TRIGGER WARNING: This article deals with drug use, addiction and death. It may be triggering for some readers.
I touched his face and it was cold, so cold. Cold and still as depicted in the movies, but colder and it was real. When I put my hand on his chest I felt and heard paper, kind of like crêpe paper.
My 28 year-old brother was lying in a coffin and he was dead. Even though he was obviously dead, I was too scared to reach in and give him a kiss because I thought he might jump out and scare me. Is that weird?
I found out later that the paper I felt under his clothes was some bandaging from the autopsy. Because Jason died on a park bench in Sydney’s Belmore Park, an autopsy was necessary to determine his cause of death. I assumed the needle on the ground or hanging out of his arm would have been a good indicator of the reason for his death.
I’m still so annoyed that I never found out whether the needle was in his arm or whether he had pulled it out before he died. Was his body slumped over when he died? Did he inject, feel the bliss of the heroin running into his veins and lay down or did he realise the minute he injected that it was bad stuff? What were his last moments on this earth like for him; what was the last thing he thought? Did he know he was dying? Who found him?
It’s been 11 years and I have still have unanswered questions. It feels like only yesterday I received the phone call from my sister to say that Jason had died. I was living in Christchurch at the time and I had it all going on – great apartment, great job, money in the bank, a killer karaoke machine and the best Chinese takeaway restaurant less than 5 minutes’ walk away. One might say I was living the dream… until that day.