When one door of happiness closes, another opens. But often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us.
—Helen Keller
After, people would ask about our home life: Was there domestic violence? Anger? A lot of fighting?
You could kinda see the hope in their eyes. They wanted there to have been clues. Otherwise, nowhere is safe, right? I always felt like the bearer of bad news. Nope, no violence in my family. Nope, hardly any arguing. At twelve, I was most concerned with who I was going to play with after school and how I was going to make the fort in the backyard way cooler.
Woodinville, Washington, was a suburban town of around ten thousand about a half hour from Seattle. We moved there—Mom; Dad; my older brother, Randy; and older sister, Krissy—in 1987 from Southern California; during the drive north, my pet lizard died and Dad pulled the car over and we all got out and held a somber funeral on the side of the road.
I was a chubby, happy kid, despite the fact that other kids would pick on me. I wore the same pair of ratty old red sweatpants to school every day; the more I grew, the more they tightened and started to look like spandex. In one photo I still have, there I am in the red sweats, a tucked-in polo shirt, and—wait for it—I’m rocking a fanny pack. That’s right, the chicks swooned.
No wonder that a group of kids popped out of some nearby bushes and egged me on my way home from school one day. I was a target until that time a group of neighborhood kids was jumping on a trampoline with boxing gloves on. They invited me to join them. I put on some gloves, got on the trampoline, and then a kid started swinging at me. I’d never fought before. But this felt more like a competition than a fight. More like a question to myself: Okay. We’re in this. What are you gonna do now?
I reared back and took one swing. Glove to putty jaw. That kid went flying off the trampoline. Out cold. Score one for the stylin’ kid in the sweats with the fanny pack. No one really messed with me after that.
But even when they did, it was never that big a deal. Because I always had the safe cocoon of family. We’d do everything together; Randy was six years older than me and Krissy three, but we’d work in the yard together as a unit and then all go out to the movies. My parents never missed any one of our games.
Mom would do everything for us kids. She chauffeured us to games, practices, friends’ houses, and school recitals and dances. She volunteered at the school library, checking books in and out and stocking shelves, and led a reading club that was popular among my classmates. She radiated, man. Every interaction meant something to her. She’d talk to anyone and everyone—cabbies, doormen, store clerks… Maybe that’s where I get my love for people: Every connection is an opportunity.
Mom was kind and gentle. And always, always smiling. I used to throw a tennis ball against our three-car garage; if my throw didn’t squarely hit the single pillar of wood in the middle, the noise would be deafening. Once, Dad came charging out of the house. “I’m trying to work!” he yelled. Mom followed him shortly afterward, putting a glove on.
We’d never played catch before. In fact, I’d never seen my five-foot mom do much of anything athletic. I must have been looking at her funny.
“What, you think I can’t do it?” she asked, smiling slyly. “I played growing up.”
A couple throws in, I realized she was legit. “Dang, Mom,” I said. “I didn’t know you were athletic.” She smiled. It was the first and only time Mom and I played catch. That was cool.
Usually, it was me and Dad, him sending an “American pop fly” skyward, again and again. As it got dark, I’d ask for one more followed by one more, and yet another. Besides heading our Little League, Dad coached my soccer team. He’d tuck me into bed at night, and in the morning, he’d say, “Where are my morning hugs?” and I’d go running into his arms.
I can remember only one fight between my parents. Dad, behind the wheel of his car, was so angry he went peeling out of the driveway. I started hyperventilating and Mom rushed to bring me a brown paper bag, telling me to breathe into it until I calmed down. Mostly, they got along. We’d giggle when Dad would come up behind Mom in the kitchen, hug her, and steer her off into the pantry and close the door. As I got older, I realized: Holy shit. They were totally making out!
Two houses down from us lived the Harpers, Pam and Larry, and their sons, Aaron, Paul, Michael, and James, my best friends. Across the street lived the Witzels, where we’d play Wiffle Ball or football or have intense pinecone wars—nailing each other with those sticky suckers. We’d play a football game in which the ball carrier would be gang-tackled by everyone, at which point he would throw the ball into the air and whoever recovered would be the new victim. Typical kid stuff, right? This was before cell phones or pagers, so my folks had a bell on our front porch that they’d ring when it was time for me to head home.
