My brother was 20, didn't have any physical health problems. He died in his sleep. It was all kind of amazing how the surrounding events happened. I live in Grand Junction, my family lives in Denver. My boyfriend (Dan) had a couple days off so he decided to go to Denver so we could see my parents. Dan and I have a child together. My mom had told me about the baptism class that was Sunday. (6/3/07)Dan and I talked about it and decided Annalyse and I would stay and go back home Monday on the bus. Dan had to go back to work Friday night. This was going to be the first whole weekend Dan was going to be away from Annalyse. The longest time he had been away from her was 15 hours, when he goes to work. Well Saturday Dan felt that being away from the baby that long was killing him. So he drove back to Denver from work. He gets off work at 6am, and from where his work location is its little more than 3 hours to Denver. He decided that he would get there sleep till my class was over and then drive back home. Well he had been at my parent’s home about 10 minutes. My mom went to wake up my brother for church. The next thing I heard was my mom screaming. The first thing to run through my mind was there’s a mouse upstairs. I ran up the stairs to find my mom crouching on the floor in front of the stairs pointing into my brothers room screaming “my baby my baby.” I then ran into his room and knelt down beside him and started shaking him. It was like trying to shake concrete. I kept telling him to wake up, that he couldn’t be dead, and that I still needed him. My dad came running up the stairs and pretty much did the same thing. He told me to call 911, I did. I told the women that my brother was dead. She asked me why I thought that. I told her he was stiff. She told me to check for a pulse and if he was breathing. I knelt down by him all I could hear was my mom screaming that she wanted her mommy. My mom a grown woman is crying for her mommy like a little kid, which hit me like a ton of bricks. I touched his neck and it was like touching a wall or a door. I told her there was no pulse. She then said I had to get down by his face to check if he was breathing. She was really pissing me off, I kept telling her was dead and there was nothing we could do. Of course she wasn’t there she couldn’t see what I was looking at. So I got up and stepped over his body and looked at his face. His head was turned to the right with his eyes and his mouth closed. When I first saw his face I started screaming. The women told me to tell her what I see. So I screamed “his face is purple.” She asked me to check if he was breathing, of course he wasn’t. She told me that we have to turn him over to try and do CPR. My dad was running back and forth from his room to my brothers, trying to find out if the cops where coming. I told him that she told me to turn Tim over. So my dad got on the right side of my brother knelt down and turned my brother towards my dad. My brother was a statue. I then told the bitch on the phone that his arms where purple too. That’s when she knew he was dead. She then told me that she was very sorry there was nothing that she could do, and by the time she said that the fire dpt was coming in the front door. When my dad saw Tim after he turned him over he too realized he was dead and there was nothing that could be done, so he put his blanket over him. My mom and dad where a total mess, neither of them could be understood when they talked. For some reason I was calm. I was the one who talked to the firefighters, cops, and the coroner. All of this happened in maybe 5 minutes, but it felt like it took hours.
I was the last one to see and talk to him. I of course feel guilty. We had a fight hours before he died. We had gone and got Qdoba’s. His last meal was a root beer and a chicken burrito. After we got our food I went next door and got a 6 pack of beer. When I got back to the car he had every door open. I asked him what he was doing; he said he had to air out the car because he farted. We laughed so hard all the way home. We got back to my parents house and sat down to eat. Tim had eaten half of his burrito and said he was full. He came to see what I was doing. I was eating my food and talking to Dan online. Tim kept trying to read our conversation, and I told him that he didn’t need to know what Dan and I were talking about. Tim then went up stairs to his room and came back down a minute later. He was now complaining that the burrito gave him diarrhea. I kept telling him that it couldn’t happen that fast. He kept saying that he always gets diarrhea from Mexican food, that is was the sauce. I told him that maybe it was the 8 soda’s he had that day. He said that soda has no effect on him. He then told me he was going to bed. I went upstairs after him to get Annalyse from my parent’s room. I went down stairs and got a beer and put the rest in the fridge. I opened the beer and sat down and continued to talk to Dan. I had the web cam on so Dan could see Annalyse. Two minutes later