You know the white chalk line in police movies? Where a person last lay at the crime scene before his or her body was moved? I have seen this. For myself. My son’s own personal “chalk line.” The white outline was not there, but his body was. Lying on the cold concrete as if a clip from a drama movie. His body positioned almost perfectly to those silhouettes’ used to characterize who was just there. These are the imprints in my mind.
Thursday morning, December 1, 2016. I woke Morgan up at 7:05a because he usually is up by then. He jumped up, looked at his watch and said “shit,” realizing he was running late for class in Green Bay. It had been a long night. I made him coffee and toast for the go and asked him if he was sure he should be driving on little sleep because we didn’t need another car accident (he totaled his car two days prior). His eyes were glossy from crying. He told me yeah that he’d be fine. I asked him to message me when he got there. I said “I love you,” hugged him, and we went on our ways. I didn’t hear from him so I sent him a Facebook message at 9:36a. “At school?” He said “yeah, sorry I forgot to text you”. I said “it’s okay; I love you.” He said “love you too.” He texted me at 10:19a. “I can’t fucking concentrate.” The communication between my son and I continued through the early afternoon. I contacted the college after Morgan died and asked about his demeanor. The professors stated he was “fine.” He participated as he usually did and nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Morgan’s mask. And he wore it quite well.
My son Logan was the first person on scene besides the paramedics. He was working around the block from home. I was in contact with him letting him know that he should get home as soon as possible. That it was serious because Morgan stopped communicating with me and I had just heard sirens and watched the rescue squad turn down our street from my work office window. I found out months later that Logan had followed that squad all the way through town. He had been in the work truck coming home from a job site and got behind it as it pulled out of the station downtown. Little did he know that this squad was for his little brother. Logan messaged me to call him. I already knew. My brain was aware but shock was taking over and I told him I couldn’t; I was working. He called me then and told me I needed to come. I needed to come now. That Morgan was gone. I knew he was gone. I knew I needed to go but my body seemed to be catatonic.
I was on my way home (also around the corner from where I work) as a police escort met me in the parking lot. I remember looking at the sadness in her face as she got out of her vehicle and I cried “no, no, no” shaking my head and falling to the ground as she put her arms out to catch me saying, “I’m so sorry ma’am”.
That was the longest and sickest car ride of my life.
We pulled up and there stood Logan. In shock. Distraught. We instantly embraced and made a promise that neither of us would leave each other in any way. We were now all we had.
There were officers here and there. My parents were called to my home. Everyone was being drilled. And being in the midst of everything that was taking place, I felt a million miles away.
I have never seen a person’s face as white as I seen my son’s best friend’s face that afternoon. Morgan worked at his high school’s weight room. His friend was trying to reach him because he had not picked him up yet for their usual “duo” lifting session. Trevor had his mom bring him over to the house to see what was up and as they pulled up alongside the curb where I was standing, we made brief eye contact. That was all that was needed. At that moment, the color rushed from his face. Ghastly white. I knew that he knew.
His girlfriend whom I’d been in contact with throughout the afternoon had been unknowingly to me on her way from college in Green Bay without knowing herself as to what was going on. I remember Haley pulling up and parking in front of our neighbor’s house. She got out of her car screaming and b-lining it towards the garage where her boyfriend lay inside. The officers intercepted.
Dazed and numb. Yet attentive to everything that was going on around me.
I wanted to see Morgan before the Coroner took his lifeless body away. I do not recollect how many times I cried, yelled, and repeated “I want to see my son” before the police finally persuaded me to go into the house. It seemed like hours. I knew why they wanted me in there. It wasn’t because it was getting dark. It wasn’t because it was cold and they said I needed to warm up. It was because they didn’t want me witnessing my son being hauled out of our garage in a body bag on a gurney to the morgue. I wanted to see him. I wanted to see the transfer from where he took his last breath to the Coroner’s vehicle. But, they would not let me. Instead, I sat on my couch, shock settling in deeper and the fog rolling in slowly and thicker. Commotion all around me as the Chaplain, Coroner, and Detective gathered verbal evidence. Logan yelling at them to leave me alone as I just lost my son. “Do you have to fucking do this right now?” The dogs barking crazily because they were contained in another room knowing something wasn’t right. Faintly hearing pressured, time critical questions about organ donations. “Where is his wallet?” “His Driver’s License?” “Does it have a donor sticker?” I asked. Static. Lots of static.
I was persistent though. I am his mother. I needed to see my Morgan as a whole person one more time before the donor process started piecing him apart. I was granted permission. Granted permission to see MY son, whom I created, gave birth to, and raised into a fine young man. I, and immediate family members, was allowed to see Morgan after he was moved once again from the morgue to the funeral home where most of us would say our final goodbyes. He was cold to my touch. I am familiar with this concept. I have heard others talk about the coolness of their loved one’s body after passing. But until you experience it first-hand, it’s just a thought. A thought that becomes reality so much quicker when it’s your child. Cold and still. And what was that gash by his right eye? It was not there last night when I sat with him in the garage knowing what he was contemplating that evening. Never thinking that the next day he would follow through. I was told by the detective and coroner that it must’ve been from the car accident that Morgan was in two days prior. I knew better than that but my mind at the time allowed that to be the answer. I was clouded. So deeply clouded. A month later, when I read the police report, I had found out that the officer who tried to get Morgan down from the cord/rafter/ladder he was “entangled” with, dropped him. Morgan was too heavy for the officer to handle and he fell to the ground where he obtained the gash by his eye. My son. Dropped to the concrete like a rag doll.