It sounds cliché to say it now, but August 2, 1992—twelve days after my twelfth birthday—had really been just another normal day. Krissy was in California at Mom’s parents’ house—Nonnie and Poppy. Earlier, Mom and Dad had dropped Randy off to carpool to a basketball camp in eastern Washington. When I left to go play at the Witzels’, Mom and Dad were working in the yard. Around 9:00 p.m., I heard that bell on our front porch ring, and I knew it was time to go home.
Dad was standing on the patio, and I went inside, and he just kind of hung around me. And I remember asking where Mom was, and he said that she had gone for a walk with her friends. And I said okay. He and I played chess; we played a couple games of rummy. We played a computer submarine game called Gato. It was way over my head. Really, I would just sit on his lap and he would play it, and I would think I was a really good submarine captain, blowing up battleships from other countries.
Our neighbor Jim Brown stopped by. He and Dad were starting a soccer league and Mr. Brown was dropping off a roster of players. Dad walked Mr. Brown out to his car in the driveway.
Soon it was time to go to bed. I had baseball camp the next day. In my room, I followed my nightly pattern. With two cassette decks, I’d made a tape of the crowd cheering from the opening of Aerosmith’s live version of “Janie’s Got a Gun.” After hours of play, pause, record, and repeat—voilà!—I had about twenty minutes of cheering. I’d hit play as I stepped up to the foul line—a piece of tape on the floor—with a big game on the line. If anyone had been watching, I was just a twelve-year-old tossing a Nerf Ball into a makeshift hoop. To me, I was a sports hero, and the crowd was going wild. If I missed the shot? No problem. Lane violation… because that happens so often in real life. A stack of three-by-five cards stood nearby. Why? Autographs, man. I had to sign them on my way back to the locker room after burying the big shot.
Once I’d gotten all those heroics out of the way, I’d climb into bed. Where, every night, I’d wait for Dad to tuck me in. I had no clue this would be the last time he’d ever do that. But he must have known it when he pulled the sheet and blanket tight around me.
At 6:30 the next morning, all my baseball stuff—cleats, glove, ball—had been removed from the garage and was on the kitchen table. That’s when I remember asking, “Where’s Mom?” That’s when Dad said that she had gone to the club and gone swimming. I thought nothing of it.
So I grabbed my stuff. I was wearing a pair of blue sweats, the rattiest orange construction T-shirt you’ve ever seen, and an old-school Seattle Mariners cap. My dad walked me down our driveway to the street, where our neighbor Larry Harper waited to drive me and his sons Aaron and Paul to camp.
My dad gave me a hug, and I got in the car. I remember I turned around as we drove down the hill that was 146th Way. And he was just standing there, looking at us leave. And then he got smaller and smaller. And then he was out of sight.
At baseball camp, for whatever reason, everyone called me Cecil Fielder. Maybe because I was overweight like the Detroit Tigers slugger, and maybe because I hit bombs. Also probably because I played first base—I didn’t want to run. What did John Kruk once say? “I ain’t an athlete, lady. I’m a baseball player.”
I was on the field when Coach Bill Stubbs found me and said there’d been an accident. I figured my dad broke a rib playing soccer with some friends. At the police station, Officer Childers, who ran the D.A.R.E. program at my school, said, “There’s been an accident; your mom didn’t make it, and your dad’s being held for questioning.”
I had no idea what he was talking about. No clue. After a moment: “Okay, so where’s Mom and Dad?” I asked.
As I looked at his face, it started to dawn on me that something serious was up. While I sat there, they called my sister at my grandparents’ house, and I’ll never, ever forget her scream. It was like a scene in a movie, when you see a phone drop and hear a bloodcurdling shriek. Gradually, more facts became clear. An argument. Mom was pushed down the stairs, which, of course, turned out not to be true: they were sugarcoating. Dad was being questioned.
Randy arrived back from basketball camp. I don’t know how long it took before he got there. I don’t know if I was in that office for twenty minutes or ten hours. I just remember sweating, I remember my heart racing, I remember wanting to cry… but not being able to. I just couldn’t. I could barely walk. I looked at my face in the bathroom mirror and I didn’t recognize the reflection. It was just an empty face staring back at me.
