S2, Account 5: Wilson
Today I am burying my son. Those words feel like an exploded grenade in my chest. I look at my flesh and the bones they contain and I don’t understand why I’m still here. That I lived to see this unnatural thing come to pass. My son is gone. Cory is gone. My world is gone.
When my wife told me that the police had called her and told her that Cory had passed, I genuinely laughed. It was inconceivable to me, that my son should die. My loyal, hard-working, beautiful son? Definitely a mistake. She started to scream at me, and I told her to calm down, I’d be home soon and sort all this misunderstanding out.
When I arrived home, my sister was comforting my wife. I was a bit annoyed that another family member had been pulled into this fiasco. I told my wife to repeat to me again what the police had said. She said that Cory was dead…from a suspected drug overdose. At that, I burst out into uncontrollable laughter because now I knew for sure, that we’d been pranked.
My wife and sister stared at me in complete shock. I said to them how on earth could Cory die of a drug overdose? Our son, Cory? It was impossible. He had never touched that stuff, he had a great job, a great girlfriend, supportive parents…why on earth would he need to dabble in any of that? Right then a thought occurred to me which I expressed aloud, and it was that perhaps there had been a mistake and it was that boy, and if that was the case, I can only say that’s where that lifestyle inevitably leads. As we all pondered this, I saw my wife and sister’s shoulders relax a bit with visible relief, and I suggested we call the police back to get more information. They said they were sure it was Cory due to the forms of ID found on him, but asked us to come to the station for formal identification.
I don’t quite remember what happened after they pulled back the white sheet and I saw what I never expected, I just remember hearing an inhumane wail from where I knew my wife stood, things going blurry, and then black. They told me I fainted. I have never felt a pain like that in my life — like lava erupting through my arteries & veins, and cement being poured down my throat — my body could not take it.
We have been robbed. Grief and pain are visceral emotions constantly playing tug of war in my chest every day since that day that I wake up, but the overwhelming emotion I feel above that is rage. Rage because I know that if Cory got into drugs, it was that waste of space who got him into it. Words cannot express how much I want to destroy him. He has taken everything away from us, and I wish his body was lying in this grave. It wasn’t enough for him to shame us, he resolved to destroy us completely in mind, body and soul, and he has succeeded. He has reduced us to ashes, and now there’s nothing left. He has had his vengeance, and he has won. He has won.
Originally posted: December 29, 2020