to obtain that justice. My father's error that cost him his life? He  believed in trust, in the sense of obligation to very close members of his family, by giving them a chance to change their ways. The good deed he did, paid back by these very same, who had him murdered. Horrifically ugly, but brutally true, and they all got away with it, didn't bother any of them, never mattered to them.

The family never talked about it for 40 plus years, not even to speak my father's name, it is the taboo secret code followed by many families of victims, as if somehow, the unbearable pain would get less. I have spent most of my life investigating his case and eventually shared it with our family. Never have figured out if I did good or bad by reopening the wounds, but I do know, those are permanent gaping, seeping, toxic, painful holes, they never really were ever closed.

I have been doing more thinking than usual lately, not necessarily a good thing for me, as I yearn to be one of those who are able to practice the art of ignorance is bliss.

How can a loved one who dies suffering, rest in peace, ever? Seems like a simple thing to believe, say, and its even reduced to a short acronym, R.I.P., easy to write. I can't write it, not possible, not after all the never ending suffering of my father, and us.

For an ultra private person like me, a blog is obscenely public, personal, grossly revealing, definitely not my style, but  interestingly, momentarily cleansing, a way of coming out, being up front with unbearable realities, my reality. Mostly I do it for those that can no longer speak for themselves, who experienced unimaginable suffering that ended their lives. In this moment, my father's reality.

I have absolutely no idea, not the slightest clue why over 3,200 people as of this date have viewed my blog. I am sometimes intrigued as to why and what would anyone want to obtain from my words that could bring them here. I see search terms on my blog from people who arrived looking for information about my father, a lot of other interesting search words.

Some of you are the cowardly, but powerfully connected scum bags who murdered my father, as well as those of you in arrogant, incompetent, corrupt law enforcement, whose agencies knowingly covered their asses, and in doing so, betrayed your sworn oaths to defend justice, by participating in covering up the truth, obstructing justice in this capital offense, which has no statute of limitations.

We all know each other, or about each other, you know I have hidden away safely the written confidential secret official documents with my honest law enforcement and political friends, the written proof of all the detailed real facts. Nothing to be concerned about, it will remain buried. We all know the deal that protects all of us, the reasons that nothing else has been done by any of us about my father's murder, the reason these documents will remain hidden, is the unspoken but very clear mutual understanding we all have forever, of don't ever again fuck with any of us, and in return, we won't fuck with any of you by making the real truth public.

The March continues, May/June are the busiest  months for me, I dread this time of the year, horrifically gruesome memories of human, innocent lives wasted. The rest of the year, the ever present Demons make sure we remember those, whose memories others have tried to erase, these are my family, they  were human beings who will never be forgotten, they lived and never deserved to die in such horribly suffering ways. 

Today we remember my courageous father. He is not resting in peace, that is certain.

Why? Why Him???

YOU CANNOT PETITION THE LORD WITH PRAYER

Most of you know that I am not a believer in god. To each his/her own and you are welcome to believe in whatever you want, as long as it doesn't hurt someone else.

I like the quotes of certain people who I think spoke the truth. Many of them were musicians, who expressed their inner most feelings through their songs, words that spoke about real life. Frank Zappa, Jimi Hendrix, and Jim Morrison possessed a great deal of truth in what they said. Hendrix and Morrison died from drug overdoses, Zappa from prostate cancer. Their wisdom did not serve them well in keeping them alive, but organized religion doesn't have much of a successful record either.

With credit to Jim Morrison, whose music with the Doors was so far ahead of its time, incredibly, profoundly religious in words of truth, reality about life. I am caught in a time warp where these words by Morrison, describe my realities of why I have been publicly blogging, especially now, starting with my  annual "MARCH", in particular this year, first about my sister Iris.

For too long Victims have had and continue to have no rights. The right of expression of their own reality, feelings, thoughts, and the humanity of those they speak for are sacred, and not meant to be taboo because it may upset other people.