By the time Randy and I left the police station, the story of my mom’s death was all over the news. A crowd of cameras and news vans were outside our house. My grandparents, Aunt Susan, and Krissy were on their way from California. Meantime, I would stay at the Harpers’ house, just down the road from ours. I was put into the backseat of their car and told to lie down with a blanket covering me. We drove past the pack of media in front of our house and pulled into the Harpers’ driveway. The TV crews were none the wiser.
Once inside, I plopped myself down on one of the two little steps that led into the Harpers’ living room. It felt like I sat on that step for hours without saying a word. At one point, I remember looking at Aaron Harper and saying, “I miss her so much and I didn’t even get to say good-bye. I just don’t understand.”
It was the most empty and alone feeling I’ve ever felt. I’d lost my mother and father and my own idea of what my life was and would be. I sat on that step because it felt like there was chaos all around me. If I stood up, it might sweep me away. I wanted to bawl my eyes out, and I kept asking myself, Why can’t I cry? It felt like my body was frozen.
Poppy and Nonnie arrived, along with Mom’s sister, who we called Aunt Sue Sue, and our cousin Steve Whitehead. My grandpa is the man, the life of the party, one of my favorite dudes in the world. A couple of years ago, I went into his closet to grab a jacket. And there I saw a collection of caps of every team I’ve ever played on, from high school to the pros. I had no idea. When it’s his time, all I want are those hats.
When he got out of the car in our driveway back then, he pulled out a handkerchief and kept dabbing at his eyes. He went into the house and straight to the hallway that led to the bedroom that he had built above the garage. In that hallway, family pictures hung on the wall. I peeked around the corner and watched my grandpa just standing there, looking at the pictures of my mom and our once-happy family, and he kept dabbing at his eyes with that handkerchief. I could hear his labored breathing as he folded the handkerchief up in his hand and put it in his back pocket. He reached out and took a photo of my mom off the wall and held it up close and exhaled a big, deep, painful sigh while tears streamed down his cheeks. That was it for me. I went running into my room and flung myself onto my bed, my face buried in my pillow. And then it came, tears mixed with guttural screams.
Randy went to stay with the Johnsons, friends of my dad’s. Nonnie, Poppy, Steve, and Sue Sue stayed with Krissy and me at our house while we figured out our next steps. The idea was that we’d stay somewhere for the school year—Randy’s senior year of high school—and move to California to live with Aunt Sue Sue after that. Meantime, each night I’d drift off to sleep, expecting Dad to come tuck me in. The same morning scene played out day after day:
I’d wake up to the sound of pots and pans coming from the kitchen. I’d bolt up and run downstairs, thinking it was Mom making me breakfast like before. Mom. It was going to be Mom, and this whole thing was going to have been just a dream.
But it was just my grandparents and Aunt Sue Sue, cooking breakfast. The same scene, day after day. Come Halloween—Mom’s favorite—I was sure that, as I came downstairs, the house would be alive with her crazy decorations. Now I know that it takes about a year for it to set in that this person is really, truly gone. That one day I’d wake up and head downstairs and I wouldn’t be expecting to see her. But then? I’d just turn around and slink back upstairs. Alone in my room, I’d begin each day, like some macabre version of Groundhog Day, coming to the realization that Mom was gone, and bawling my eyes out.
I must be an observer at all times. I must observe all my family, and Randy. I still have to really get in touch with my feelings more… I really need to focus on observing everything that’s going on, observing my feelings, and put it all together like a jigsaw puzzle.
That’s an early entry from the journal my therapist, John, had me start keeping after Dad killed Mom. I’d meet with John—sometimes alone, sometimes with Krissy, sometimes with Sue Sue and Nonnie and Poppy—multiple times a week at a neighbor’s house. In therapy, we had what was called a “feelings tree”; it was a drawing we’d make in order to identify our feelings. From the moment I’d walk into therapy, I’d know that the usual rules didn’t apply. For example: answering a simply question like “How are you?”
“I’m fine,” I’d say.
“Jon, ‘fine’ is not a feeling,” John told me.
At first, I was resistant. Who is this guy? Why am I here? Why do I have to do this? I didn’t do anything wrong!
