The Memorial
- Ashley
- Feb 4
- 6 min read
Part VII
Warning:
This part contains subjects that may be upsetting to some readers, such as mention of suicide, mental illness, feelings of numbness/disconnect, and depression.
My Mom and I sat at the family reunion, laughing with my Mama, Aunts, and cousins.
My Mom's phone rang. The caller ID said it was J calling. She answered.
"Hey... oh hey C... is everything okay? Is J okay? What's wrong?"
I sat staring at my Mom from across the table. I watched as her face turned white, and went from shocked to twisted in sadness and desperation.
"No. No, C. No!" Tears started to spring up in her eyes. My heartrate picked up, and my breathing got hard. Part of me knew. If it wasn't C or J that something happened to, and Austin was with my Dad, and everyone I loved was sitting around me, that left one person.
Johnny.
I stared at my Mom, heart pounding out of my chest. "What Mom, what happened?"
"It's Johnny," she manages to get out between sobs, "He shot himself. He's gone. He's gone."
I remember everything moving in slow motion around me. The choked gasps that came from my Aunts and Mama, their tear filled pleas that it wasn't true.
I immediately stood and ran to the bathroom in the house.
I hadn't cried yet. I was in shock.
Everything around me felt so tight, like I was suffocating. My heart pounded. This couldn't be happening. They had just talked to him before leaving. No. He can't be gone. I stared in the mirror, watching my chest rise and fall way too quick. My belly started to tighten, a strange sensation I had never experienced.
Was this a contraction? What the fuck is my body doing?
I took my phone out of my pocket. I immediately called my Dad.
He answered after the second ring.
"Dad?" I managed to get out before the tears started.
"What's wrong? Are you okay? What happened?"
"It's Johnny. He's gone, Dad, he's gone."
I sobbed, and sobbed, and sobbed. I leaned over the bathroom sink. I felt like I was going to throw up and pass out all at the same time. I held my belly and tried to breathe but I couldn't. My Mom and Aunts came into the bathroom to check on me. They rubbed my back, wiped the mascara stains off my cheeks as they cried tears of their own.
We quickly said our goodbyes, got into my Aunt and Uncle's car, and left to get to the house.
I remember coming down the hill of our road and seeing all of the flashing blue and red lights from there. Our driveway was packed with police cars, ambulances, and a coroner's van.
C was outside smoking. I immediately ran to him, threw my arms around him and sobbed more. I asked him if he was okay. You could tell that something had been drained from him seeing Johnny that way. He told me he had called his Dad to come pick him up for the night, and that he was on his way. We stood and just held each other.
I hadn't thought about that. The last thing I wanted to do was stay in the house that my brother had just taken his life in. I called my Dad and arranged for him to come pick me up.
I entered the house to see J sitting with an officer at the kitchen table.
J looked... different. For the first time in 8 years, he looked upset. My Mom had taken a seat at the table already, still emotional. The officer told us that he would stay with us until everything was handled upstairs.
I sat in the chair, numb. This wasn't real. None of this could be real.
I was completely zoned out until I heard J speak the words to the officer,
"I don't know why he did it."
My eyes immediately snapped to his face. I sat there and just stared at J. There was no fucking way that after everything, he could sit here and say he didn't know why. That he didn't just tell him on the phone less than 2 hours ago that he was useless and to get the fuck out of his house. That he hadn't used us all as verbal and physical punching bags for years. He had to be fucking kidding.
I seethed. Tears burned at my eyes. C's Dad arrived a few moments later. I hugged him goodbye and told him I would call him when I got to my Dad's. And that I'm sorry he had to see that.
I came back into the house to see J joking with the officer. Smiling. Laughing. What the fuck?
Like his kid wasn't upstairs, lifeless on HIS bedroom floor. Like he hadn't been Johnny's breaking point. No. Fucking. Way.
I went back outside and waited for my Dad. It wasn't long before he arrived. I remember him getting out of the car, and running to him, being wrapped in his bear hug and sobbing again.
The officer came out to let us know that they would be bringing Johnny's body down and into the coroner's van, and that we shouldn't see this part. So I got into my Dad's car, and we started to leave.
I looked back to watch two men carrying Johnny out in a body bag.
And then it was real. He was really gone.
I spent the night at my Dad's house, curled up in him & his girlfriend's bed with Austin. I had sobbed, gone into episodes of just absolute numbness, and felt every stage of grief but acceptance in those first 24 hours. I couldn't sleep, I couldn't think straight. I was mad. I was SO MAD.
A lot of the time between his death and the memorial is a blur.
But in that time, I had made my mind up on something.
C and I had chosen the name Weston James for our baby boy that was due in only a few months. But I knew I wanted to preserve Johnny anyway I could. So C and I both agreed that our boy would now be named Weston John, for his Uncle that he would never have the ability to meet.
The memorial came. We were never a religious family. J had opted to get Johnny cremated and not buy a burial plot. My Mom and J decided on a celebration of life style service. They ended up having to extend visiting hours at the funeral home to accommodate the huge amount of people that came to pay their respects. It was beautiful, hearing all the stories. His friends who rubbed my belly and hugged me, telling me how excited he was to be an uncle. It made me sob, and made me yearn for those moments that would never come. Seeing Johnny hold Wes for the first time, watch him be an Uncle, see how he was with a baby.
After the service was over, that's when it hit me.
Johnny's ashes were coming home with us. And he was placed on the old, unkept brick fireplace between the kitchen and living room.
He wanted to keep Johnny in the house.
I had no control over any of the decisions being made, but I hated it. Johnny will be forever trapped in that fucking hell house until the day J dies, and then I will make it my goal to get him and give him a proper resting place.
Johnny's obituary was posted online and people began sharing it. I clicked on the link, and it felt like a knife was twisted inside of me.
There was nothing listed about anything he enjoyed, his hobbies, his personality, nothing.
And Austin and I were left out of it.
J had went onto include Johnny's classmates and friends, himself, my Mom, and Johnny's Mom, but nothing about me and Austin at all and nothing about the beautiful person Johnny was.
It felt like such a selfish thing to be sad about, but it was just another way that J made us feel like we were nothing. Like all of the memories Johnny and I had made, the nights of being each other's only support, the only people who knew what it felt like to live under J's thumb.
I knew one thing once the dust settled and the chaos of memorial planning died down.
I needed to get me and Weston the fuck out of this house.
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