In particular, I was ashamed of my pain, hid it from the world, as if there was something wrong, dirty about it. Almost like my loved ones did something wrong to make others uncomfortable by my talking about memories of them. It was as if I wasn't supposed to talk about it, too sad, not happy thoughts. Even losing my mysterious bananas, funny stuff, was an admission of my weakness, but it fit in my Blog, so I wrote about it.

People have actually told me how they expect or want me to feel, some mean well, most are selfish, frightened, cruel and actually have gotten angry with me, even ended relationships, because I did not listen to them, expressed what I felt instead, did not measure up to their standards of the way they believe I should feel. 

Sure most of my posts are raw, ugly, but that doesn't make it untouchable to express reality. If people choose to flee from me because they cannot deal with this ugliness, that is their choice.Those few that stay are my righteous family members, friends,  loved ones who can understand.

Jim Morrison said it best:
“People are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of all. People talk about how great love is, but that's bullshit. Love hurts. Feelings are disturbing. People are taught that pain is evil and dangerous. How can they deal with love if they're afraid to feel? Pain is meant to wake us up. People try to hide their pain. But they're wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a radio. You feel your strength in the experience of pain. It's all in how you carry it. That's what matters. Pain is a feeling. Your feelings are a part of you. Your own reality. If you feel ashamed of them, and hide them, you're letting society destroy your reality. You should stand up for your right to feel your pain.”

IRIS

The dreaded march of grief begins as it does each year at this time. More difficult than ever, filled with the aching of a lifetime beaten down into ever present, increasingly toxic, non stop demons, as each year passes. 

We planted these Iris flowers in the garden out front of my house when my sister Iris died. I liked the idea that they are perennials, each year flowering in all their beauty, now looking so alive on the yearly anniversary today of the day she died, after a courageous and anguished battle.
 
My sister Iris was full of life, insightful, sagely wise, and then she was gone, tragically, painfully, and irrevocably. She deserved so much better but it was not to be. Why her? Why??
 
My sister Iris was more beautiful in a million ways than these plants. I will miss you forever my dear sister Iris, but most of all I miss your caring love. I love you. Jerry

Bananas-Day-o

In a ritual that I have repeated hundreds of times, today I stopped by the local neighborhood mom & pop fruit store. My usual purchases of apples, onions, OJ, and always the greenest bananas that I can find. I really hate just a few days after buying them when the yellow bananas get mushy and don't taste good, those little fruit flies multiplying by the second, flying all over the place, ugh.


Buying bananas is a science to me, some people excel at picking the best cantaloupes, honey dews or other fruits. My expertise is in selecting, detecting, inspecting the finest greenest bananas. I am the Juan Valdez of Banana pickers, you remember Juan, from those old coffee bean picker commercials on TV, only the best are selected by demanding experts, like us.


I even know where the owners secretly stash their green bananas because they have to efficiently as a business sell the bananas by rotating the too ripe bananas getting sold quickly and not get stuck with throwing them out, so there is also a science to their not putting the green bananas out too early for the customers to buy. It really is a complicated theory to understand, especially on weekends when no new shipments arrive. Never buy bananas on the weekend, they are old, and ready to rot.


If you ask them for green bananas, they will say they don't have any, but a few weeks ago I discovered their hiding place for the stash, hidden deeper than Bin Laden was. So I buy my stuff and also get 2 nice bunches of green bananas and go to the checkout. This really nice hard working kid, the owners son, does checkout and we always talk about sports, his store, the weather, whatever naturally comes to mind. Today he asked me about how the weather was outside, even though he is standing 3 feet from the outside door and window. I get the feeling that his family chains him to the checkout counter and even makes him hold in his bodily fluids until his shift is over, before they allow him to use the bath room. No doubt he is also watched by them through wireless video cameras. I never see him eat anything, no time off for breakfast, lunch, dinner. He is skinny as a rail, like a toothpick.


