Linzy Costello Sheltered

Sheltered Linzy Costella

Being the youngest child in my family, I have always known that I was sheltered a bit more than the others. Growing up I was always placed at the “kids table” at holidays away from my older siblings, given the “earmuffs” at random times, or wasn’t allowed to watch certain movies that the older kids could. As I continued to grow up, I recognized that some of these things were valid. However, I also realized that the habit that was initially formed of keeping me out of things spiraled into hiding things from me as well. I am the youngest child of four; my oldest brother was ten years older than me. At times he reminded me more of a dad figure than a brother, a great one either way. One specific memory that displayed this thought was when he made a pack of Ramen Noodles. He always sat in the living room floor and watched television while he ate. I remember asking for a bite and he gave me the whole bowl and made another meal, without any hesitation. He was the most giving and kind person that I knew. He was my role model at nine years old. I say “was” because he passed away in August of 2012 at nineteen. As a nine-year-old it was hard to comprehend that you would never again see someone so important to you. I would never get to hug him again, ask for his food, swim in the pool with him, or even talk to him again. The day he passed away he spent the night at his friends. We were told that his heart stopped while he was sleeping; his friends found him in the morning and called the police immediately. His friend’s apartment was small, forcing them to sleep in close quarters, making it obvious that he wasn’t okay when everyone got up to go get breakfast and he laid there still. Panicking, they called the police and let them know the situation. Instead of getting in contact with one of his family members, it was posted on a social media platform for everyone to read, “RIP Devon.” It wasn’t until his girlfriend showed up to our house panicking telling us about it that we grew concerned. Everyone began to try to call his phone. One unanswered phone call after another, until my mom started calling his friends. After an hour of trying to get answers, a girl finally answered her phone. She explained that she knew Devon and was at the apartment, where yellow caution tape lined the complex. On her end of the phone, there were multiple voices talking, the police officers and detectives. They told her that she couldn’t come through and that everything would be sorted out after they contacted the victim’s family. I specifically remember hearing her voice echoing through the phone as she yelled at the officers that she had the victim’s family on the phone. My mom stepped out of the room, calmly, so that she wouldn’t upset us. The phone was handed over to one of the main detectives in charge of the case, who spoke to my mom. He confirmed who was calling and then proceeded to confirm my brother’s death saying that there would be an investigation to rule out any foul play. As family members poured into our home, reality set in. The day was slow and full of denial, shock, and sadness. My grandma tried to distract us kids by playing board games, attempting to postpone the sadness as if we didn’t know something was wrong. Watching my mother cry is one thing but seeing my dad cry shatters me. He has always been a stereotypical Italian dad who rarely shows his emotions. The sight of him crying was a rare one; he walked away from the family members to gather himself and came back to comfort us. Both of my parents took their time to explain to us what had happened. My older siblings had more of an idea of what was happening than I did. I caught on pretty fast when they explained why everyone was at our house.

The next few days was a complete blur. Our extended family helped with the funeral arrangements and gathered pictures to create photo boards to display. Being as young as I was, I mostly remember the big things and forget the little details. The biggest thing I remember was the actual funeral. We had an open casket to allow people to pay their respects which inadvertently stuck with me. As family members and friends of Devon went up to the podium to speak about him, I curled up in my father’s lap in tears. Everything was finally becoming real for me. After the casket was carried out to the hearse to allow him to finally rest, everyone made their way home. I remember people, over the next week, bringing food and cards to our house to show that they were thinking of our family during this hard time. Fast forward a few months and things still feel weird; having a hole within our family wasn’t something that we were going to get over easily. There were plenty of times where time felt like it stood still. I was only nine, so as sad as this time was it was also a little foggy for me to remember. Although I still have plenty of memories with him, mostly all of the good ones, some things have slipped my mind completely. Over time I felt like I would forget him entirely. Family vowed to keep his memory alive by speaking about him freely, whenever we wanted to. Shortly after his passing, as a family, we would watch home videos with him in it. In doing so it made us feel like he was still with us. However, we stopped watching them fairly quickly since my parents couldn’t handle the flood of memories. My mom took his death the hardest; she tried to go to grief counseling for it, but she gave up fairly early in. Her way of coping was to be bombarded by her family and to tell stories of him. There weren’t many times that she was alone for the first year or so after my brother’s death. The only time that she would slip away was to silently cry in the bathroom. She would pick herself back up and join the family like nothing happened. She is one of the strongest people I know. It’s been eight years since he passed away and the journey has been weird, to say the least. Since we were told he passed away from Congestive Heart Failure, the three of us kids got a thorough physical to make sure we were all safe and healthy. The entire dynamic of the house was off for a long time. His bedroom door remained closed at all times, untouched, while everything stayed the exact same as he left it inside. As a family, we made the decision to move to another house. It was almost like a fresh start, without forgetting about him. As I continued to grow up and mature, I became more and more curious about his death. I have always been pretty observant, and some things that my parents would mention just didn’t make sense to me. I would ask my older sister about it and she would never understand what I was talking about. Nobody ever entertained my thoughts on his death. I always assumed that they just didn’t want to revisit the memory of it all. Since nobody ever wanted to talk about it, I always kept my thoughts and concerns to myself. However, I knew I wasn’t going to stop there. I am now a seventeen-year-old girl who has her own life to worry about. Between school, sports, and work, the curiosity of Devon’s death seemed to slip my mind completely. It wasn’t until the Coronavirus lockdown that the idea of it all was sparked again. My brother was a party animal, he loved to hang out with his friends and was one of the most outgoing people I knew. Wherever he went he made friends, which I admired very much about him. During the summer, while in lockdown, I had a lot of time on my hands. I focused on bettering myself and maturing. There was another thing on my mind that I knew I had to get into. I was sitting on the couch with my mom and I randomly asked her about “the truth.” She looked at me like I had lost my mind and asked what I meant by that. I explained how I thought Devon’s death was sort of odd and how I would like to see his death certificate or something that would help put an end to my curiosity. She shut me down very quickly, saying that she had no clue where it would be and was offended that I had just basically called my own mother a liar.

