“The door opened and we walked up a flight of stairs. My legs felt weak and the stairwell felt like it was closing in on us. I wanted to turn back around. I wanted to believe it was all a mistake. I knew it. I felt it. I had been feeling it for years.”
‘Remember, no matter what the testing results show, your son is the same little boy he was before you walked through my office door.’ She handed me a box of tissues. I still had a feeling though, there was ‘more.’
‘Can you help me remember where we buried him?’ It was 25 degrees outside. I could see my breath in the frosted air. But I couldn’t find his headstone.’
“As I turned to head back to my car, accepting defeat, there it was. ‘Leland McCoy Marrero. January 30, 1990 – October 16, 2016. ‘ I glanced down at my watch. That exact day would have been Leland’s 29th birthday.”
‘I really messed up Will. I’ll call you soon.’ Nothing prepares you for this. I pulled over and lost it. I look back at conversations I had with my sister and tears run down my cheek.’
“Emily was such a gifted kid. I was the jealous older brother. I always thought she would be going places. Until things changed. We received a large inheritance from our grandmother’s passing. It was like a switch. ‘I never want to see or speak to you again,’ I said to my sister.”
‘Keeley?,’ you whispered. I peeked back in. You were grinning that huge grin. ‘I love you, Keebee.’ I’m not happy to admit I got annoyed. Now, I think you were just preparing me.’
“I remember my mom on the phone telling me to ‘Get out, get out. Close your eyes, don’t look’. You knew I was coming home first that day. You knew.”
‘He was yelling down the hospital halls, ‘Best day ever!’ As happy as I was for my son, I felt such sadness for my daughter. She was diagnosed first.’
“Both of our babies had cancer. Even before their diagnoses, they were inseparable, best friends. We sometimes joke, he couldn’t even let his sister go through brain cancer without him.”
‘Mom received a phone call, we must come to the hospital quickly. We were meant to be picking out baby clothes! Our world came crashing down. Life would never be the same again.’
“My Auntie came out of the ward, face pale and sick. I started saying ‘no no no no’. She told me I needed to sit down, and I collapsed to the floor. We were ushered into a small, hot side room.”
‘If my mom wouldn’t have called the cops on my brother, I would have, without thinking twice. He is on a $10,000 unsecured bond. The person pressing charges—our mom.’
“He made the decision to uproot his life and move 1,200 miles to become our full-time ‘manny.’ Sadly, today, I wouldn’t DARE leave her in his care.”
‘Picture 1 is at my grandmother’s funeral. Picture 2 is at my sister’s funeral. In both, my sister is in the exact same church, wearing the exact same shirt, laying in the exact same kind of casket.’
“Little did I know when I took the first picture of my inappropriately hilarious, charismatic little sister, that it would end up having such a surreal meaning behind it just a few short months later…”
‘My son has until this Tuesday to turn himself in. I love you, Josh. But the DEVIL returned this year. I made the decision to send my son to jail.’
“Yesterday he called. He wanted to come home. He even gave me the address where he was staying. I made the most difficult decision; I called the police to let them know where he was.”
‘There was a knock on our front door. We never received visitors – our house was locked with secrets that my biological father wanted kept that way.’
“Two ladies were standing in the doorway. I questioned how they found out. My father was going to be so angry. I screamed, ‘Where are you taking my sister?!’ Why were they doing this? She was all I had.”
