At 2 a.m. on Oct. 17, Helen Ramos tried to wake up her son, Michael Bowen. Something about the 37-year-old looked strange.
Ramos, 65, uses a wheelchair, and running errands can be a struggle. The day before, Bowen had gone grocery shopping for her. Later, Ramos pleaded with him to spend the night at her house in Milford, Connecticut. It was raining heavily and she wanted him to be safe, but now she couldn’t get him to rise.
Bowen had died in his sleep, from either medical or drug complications. He had suffered from drug addiction since he was 13.
Bowen’s death threw his family into grief — and a financial problem. Neither his four older siblings nor his parents had enough savings to come up with the $10,000 it would cost for a funeral and burial at Keenan Funeral Home in West Haven, Connecticut.
Deaths are often unexpected, and expensive. As the cost of dying rises, more families are turning to crowdfunding for funerals expenses. https://t.co/AEEnKA44Ve
— CNBC (@CNBC) December 9, 2019