He lay on that gurney in the funeral home room sporting his new red hoodie from Australia that I told him he paid way too much money for. The damn replacement string he ordered for it, because one of the string end caps had broken off, had not even arrived yet. I received that package a week or so later and still have it sitting amongst his personal belongings. Someday I’ll open that brown paper bag that contains the clothing he last wore and fix the sweatshirt with the tear down the middle from the attempt to resuscitate my child.
I touched his face. Traced my fingers around it and through his hair. I held his hands. Kissed his forehead. Hugged him tight. I watched for any sign of life. Was that a heartbeat? Did his eyelids just flutter? But his chest would not move. No breath. Nothing. My son had left us. I whispered I love you Morgan and I hesitantly left his side. I knew the next time I seen him he wouldn’t be whole.
I needed to see, read, know, and understand everything about Morgan’s suicide. I obtained all the reports from the Police, Coroner, & Medical Examiner. Photos and audio; every miniscule detail. Without previewing any of the documentation, I already knew the spot where Morgan was when he put his ear buds in, cranked his favorite tunes, positioned himself in a way where he could stop his actions if he’d wanted to and put himself into a forever slumber. The ladder and electric cord that he became one with that afternoon were cleaned up by the police before leaving my home, yet the pictures I held in my hand later on defined my mind’s perception 100%. I had pinpointed exactly where my son took his life. Where the ladder was standing. The rafter the cord was wrapped around. The window in the west that he faced. Where the sunlight was shining through. I envision him looking angelic and peaceful. I preconceived it all. What I did not know was the chalk line. The position on the ground that Morgan assumed while the paramedics tried to work on him knowing it was already too late. Those photos, as crazy as it sounds, did not shock me. Some of you may be familiar with Morgan’s Drop It Production videos he’s done. When I saw the photos of Morgan lying on that cold concrete, like a chalk line, I thought “Wow, another Dawn of the Psychopath” image. Perfectly acted out kiddo! If only…
And the note I knew my son would have left. The note that I and others, upon my persistence, repeatedly asked about. “There is no note,” we were told. I searched over and over throughout Morgan’s belongings adamantly knowing that he would have written a note. He would have said something else to me besides our last texts and instant messages. Was I fooling myself? Such wishful thinking for explanations even though I had known for more than a year this day was coming? Where is the damn note? Again, a month later, police report in hand, the first evidence item listed on page 1 was “suicide note”. My heart hit the floor hard. Immediately I was on the phone in search of, and clarification to, this very important piece of my son’s last day alive that was hidden from me. Though I have never been given a proper explanation regarding the miscommunication of the whereabouts of this note, I now have the original in my possession. Sealed up like a keepsake. It did not bring closure for me and I do not want any closure from it or this. I will not close the doors on my son’s life. Period. It did, however, summarize the hurt and pain that Morgan carried toward his father and a few friends that pushed his suffering aside. It also told of his grandiose love for and request of forgiveness from God, his immediate family and friends, and The USMC – his life dream, conquered goal, and demise.
I had mentioned earlier that the funeral home is where most people said there last goodbye to Morgan, whether it was the day he died or at his service. I said most because I had one more final goodbye the day I watched my son’s body be cremated. Logan and I stood outside the viewing window watching the funeral attendant wait for my window tap. The signal to proceed. We stood there, hand in hand, watching my son, Logan’s little brother, lying in a cardboard container, wearing his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle boxers (his favorites), slowly enter the cremation chamber to be turned to dust. That was my final goodbye to the body that held my boy. The body that once shared Morgan’s laughter, smile, kind heart, and soul. The body that had held Morgan’s precious life. My Morgan, no longer a chalk line; turned to ashes that rest peacefully and respectfully on my coffee table.
Though I harbor no regrets to what I have seen, read, and heard, I painfully endure every day what my eyes and ears have been exposed to. As long as I am on this Earth, I will tenderly carry Morgan’s pain and suffering along with my own. For the sake and love of my son.
♥ Much Love
~Mother of Logan & Morgan 12.1.16
He – The football player; #51. She – his biggest fan wearing his opposite jersey on game days, proudly displaying the symbol that they were “going steady”, always cheering him and the team on loyally from the stands.
Morgan wasn’t the biggest enthusiast of prom or homecoming dances. Yet, he attended both. He even attended one where he and his friend Austin went as a couple (to break the traditional girl/boy run for Prom King and Queen) with Haley as their duo date. It brings me joy that Haley and Morgan were able to share those opportunities and create those memories together.
Daly Chronicles 