Halloween is supposed to be fun and scary. I have had two such Halloween memories of scary but last year took the cake on Scary and Real. I had a scary Halloween as a child when I was supposed to go Trick or Treating with my best friend. Several days before I ended up with a heck of a case of bronchitis and could not go. I was at my grandmother’s and in bed...coughing and coughing. My parents worked for Avon and during this time always worked late. My sisters and I stayed with our grandparents while they did overtime.
Around 7 PM I heard the sirens. My grandparents rented several homes out and my best friend lived in one next door. It was a foggy, drizzly night and there was no way my parents would let me go out sick. I didn’t feel like it anyway. I remember I had begged to go but on Halloween night, I was just too sick. As my grandmother opened the door, the friend’s sister asked my grandmother to come quickly as my best friend had been hit by a car. My grandmother grabbed her coat and headed toward the neighbor’s home. The police cars and an ambulance was there.. I had slipped out of bed and saw the commotion and prayed very hard that my friend was alive. I would have been with her when this horrible accident happened. She was not paying attention and stepped in front of a car. It was a state road and busy.. He did not see her.
She survived and I sat many many days and months with her during her recovery of broken bones and fractured body. We were pre teens. I heard the driver of the vehicle had to be hospitalized for PTSD but they didn’t call it that back then and he visited with the family for years. He was overwhelmed with the trauma…. Be careful out there this Halloween.
Last year was the really bad one though. It was October 27th and I was on the phone with Jax Dem. She and I were planning a Kos meetup. I was on the house phone and the phone kept clicking but I wasn’t checking… We were planning a meetup. It was at this time I saw my cell phone light up and ring and ring… I glanced over at it and saw my son’s first wife # come up. She is a truck driver and figured she had gotten into town and wanted to have a cup of coffee.. I ignored the call….but the phone would not stop ringing… I told Jax ..” Look, jax I gotta run..this phone is going nuts” Several days before I got this horrible call, I had decorated for Halloween. I had little ghosts and bats bought on sale at the dollar store and little blocks made up around the tree as tombstones...I had my 10 year old’s costume all ready and then that phone call came. I had just finished decorating that day.
I had told my best good friend as Forrest Gump says who is my very best friend and a Kossack through email days before, that I had an ominous feeling and had it for days… She wrote back saying she hoped it was nothing.. I kept writing her and saying...I felt really strange as if someone was about to leave us. This friend is not Jax as I did not mention anything to her. She was spared the three days of my dark feelings leading up to the call. I finally answered the phone that night when I heard my son’s first wife, the mother of his first born say, “ I have some bad news.. Anthony is dead”. “ He killed himself,” she said. It was not panic that I heard in her voice but matter of fact which I learned later was shock. I remember exactly where I was sitting. I remember screaming, NOOOOOOOOOOOO. I remember my daughter and Vet running into the room. I remember handing or basically throwing the phone towards him and standing in front of the garage apt that adjoins our house. This was where my son resides. I remember staring at that door. I remember the cold, heart wrenching feeling that only a parent can feel that has to break the news to her child, that his child is dead. I looked at that door, it seemed like an eternity. I did not want to open it. I had, had the horrible task of breaking bad news to him in 2004 upon learning his former fiance’ had been murdered in another state. I did not want to tell him now….His son was dead. I did not even know how he died at the time. I just knew he was dead. I just knew he took his life and we had no clue anything was wrong. As I opened the door and his X Box was playing some game and he had headphones on, he noticed my presence. He also noticed my face. He had seen that look before. As he took the headphones off, “ He asked, “ Is it Brandy”? That is our oldest in Ga that has a drug problem and was in intensive care at the time with her Diabetes Type I. I managed to get the words out, “ No, it is Anthony:. He is gone”.