So I get home and put my purchases away but I only can find 1 bunch of bananas, where is the second bunch? We all have "senior moments" for a lot of different things, I can understand throwing your car keys in the garbage during one of those "moments", it happens, but how does one misplace a bunch of bananas?


You know the drill,"Oh Shit" while going through the shopping bags from the fruit store already in the garbage can, looking in the front and back floors of the car, retracing the steps taken once the bags entered the house. Strange, still no bananas, so the next step is always "if I were a (fill in the missing senior moment item) a bunch of bananas on the lam, where would I go to hide? It would be the most unlikely place that they would go to outsmart and torture ones search to find them. So I looked in the bathroom, my bed, a couple of other strange places, nothing found.


OK seriously, this is bothering me now, it's not like the end of the world but kind of embarassing to me, how does one lose a large bunch of at least 6 bananas. I figure surely the kid forgot to put them in my bag or I left a bag in the wagon by the store parking lot. Like I said these are green trophy bananas, I want them, I need them. So I quickly jump into my car, shoeless bare feet, wrong eyeglasses on, no drivers license and I put the pedal to the medal to go back to the store and reclaim my lost bananas before someone steals these prize bananas.


Great, my wagon is right where I left it in the parking lot and my Brooklyn automatic radar scans the wagon in a nano second before I am even out of the car, no bananas in the wagon. I go into the store and ask the nice kid "did I leave my bananas here at the check out counter, or do you have a magic trick that makes them disappear and can now make them reappear". The kid looks at me with a weird look and says no there are no bananas, he says that he remembers putting them in my bag with the apples. I look back at him with my own strange look, and say,"that is strange , I can't find the bananas I bought". We both then look silently at each other and I make a strategic withdrawal back to my car, hoping he doesn't think I am too crazy.


I know that I need to just retrace my steps again, also look in the most obvious places now, since often things will reappear right in front of ones eyes, that we didn't see the first time. Well I looked and looked, no bananas. Gone, that bothers me for an hour or so, or more. Well actually it still bothers me, I almost always solve these mysteries.


I imagine in my mind the kid munching on my bunch of green bananas, having a good time in enjoying my "gift", or someone immediately seeing the bag left in the wagon when I drove away and they are admiring this beautiful bunch of green bananas, on their counter at home, a lottery winner of the day for them.


I guess that this will get chalked up to one of those very mysterious forces of nature that we all encounter and cannot solve. I refuse to consider this as "my senior moment", this will go down as a "cold case" of petty larceny by banana stealing gypsies. I do know that I will now add bananas to my long list of things to check in the future before I leave a store, Bank, or anyplace.


The sun is now beginning to set as I look outside from the comfort of my  homes living room window, I hear myself humming softly a song from my youth, so many years ago,  but of course one of those "important" things still for no known reason remembered by me-It was sung by Harry Belafonte:
Day-o, day-ay-ay-o
Daylight come and me wan' go home
Day-o, day-ay-ay-o
Daylight come and me wan' go home


Work all night on a drink of rum
Daylight come and me wan' go home
Stack banana till de morning come
Daylight come and me wan' go home


Come, Mister tally man, tally me banana
Daylight come and me wan' go home
Come, Mister tally man, tally me banana
Daylight come and me wan' go home


Lift six foot, seven foot, eight foot bunch
Daylight come and me wan' go home
Six foot, seven foot, eight foot bunch
Daylight come and me wan' go home


Day, me say day-ay-ay-o
Daylight come and me wan' go home
Day, me say day, me say day, me say day
Daylight come and me wan' go home


Beautiful bunch of ripe (GREEN) banana
Daylight come and me wan' go home
Hide the deadly black tarantula
Daylight come and me wan' go home
Lift six foot, seven foot, eight foot bunch
Daylight come and me wan' go home
Six foot, seven foot, eight foot bunch
Daylight come and me wan' go home
Day, me say day-ay-ay-o
Daylight come and me wan' go home
Day, me say day, me say day, me say day
Daylight come and me wan' go home


Come, Mister tally man, tally me banana
Daylight come and me wan' go home
Come, Mister tally man, tally me banana
Daylight come and me wan' go home
Day-o, day-ay-ay-o
Daylight come and me wan' go home
Day, me say day, me say day, me say day....ay-ay-o
Daylight come and me wan' go home


I am home and I still have 1 bunch of green, fresh bananas to tally man and eat.

