Sometimes between 7 this morning and 5 this afternoon, my cousin passed away. I am not sure of the exact details, but it is a suspected heart attack. Junior, as the family called him, had a rough life. His parent divorced when he was 10. His dad disowned him when he was 11. He moved in with my grandmother who raised him from then on.
Ma was far beyond her prime parenting years and was overly lenient with Jr. As a result, he ran the streets and got into minor trouble here and there, and started a life long battle with substance abuse.
I can remember going into the garage behind my grandmother's house and seeing him, covering his face with a washcloth soaked in gasoline, breathing deep, eyes glazed over.
We were never overly close, primarily because as a child, we never lived in my hometown. I would see Jr whenever we'd come home on vacation. At the time, I admired him, he had a cool stereo in his room with lights that lit up to the beat of the music. He had tons of records, and posters in his room, and was always laughing.
His mother stopped talking to him when he dropped out of high school. I dont think they said more than ten words to him since then. As an adult, he continued to live with my grandmother, sponging off of her, and spending his days either working on cars, getting high, or trying to find ways to rip people off.
When I returned from the first Gulf War, I went home for three weeks of leave. One night, I came home to a familiar scene. Jr's black 1978 Nova, in the back of the driveway, with the hood up. I figured that Jr was in there tinkering with his car. Seemed that was all he ever did. So, I went up to shoot the shit with him a bit. I saw something that I had not encountered in my 9 months in the gulf. There was my cousin, slumped over in the front seat, bleeding from his abdomen. In a drunken, pill fueled rage, he had attempted to kill himself. There was blood everywhere, a gun laying beside him, and he was gasping for air. I ran inside, grabbed some towels and told my grandmother to call his dad and tell him to meet me at the hospital.
I loaded him into my truck, and drove faster than it had ever gone, over hilly, curvy country roads to the local hospital, all the while holding pressure on the hold where blood was pouring out, and telling him things would be okay.
I got to the ER and pulled right up to the door. There were no wheelchairs in the front, so I picked him up and threw him over my shoulder and ran inside, yelling that I needed help. The nurses pushed a gurney over and I placed him there and as they took him to the trauma room, I was frozen, standing in the hallway alone, with blood covering one side of my shirt, from shoulder to my waist. My cousin, who I was never close to, was now the most important person I had ever touched as a trained medic.
A few days after the incident, he told me that he had tried to shoot himself through both lungs and his heart. He said he thought he could get all three in one shot. However, the bullet ricocheted off a rib, went down, through his liver, his large intestine, and out through his abdomen. He lost half his liver, 9 inches of intestine, and had to get 7 units of blood while on the OR table. Throughout his recovery, our minister would sit and read passages from the Bible about redemption and changing one's life. He swore to me he was done with drugs, done with drinking and done living a sinful life. And for a few years, he was. Until the lady who he originally had shot himself over, and later married, decided to leave him. She took the daughter they had together, and left. He was never really the same.
He returned to drinking. And, eventually, back to the pills. Valium, percocet, darvocet, and later in life, oxycodone, became his numbing agent.
When our grandmother passed away, I saw him at the funeral. He looked like hell. I knew he had suffered a heart attack a few years prior, but he still looked like hell. He cried like a baby at the casket. Crying and screaming that the only person who had ever really loved him was gone.
That was the last time I had seen Jr. He moved out into the country, and kept to himself. Eventually he became disabled and lived off a government check. He depended on his half brother for help.
He was at his half brother Jeff's house when he was found, sitting in a chair, dead.
Nobody from his family, not his mother, or father, or any other relatives have contacted the funeral home to make arrangements. He sits in the morgue, nobody showing him enough respect in death, to arrange a funeral and burial for him.
I am ashamed of my Uncle and Aunt for turning their back on him. I am ashamed of him for not caring enough about himself to get his life together. I am ashamed of myself for not following up on the promise I had made when I saved his life, that I would always keep in touch and be there if he needed me.
John, I know you are up in heaven now, listening to that Lynard Skynard album you were always playing when I was a kid, laughing, smiling and joking, the way I remember you. I wont think of the times I saw you looking homeless and destitute. I will always remember you and that crafty smile you had. That way you'd laugh and say "Oh yeah Ronnie".
Rest in Peace Junior. I may not have said it often enough, but I love you.
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