In my last year of high school, I had a pair of older friends who married fairly young. When they would go out together, they sometimes asked me to come along to be a companion to a visiting out-of-town friend whose name was Brent. Our double dates, if you want to call them that, were always platonic because Brent was destined to become my friends’ brother-in-law. He was engaged to the younger sister of the female, and his fiancée lived in a different town.
Brent liked to talk and tell stories, to which I liked to listen. When he was visiting my friends, the four of us went to movies together, ate pizza, and laughed at Saturday Night Live and other comedy shows that came on after SNL concluded. Looking back, I can say that Brent was on the path to alcoholism. He may have been a very functional one, but he was a constant drinker, nonetheless. I never saw him behave as though inebriated; nonetheless, whatever time of day, I always saw him with a beer in his hand.
One day, while en route from his own small hometown to that of his fiancée, about two hours away, Brent was arrested for “driving under the influence” and held overnight in a jail cell. This detention occurred in a third small town, one with a reputation for having some “nasty” sheriff’s deputies. I learned these details via a phone call received while I was in midsemester of a study abroad program, many miles from my hometown.
“Brent is dead” were the words I heard from my friend who called to share this sad news. “He was arrested for DUI and held in jail. The next morning, they found him hanging in the cell from his belt. Dead.”
Still in disbelief, I began to ask questions. “Was he depressed?”
“No, he was going to get married soon and was happily making those plans,” my friend assured me.
“Is there any way someone else could have done it to him?”
“That’s what everyone is wondering. And his parents have hired an investigator since the state hasn’t really stepped in to do their own. They’re trying to find out why he even had his belt with him in the cell, if he was locked up. The jailers should have taken it away from him, or so we all think. Isn’t that a safety policy?”
Brent was his parents’ only child, and they poured money into a legal investigation of their son’s death; a young man was happy one day and dead and gone the next. There was no resolution, no explanation, other than apparent suicide. Brent had every reason to live. Being arrested would not have been the “end of the world” to his fiancée, parents, friends, or anyone who knew him; being dead sure was.
Years later, this same small-town sheriff’s department was indicted, from the top person down to the several subordinate deputies, for their participation in a variety of crimes involving bribery and extortion, wrongful imprisonment, and even some heinous torture of those detained in their little jail.
Still, nothing specific in respect to Brent’s death was ever revealed. If anyone knew more, they weren’t saying.
***
Charles was one year older than I and the brother of my friend Kelly, so a big brother kind of friend, for the most part. He was often present when Kelly and I had plans of one sort or another, such as sleepovers, swimming in the neighborhood pool, and, of course, shared family meals.
Eventually, Charles and I also shared some of our own memories. On the week of my fourteenth birthday, he took me on one of my first dates, shyly presenting me with a pair of earrings, gift-wrapped and trimmed with a bow. I was sure these were his mom’s idea, but I was proud to wear them and think of them as his sweet gift to me. Since Charles was too young to drive at age fifteen, his mom, like a “second mom” to me, drove us to our destination while trying her best to be invisible. He took me on my first motorcycle ride, so proud of his wheels. We had several common friends, so although we didn’t continue dating, we did “hang out” together from time to time.
While visiting my hometown on a break from my university studies in another state far, far away, I met Charles at a gathering of many “old” high school friends. He asked how my school life was “so far from home,” listened to me tell of my dreams and goals, and then made a prediction. “You’ll be back. You may not even finish college, but either way, you’ll come back. You’ll end up right here, back home, like everybody else.” His words stiffened my resolve to continue my studies and not to “be back home” unless I wanted to be. And I had other ideas for my life.
Charles was a significant boy in my teen years, someone I cared for very much, and I regret the last conversation we had didn’t go as I might have wished. He died while still in his twenties, leaving behind a wife and two children, family and friends who dearly loved him, and a lot of questions.
The official cause of death was a drug overdose. No one called it suicide; he was not suicidal. Reportedly, there was way too much drug in his system at one time, much more than any user would intentionally inject for a recreational high, an amount that led to suspicions. Was he murdered?