Arrogance

This speaks for itself, sent to me today by someone dear to me in New Zealand. So grotesque that I hid it from my own children. It is about the truth of unlimited arrogance and inhumanity, ignoring the sanctity of a human being in a heartless, barbaric, inhumane way. They killed Steven in life, violated his dignity and sacredness in death, like he was a piece of garbage. They steal his life, violate his dignity, desecrate his body, and hide behind cowardice,with no accountability, no conscience for their behavior. They will do anything necessary to hide the truth. Steven Nathaniel Wolkoff was a human being, HE LIVED, WE LOVED HIM!

We know how to stand up to scum like you, understand very clearly that you will have to crush all of us before we stop fighting to obtain JUSTICE FOR STEVEN!

http://www.insidebayarea.com/news/ci_17544933

San Mateo County coroner sued by parents upset over handling of dead son's brain

By Joshua Melvin jmelvin@bayareanewsgroup.com

Posted: 03/05/2011 06:50:44 AM PST

Updated: 03/05/2011 06:50:44 AM PST

REDWOOD CITY -- Coroner Robert Foucrault is being sued by another family over the handling of their child's remains.

Jerald and Sandra Wolkoff, of New York, said the coroner allowed a person unaffiliated with the county agency to take tissue from the brain stem of their son Steven Wolkoff, according to a suit filed Feb. 24 in San Mateo County Superior Court.


They responded with "shock and horror" when they learned his tissue had been cut into pieces and analyzed without their consent, according to the complaint. They seek an unspecified amount of damages.


Foucrault, when reached by phone Friday, said his office has done nothing wrong, and he was surprised to learn of the complaint. "My office and the county did everything according to law," he said. "We did everything proper."


Chief Deputy County Counsel Lee Thompson declined to comment Friday because he said his office had not yet been served with the suit.


The Wolkoffs are the second set of parents in recent years to sue Foucrault over the handling of their child's remains. Selina Picon, of Daly City, claimed the coroner illegally kept the heart of her 23-year-old son, Nicolas, after an autopsy. That suit was thrown out last May by the California 1st District Court of Appeal, which ruled she hadn't proved the Coroner's Office was obligated to get her consent to keep the organ. The state Supreme Court has declined to review that decision.

Wolkoff 30, died in a car crash in June 2008 in a car crash in June 2008 on Highway 1 near Pescadero and was autopsied by the San Mateo County Coroner's Office. 

Some of Wolkoff's brain tissue was kept after the procedure, but the family was notified of it. After Picon's suit was filed, Foucrault had adopted a policy of informing families when body parts are kept.

About a year after his death, Wolkoff's parents filed a lawsuit that claimed numerous people and agencies had been responsible. Among the defendants was American Medical Response, a company that contracts with San Mateo County to provide ambulance service.

As part of the company's response to the Wolkoff's first lawsuit, it hired Quest Discovery Services to collect evidence for the case. A Quest pathologist got Foucrault's permission to take some samples of Wolkoff's brain tissue.

The man's parents argue this violates state law, which they say prevents a coroner from turning over body parts to someone who is not a coroner for research.

The tissue, according to the suit, was taken not for the purpose of determining the cause of death, but to use it as part of the litigation, which violates "an obligation to protect the dignity of the human body in it's final disposition."

The Wolkoffs claim it was only by accident that they discovered their son's tissue had been taken. One of Foucrault's pathologists, during a deposition as part of the earlier lawsuit, disclosed that the body parts had been turned over to the pathologist working for the ambulance company.

Contact Joshua Melvin at 650-348-4335.