The look of horror was all over him. The tears welled up in his eyes. I did not know what to do. My husband was standing behind me with tears in his eyes as my 10 year old held on to my waist. He was so in shock as all of us were and odd as it may seem, the first people I thought of was ….you folks. I thought of Daily Kos. I thought of my friends here. Odd as it may seem, I felt some relief of shock as I tried to manage my grief and horror. I knew there were people all around the globe ready to hug me virtually. My friends. I also had to break the news to my son’s second wife, Brandy’s biological Mother and that was hard as she was his stepmom for so many years. My son was in touch with Anthony’s mother and he went into some sort of Zombie state which is understandable and I was trying to be strong.. Vet was the rock.
Funny, about PTSD combat vets, they are at the top of their emotional game during crisis. I spent the next several hours getting details and trying to find out what happened ….and found out the Mother had called me from the shed where she found her son hanging. She was alone and cold and in shock and my number was on the speedial. She was talking to Vet after I left the phone to gather my composure and tell the news to our son. Vet was trying to tell her to stay as calm as she could and just keep talking to him.. She wasn’t making much sense but he was there. He was on the phone when the ambulances, police and other authorities arrived to be with her… She had called 911. She had stopped by Anthony’s home after she got off from work. He was having marital and financial problems… He also had turned to substances, including alcohol. We had no clue.
My son never went to bed that night but got up early trying to get up gas money to get to Ga. He went to work. I do not know how he managed. I was packing clothes and just going through the motions. I had to gather pictures for his funeral, I had to do all of that through the tears and fears and then my Kos friends started calling me and it made me feel so much better. Some had picked up the news from Facebook and some from a diary I had up. I remember my best good friend calling me and saying she would be right there if I needed her for anything..and then emailing me saying the feeling I had been telling her about was real. She was soooo sorry. I remember Doc Zombie called me and encouraged me to get into grief counseling. I remember Jax calling me , I remember River calling. I remember Gordon20024 driving all night from Va. to Ga to be at the funeral and not telling us..just showing up ( so honorable and thoughtful) and Opal calling me at the motel I was staying, I remember Aji and Wings messaging me. I remember so many trying to comfort me, I remember the day he laid in state at the funeral home… Halloween. The scariest Halloween one could ever have is staring down into a casket and their first born grandchild lying there never to awaken.
It has been almost a year. I still feel the pain but I still feel the love from all of you, I just want new comers to know...this is more than a blog. This is a community of love. We are like brothers and sisters. That is this person’s opinion anyway. Some of the folks have left Daily Kos and that is a shame because we all had so much more in common than differences.
There should be a law of preying on grieving parents and grandparents from funeral homes because trust me it has been hard enough to get through that kind of trauma without feeling some amount of guilt of , “ If only I had known”….to talk parents into funerals they can’t afford. Into Headstones they can’t afford. There should be a law. Had some of you not helped me with some of that expense, I don’t know what that poor Mother and Father would have done trying to bury their son. I cannot imagine how we would have gotten through Christmas with 4 little children left behind. Yes there should be a law to make it illegal for smooth talking funeral directors to sell and someone should have to intervene for grieving family during such a time. Thank Goodness I had Daily Kos’s outpouring of love…
I got busy.. I started working on Dem Candidates and hard for Hillary Clinton after the primaries. I KNOW how much we need mental health treatment for those who cannot face the hardships of life. I know how badly Florida vets are treated when the likes of some of those at Florida’s VA cuts out anti anxiety meds two weeks after a suicide, like they did to my husband.. A med he had been on for years. I know how privatizing VA’s will harm this country and turn every state into Florida. I know. Georgia needs mental health services… they need healthcare , preferably single payer adjusted to Obamacare. I know. I also know that had my grandson had access to mental health treatment..Affordable mental health, he might be trick or treating with his children this Halloween instead of lying dead in a grave, leaving behind so many to suffer. I don’t want you to feel sorry for us… I want you to vote. I really want you to vote. We must rid ourselves of this destructive, obstructive conservative legislators that cause harm.
His brother came in here the other night and burst into tears… as he played this song….. He is 24. Anthony had another mother and the only one of 5 we did not adopt. Odd that Chris heard a song that actually called out Anthony’s name. it has been a year and we all still weep.
x YouTube Video Front of Anthony’s tombstone Foot stone at grave