Since she was so reluctant to help me, I decided to do some digging on my own. I remembered a few names of his friends that were with him the night he passed away. Being a gen z baby, I immediately turned to social media. I ended up finding a lot of information about one man in particular. He sparked my interest very quickly due to his poor court records dealing with hard drugs. After I dug up more and more information on this particular guy, I realized just how much of a party enthusiast he is. Knowing how my brother was, it wasn’t all that surprising that his friends were not the most “sober” people, if you will. Drugs, alcohol, and partying littered every single one of his friend’s social media platforms. My mind automatically went back to the rumors that were spread around our tiny city. Devon knew a lot of people, as I’ve explained earlier, so just about everyone had an opinion on his death. Many people thought he took his own life and some even said he got into a car crash. Others mentioned a drug overdose or a possible homicide. Obviously, it was very easy to ignore these crazy rumors, as our parents had told us he passed away while he was sleeping simply from his heart stopping. Now in high school, taking medical classes and expanding my knowledge, I realized that something like that happening to someone of that age and health is very odd. At the time, I trusted my parents; there was never a reason not to. There was never a reason to even question them. After about a week and a half of pestering my mom about the death certificate she finally agreed to look for it. I let it go for a few days to give her space to make her decision. I knew that she knew where it was because both of my parents are very organized when it comes to paperwork and their filing systems for bills, birth certificates, etc. I was at the kitchen counter talking with my sister when she walked through and laid a manila filing folder on the counter. I could tell she had been crying so I hugged her, and she walked in the other room. My sister and I made eye contact and sat there staring at the folder for what felt like an hour. I reached to pick it up and emptied the papers onto the table. I took a deep breath and began scanning the document. My eyes immediately met with the words “Manner of Death.” I continued reading to see his death be considered an “Accident.” As I continued to read, the actual cause of his death was stated as “DRUG AND ALCOHOL ABUSE.” Some of the substances in his body were considered opioids which reacted with the alcohol he had consumed that night. I immediately walked to the other room where my mom was. We all were clearly upset. My sister, twenty-three, and I, seventeen, both were irritated that my parents kept this a secret from us for so long. We understood that they wanted to keep it a secret when it first happened since we were so young. We were all sad as well because we had to revisit such a devastating situation once again. There were so many emotions going on at once which sparked many questions. The main question that came up was simply, “Why?” Although I understood that they wanted to keep it on the downlow when we were younger, it didn’t make sense to me how they never told us the truth eight years later. There have been times where I specifically asked about his cause of death and if heart conditions were a problem in our family, concerned for myself and my siblings. After that night, I didn’t want to talk about it anymore. I saw this as an opportunity to end my curiosity and to have closure. I believe that I was more curious than anyone because I didn’t know him the way everyone else did. I felt scammed out of all those years with him because everyone got to really know how amazing he was as a person. Since I was so young, I didn’t get the same opportunities as the others. I was always relying on stories and home videos to give me a touch of what I had lost. Just when everything seemed to go back to “norma,l” I discovered another secret that was kept from my siblings and I. My brother, Devon, wasn’t entirely my brother. He was my half-brother.

My mom was telling my best friend and I a story and mentioned “Devon’s dad” which I thought was odd. She sometimes refers to my dad as “your father/dad” or just his name. I wouldn’t have put much thought into this if it weren’t for her hiding my brother’s death. I interrupted her and said, “Did you just say, ‘Devon’s dad?’” As I said this, her jaw dropped, she raised her hand to cover her mouth. I just stared at her in shock while she tried to comprehend what she had just said. After she told us that she had gotten pregnant right before she met my dad, she explained that everyone else knew. My parents asked all of our extended family to not mention it to us at the time. Supposedly my brother wanted to tell us himself when we were all older because he was scared that we would look at him differently. Although all of these things happened for a reason this summer, it was a heavy load to take in. To be completely fair, I was asking for it when I pestered my mom for the death certificate. After all of this time being sheltered, it felt oddly comforting that my siblings were finding this all out for the first time with me. For years, I wasn’t allowed to do certain things that my siblings were allowed to because of my age. Even now my dad has a hard time when I want to do certain things. However, considering they did lose a child I try not to complain too much because I know that they both just want to protect us all. Taking everything into consideration, I understand more why we have been sheltered for a fairly large portion of our lives. Being the youngest just adds more of the sheltering, but I wouldn’t trade my family for anything. Going through something as big as a death brought my family together tremendously. It proved that life is too short and showed me to cherish the moments that we do have together, good or bad.