From the very start of our sessions, words had very precise meanings. I was told not to call Aunt Susan “Sue Sue”; nor were Mom and Dad “Mommy” and “Daddy.” Gradually, I started to get it: Even though I was just a boy, when I was in that room, I had to become a man. I had to realize the issues I was dealing with were very adult. It’s a lesson—this sense that language matters, that how you say things aloud and to yourself can shape outcomes—that has stuck with me ever since. Just ask the speaking agent I stopped working with for continually saying I had “played five seasons.” No, I corrected him: “I’m going into my sixth season.”
The agent didn’t get the distinction. “But you’ve only played five seasons,” he insisted. It was time for an agent who talked about my career in the same positive way I had trained myself to do.
One day, therapy clicked. I was sitting outside; a neighborhood kid had one of those giant bubble makers. He’d dip that stick into a pool of soapy water, spin around, and form a monster bubble. As the bubble floated higher and higher, I remember watching and thinking, If I could jump into that bubble, I’d float away, too, and everything would be okay. But then I watched as the bubble suddenly popped and I said to myself: Wow. Had I been in that bubble, I would have fallen twice as far and hit twice as hard. Floating away—escaping—wasn’t an option.
I ran into the house and started journaling my feelings—writing them out forced me to think and feel and express all at the same time. Without anybody judging me or even reading what I wrote, I thought to myself: Huh. That wasn’t so bad. I realized that this guy—John, the therapist—wasn’t trying to tell me what’s right and wrong. I stopped talking to myself like a victim—Why do I have to be here?—and realized he was just trying to get me to put my thoughts into words. He was trying to get this deeply wounded and closed kid to feel and think and express himself. If my heart and mind and mouth could all get to the same place, maybe I’d be okay.
There was, after all, a lot to deal with. The funeral was a blur. A lot of people, a lot of tears. Mom’s friend Leslie Moore, our neighbor, sang “Wind Beneath My Wings,” but from behind a curtain because she didn’t think she could look out at everybody and keep it all together.
The weirdest thing were the visits to see my dad. Either my grandparents or Aunt Susan would load me and Krissy into the family van (Randy was off doing his own thing) and we’d go to the county jail. Wow. Think about that: What must that have been like for them? For my grandparents, taking their grandkids to see the man who had taken their daughter from them? Or for Susan, who was Mom’s sister, yes, but also her best friend and sidekick throughout life? Yet they never once pushed their thoughts on me or Krissy. They had to be tempted, right? To say something like, “The hell you’re going to see the bastard who took my sister!” But not once. I remember realizing this in therapy: They just loved us and let us figure it out. Maybe that’s why we turned out okay, me and Krissy. We never got in trouble. Never missed a day of school. Because our grandparents and aunt respected us enough to let us figure this shit out ourselves.
Yeah, they’d take us to the county jail and sit outside for these odd visits, where we’d just talk about nothing with Dad. We were told not to talk to him about what happened—I guess he couldn’t discuss his case—so we’d all pretend that everything was normal. Normal that we’d have to walk through metal detectors. Normal that Dad was behind a pane of glass in an orange jumpsuit and we’d talk to him over a phone… about the most mundane stuff. “How was school?” he’d ask. “What are you learning in math?” Or he’d always ask: “Is it raining outside?” As if we were his only lifeline to the outside world.
One time we saw him and he looked like hell. His face was bruised and he looked beaten down. Rumor was that the inmates would load up pillowcases with bars of soap and swing them around on the new guy in the yard. I guess Dad was the new guy that day.
I was relieved that he was separated from us by that glass. Funny, because his hugs used to mean so much to me. From my journal after one of these visits:
I don’t really fear him when he is in prison. But I will fear him when he gets out.
When school started in September, it felt like everything had stopped around me. It was like everyone was just kind of looking at me and didn’t know what to say or what to do. It all felt very still. And I walked around every day, feeling self-conscious, like I was wearing that sign identifying me as the kid whose dad killed his mom.
There was a kind of somber sadness in the air, in every class, in the hallways, in the lunchroom. One day, my sixth-grade teacher, Mr. Butz, stood before us, as he often did, twisting his wedding ring off his finger and flicking it into the air and catching it. “Listen up,” he said. “Here’s your assignment. Everyone is going to learn something and teach it to the class. It can be anything you want.”