Tim came back down stairs saying he couldn’t sleep, that he drank too much soda. I laughed so hard at him. He then asked me if he could have a beer. Of course it would relax him so he could go to sleep. That night Tim was 20 years, 8 months, and 24 days old. 7571 days old. 654,134,400 seconds old. 10,902,240 minutes old. 181,704 hours old. 1081 weeks (rounded down) old. He wasn’t 21 yet. I wouldn’t let him have a beer. Tim kept telling me that mom and dad let him drink. So I told him if he wanted to drink he had to go ask both mom and dad to come downstairs and watch him. It was about midnight and they had been asleep for hours. Well apparently we were being loud so my mom came down to tell us to keep the noise down. Little did she know that was the last time she would see or talk to Tim alive. For about 30 minutes Tim sat and sulked. I had made the baby a bottle cause she had started to fuss and I had my beer, so I couldn’t breastfeed her. Well after she ate and fell asleep, I had to pee. So I got up and gave Annalyse to Tim, and I went to the bathroom. When I got back Annalyse was all snuggly with Tim, it was so cute. Well earlier in the day my batteries to the digital died, so I had Tim pick me up some disposable cameras. When I saw how Annalyse was laying I thought “Dan would kill me if I didn’t get a picture of her.” It never crossed my mind that those would be the last pictures of Tim. I never thought one of the last things he would be doing was holding my daughter. I was getting really tired so I told Dan that I loved him and that I was going to bed. So I turned off the computer. I told time he needed to go to bed, he didn’t say anything but went into the family room. I fallowed and found him sitting in my mom’s recliner. He told me he was going to sit there all night long. I told him again that he needed to go to bed. He got up and went and got his energy drink and said he was going to drink it and stay up all night. He then told me he could go to sleep if he had a beer. By that time I was getting mad, I was tired and wanted to sleep. So I told him “FINE DAMN IT HAVE THE DAMN BEER, I DON’T CARE ANYMORE” his response to me blowing up like that was “yea know I really didn’t want it, I just wanted to see if you would give me one” so I turned around and started to go upstairs. I told Tim that he needed to sleep, and I told him goodnight. I regret not telling him that I loved him. I got up half way up the stairs and remembered that Tim hadn’t taken his medicine. I went back down stairs and told him to take it. So I again tried to go upstairs so Annalyse and I could go to bed. When I got to the bottom of the stairs Tim was getting his pills, and it sounded like a lot of pills where coming out of the bottle. So again I went to tell him to make sure he’s taking the right dose. He said he was. That was the last time I saw Tim alive, it was about 1am. I went up stairs and got in bed. As I was lying in bed I heard Tim come up stairs, and then a couple minutes later I heard him go back down stairs. I then fell asleep. We had planned to go play pool after the baptism class and go swimming. I know Tim didn’t kill himself. He had the next couple years planed out. He had been out of school a couple weeks and couldn’t wait to go back. He was a fourth degree Knight with the Knights of Columbus. He was worried that him working on Monday would mean he was going to be late for a KOC meeting. He was always worried about his friends, and couldn’t wait to hang out with them all next. He loved his nephew Aiden and his niece Annalyse. He was sad that I didn’t live closer, because he saw Aiden all the time but didn’t see Annalyse much. I found out at his funeral that he had talked to our priest a month before he died about wanting to become a deacon. Tim hadn’t told anyone else this. He was really looking forwards to going swimming this summer. My parents met people they never knew from the church my mom had been going to for 20 years, and people from the neighborhood they have lived in for 20 years. He is not in a better place, he should be here with his family. He was supposed to stay at home forever and take care of our parents as they got older. Our birth mother was supposed to meet us and be reunited with us, not visit him in a cemetery. We had a conversation a couple days before he died. He was upset about something and he wanted a beer or something stronger. I kept telling him that he shouldn’t turn to alcohol to solve his problems, or he is going to end up like Byron. Our older brother is getting a divorce and barely ever sees his son because of alcohol, and I have no relationship with him nor will my daughter ever. I kept telling Tim that he and Annalyse was all the real family that I have, and that I don’t know what I would do if I lost him. He started crying so hard. I don’t know how to live without Tim. It’s crazy all the things he did that annoyed me I miss so much now. It’s hard to grieve Tim’s death and be strong to raise and take care of Annalyse, and myself.