Rumors were flying. Some pointed their fingers at another young man we all knew, one who now had a reputation as a drug dealer who could “take care” of anyone who crossed him . . . in his own way. I couldn’t imagine either of these “boys”—now men—mixed up with hard drugs in the ways I was hearing. I was naive. I was absent from that local scene, living elsewhere since high school. I had missed a lot of years and many stories involving the people I knew while growing up, and many more that I didn’t know.
The crowd at Charles’s funeral was too big for the little rural church to contain, but there was plenty of room for all of us outdoors at his graveside. The people in attendance covered the rolling hills of the small cemetery. It was a strange reunion, the first time I’d seen many of these old friends since high school, including Charles’s family. And it broke my heart to see his young wife and children, his mom and sisters, bereaved, angry, and bewildered.
Charles’s case was never solved. Was it homicide, an intentional overdose given to him by his dealer? Was it an accidental overdose? There was never any true resolution or the measure of closure that might conceivably come with that. No one stepped forward to confess to a crime in this matter. And no one who might have known pointed a finger with surety and evidence to back up their claims. People continued to talk.
I did come back home to pay my respects to his widow, his sister, and his mom, and to see Charles laid to rest.
***
Geoff was the little boy who lived across the street. He was my brother’s best friend from the time we were young children. He would bring his toy army men and his Cap’n Crunch cereal when he came to visit in our home. The two boys played basketball on the same teams throughout their teen years, creating many memories together, and Geoff was the best man at my brother’s wedding.
He was a “best man” in every sense of the word. His parents were so proud of the man he became, a counselor to younger adults who were recently off drugs or doing their best to become ex-drug users. He had a happy attitude and could make people laugh just by being himself, a naturally silly person in such an enjoyable way.
One day, Geoff’s lifeless body was found in a remote and wooded area many miles from where he lived. There were no signs of struggle other than a bruised forehead, no obvious cause of death, no tire tracks or other visible signs of transport, no witnesses, no clues on or near the body; and due to mishandling of collected physical evidence in the days immediately following his death, no toxicology studies could be performed. Geoff’s mysterious cause of death was never solved.
He was the only child of divorced parents; they came together to support each other and do their best, within available system parameters, to seek answers to this tragic mystery. How could Geoff be alive and well one day and gone the next without any explanation?
His friends, including my brother, were stunned. They did their own “investigation” through their own “channels.” There were rumors and conjectures but no clear answers, no confessions, no heard-it-through-the-grapevine reports that could be conveyed to, and further investigated by, the proper authorities.
What a travesty of justice! All agreed. But no one had the answers. Every question led to more questions but not to any tangible clues. Who could have wanted Geoff dead? How could it have happened? How could no one have seen him or someone with him in the hours leading up to his disappearance? How did someone transport him from the location where he died to the place where he was found? How many would it take to do that?
There was no end to the questions, the conjectures, the reasoning, and the frustration that everyone in authority seemed to give up on finding out so soon. Did the world not owe it to Geoff to find out who killed him, how they did it, and why?
Questions haunted his bereaved loved ones, his dear friends, and colleagues. Some struggle to this day with the reality of his loss and the lack of acceptable answers to the abundance of questions. Someone knew something and wasn’t telling. Would this knowledge go with them to their own graves?
He was loveable and silly, joyous, and athletic in life; violent, tragic, and without resolution in death. This dear, sweet man, who lived to help others, was no longer alive and doing what he loved: supporting others’ growth and health and safety. Geoff was gone.
[Written by Julie Saeger Nierenberg, excerpted from Journey’s End: Death, Dying, and the End of Life]
Julie Saeger Nierenberg is a freelance writer and editor, lifelong educator and artist, a proud parent and "grand-partner." Julie lives in Canada. Inspired by the experience of her father’s dying and death, Julie published a short memoir about her family’s grief and loss. Daddy, this is it. Being-with My Dying Dad launched a true journey of connection and transformation, as Julie reached out to share it with those who assist the dying and bereaved. Following that memoir's publication, Julie received numerous end-of-life perspectives from others, some of which are available in Journey's End: Death, Dying and the End of Life. Writing and publishing in this heart-led direction, Julie hopes to contribute to a cultural shift in how we prepare and support others in the final chapter of life. Julie also enjoys writing and editing legacy writing, fiction and nonfiction works; she feels privileged to help other writers succeed.
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