Little did I know this was all a front. He’d been, I’m sure to this day, conspiring with John. Because later that day, in therapy, John asked me: “So what did you do in school today?”
Odd. Usually he started off with a question that would get me to express a feeling. “Nothing much,” I said.
“No?” he asked. “Any new projects to work on?”
I still wasn’t thinking. “Not really,” I said. Then: “Well, we’ve gotta teach the class something.”
“Oh, really?” he said, perking up. “What are you going to teach?”
“I don’t know. How to hit a baseball.”
“I have a better idea,” he said. “Why don’t you teach them about what you’re going through? And what’s really going on in your life?”
Whoa. This just got real deep, real quick, huh? I was thinking of doing something more along the lines of how, by the way you hold it, you can put a wicked curve on a Wiffle Ball. But John wasn’t having it.
“Jon, nobody knows how to act around you, nobody knows what to say,” he said. “I guarantee you, your friends have many questions. I think you can help them. Has anybody said anything to you at your school?”
“Um, no,” I said.
“Isn’t that kind of weird?” he asked. “Didn’t your mom teach some of these kids?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I think they’re dying to talk to you, so why don’t you help them out with that?”
When it came time to do our reports, I went last. Otherwise I was kinda going to be a tough act to follow. John had told me to speak from the heart, and he gave me one pointer: “When you stand before the class, make sure you turn your hands with your palms facing your classmates.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because that’s you opening up, and they’ll sense that,” he said.
When I stood up to speak, there, walking into the class and squatting down in the back into one of our small desk chairs was John. Seeing him, I felt a mixture of relief and pressure. My palms were sweating and I looked out at my classmates and then down at my hands. Turn them out, I told myself, showing my palms like John had said.
“A lot of you know that my mom was killed,” I said, my voice cracking. “And she taught a class here. A lot of you guys knew her. That’s John in the back—he’s my therapist. He’s trying to help me. I don’t really know what’s happening in my life, or where my life is going to take me. But I wanted to stand up here in front of you guys and let you know you can talk to me. I’m sure you’re just as confused as I am. But we’re going to figure it out. Don’t feel awkward around me or like you can’t ask me a question. You can tell me your favorite memory of my mom or just tell me how you’re feeling.”
I looked out at the class, and they were crying with me. And then Deanna O’Hara got out of her desk to hug me and tell me Mom once helped her with her homework. Then came Jared Smith saying how much he missed my mom. And then they were all around me, Jessica Morris, Kristin McCormack, Andy Van Slyke, all of us with tears in our eyes, and for the first time in what felt like forever I didn’t feel so totally, awfully alone. My eyes met John’s, and he gave me the nod. I know that nod, now. It’s the nod I’ve gotten as a professional athlete from a coach like Andy Reid when I’ve played through an injury that would have kept others out of the game, a nod that says, You did a hard thing. I respect the doing of hard things. And that right there—a mere nod—is the highest of praise among men on a mission.
That was my first one. The next day, I wrote this in my journal:
Yesterday I gave an oral presentation to my class and John was there. I cried a lot and so did my classmates. I really surprised myself because I didn’t hold back at all. Me crying also helped other kids in my class because now that they saw me cry, they aren’t scared to cry in front of me.
My dad’s trial loomed at the end of October. I kept telling myself that Mom would want me to be brave for it. And, at John’s suggestion, I littered my journals with memories of her, like this one:
At the bus stop this morning it was raining and a good memory came to me, when I was the only kid at my old bus stop and it was raining very hard. My mom said “My baby!” and got into the van and drove to the bus stop and picked me up, got me warm & dry, and then when the bus came I hopped on the bus and went to school. I know my mom said what she said because she told me. And that memory made me shed some tears, I cried. In school I saw a play called A Christmas Carol. It was about Mr. Scrooge being selfish and mean. The Christmas ghost comes and shows him the past and future. In the end, Mr. Scrooge gave money away and invited everyone to his house and was really nice. It made me feel good to see someone’s life turn around just from observing his past, and a little his future.
I wanted to be in the courtroom every day of the trial. But that doesn’t mean I was going to pay full attention. That voice in my head? Back then, it was busy telling myself, over and over again, Just get this through this. Just get through this.