The Family in Denial
As I had suspected, my mom was in the center of it all, doing the best she could to be there for Paula and her family while at the same time trying to contact everyone she could to help with the situation. What made things even more difficult at the time was that my aunt Linda, (the aunt everyone comes to when they need help, outside of my mom), was out of communication for the first few hours while all this was going on.
As this had occurred in the middle of summer, she and my uncle Ron were out at their summer trailer and no one except her two daughters knew the number to her cell phone. To add to this quandary, the only number they had at the time was my cousin Ronda. Who (and not to be mean when saying this) is not the best person to suddenly drop something so earth shattering on without knowing if there is someone else there with her, as she is asthmatic, and in all seriousness is not the best at handling stressful situation. Thus, it took a while for the information to trickle down to her and the rest of the family, such as my other cousins.
When talking to my mom, who was already with Paula as well as my aunt Peggy, cousin Mandy and the bulk of Paula’s immediate family and group of friends, she told me that several members of the family were having trouble accepting the idea that Jeff was gone let alone murdered. As expected, his twin brother Jason refused to talk about it with anyone. From what I was told, he spent most of his time outside, smoking cigarettes as his fiancée and his friends tried to comfort him in whatever way they could while they too tried to make sense of their own feelings of loss; their own feelings of pain mixed with anger and animosity.
Out of all the family members, Jason was the last one to see him alive, the last one to hear his words, see his smile and feel the warmth of his hand as they said good-bye to each other, not knowing at that time it would be the last time he saw his brother alive.
This will be something I am sure Jason will remember every day for the rest of his life. It may sound odd to some, but for those of us that have seen death head on, those of us who have been there at the moment of death, we remember everything, every moment, every feeling, every smell, touch, and sound.
It was the same for me when I stood above my father the moment he passed away, feeling the warmth fading from his body, remember the last words I said to him as I heard the light clicking of the clock in his hospital room and so too will it be the same for Jason and his family as well.
From what I can recall, his youngest brother, Josh and his sister Jillian were not fairing any better. I was told that Josh flat out refused to believe that his brother was dead. That he would not believe it until he could see the body for himself, as for Jill, I didn’t get much information on how she was fairing, except to be told that she seemed to be dealing with it a bit better than others, as she was crying and allowing herself to grieve.
Paula however, was not doing well. Having several health issues already, her sisters and Tony were doing everything they could to keep her relatively calm, a task I am sure was not at all too easy. My conversation with my mother at the time was cut short when Linda had called her cell phone; it was the first time my mother intentionally hung up on me while I was midsentence.
Eric
Shortly after hanging up with my mom, Eric came back over to my house, after leaving for a bit to get something to eat and see what, if anything, he could learn about Jeff. The thing you have to know about Eric is that he has a condition known as Tourette Syndrome, as well as some learning issues and around that time was also having some issues with his neck and shoulder, which was later discovered to be something called Torticollis. Torticollis is a painful condition in which your neck muscles contract involuntarily, causing your head to twist or turn to one side, sadly as of yet there is no cure, and the only known treatment for it are quarterly injections of Botox to the affected area.
Eric has been going through some sort of pain on a daily basis nearly all his life, be it either physical pain due to his health issues or emotional pain due to how society discriminates against him for what he has, not for whom he is. Yet through it all, almost anyone that has met him would tell you that he is one of the nicest and kindest guy’s you could meet. I mention all this not for you to feel sorry for him but so you can understand or at the very least get some sort of idea what I was seeing and experiencing when he came back over that day.
Here Eric was, walking into my living room; he moved slowly past me on his way towards the computer room and as his face met with mine I could see the pain in his eyes, the tears gliding slowly down the sides of his cheeks. “Eric, you okay?” I asked as he pulled his glasses away from his face, draping the back of his hand over his eyes, wiping away his tears. “Dude, does the shoulder hurt again?” I asked. “It’s… not the shoulder, the neck and shoulder always hurt,” Eric paused for a moment, trying his best to hold in his pain, the sorrow in his voice echoing the truth of his thoughts. “Do you think…, do you think he felt much pain?” he asked. Sighing for a moment, I took a deep breath, not really sure what I was going to say to answer his question, to put his mind at ease, to calm his sadness.
“I think he did, at least for a few seconds, I would like to believe that once he fell down on the ground his body was in shock,” I said feeling a building pit of dread in my stomach as I thought about what Jeff must have gone through. “To be honest,” I said as I paused, breathing deeply, allowing my lungs to fill.
“To be honest Eric I was thinking the same thing on the way home from work, I… I don’t even want to imagine the confusion that was rolling through his mind those last few minutes as he bled out.” I said almost quietly to myself, “I want to believe that he wasn’t thinking of his family or the fact that he knew he was dying.” I paused as my mind raced with images of what he might have seen, the faces of his loved ones feathering through his mind like bolts of lightning. “More so I pray the last thing he heard was not the hysterical voice of the woman; that monster that killed him… it pisses me off to think about it right now you know?” I asked.
“Yeah… I do,” he mumbled. “Sorry,” he said as he took a breath, “I didn’t mean to upset you, though I hope aunt Paula and Jason are doing okay.” Eric added. “Me too Eric,” I said as he walked back into the computer room, I could hear the slight deepening of his breath through the crack of the open door, “I love you Jeff,” I heard him whimper to himself, before hearing the theme to the Anime ‘Bleach’ kick on the speakers.
To see Eric like this, to know what he was secretly thinking, to know he was thinking of our father who had passed away more than 10 years before, I knew he was feeling that same pain. Remember the feelings he had long since buried, long since forgotten. It pained me to see him this way, yet I knew it was a pain I would see in the eyes of several others over the days, weeks and months to come.
11PM
The Postings War Begins
Shortly after 11pm, a person with the user name Boloney left the first comment on a Grand Rapids Press article that stated almost the same chain of events as previous mentioned above with the addition that the police took the girlfriend into custody. However, the Local television stations added the alleged (and later disproven) fact that Jeff was drunk at the time of the incident. This mediated interpretation of the facts would bring with it, what would become a long, drawn out war of comments and posts.
Posts, comments, and even underlining threats that would eventually draw in such absurd subjects as women against men, legality against morality and sadly whites against black (but not by who you might think). In the first comment of over 100 on three different webpages, the battle between what really happened and what the Media’s interpretation of what happened played out in the hours and days that followed.
Oddly enough, I was also one of those that participated in these comments. Defending my cousin to the end, trying as best I could to set aside my anger and rage when I could but finding it difficult to do so with such cultural contempt.
The user Boloney stated in her com
ment, “What if this was your sister, mom, daughter? News stations said man was DRUNK and there was a lot of previous domestic violence. Ever had a large drunk man waving a knife at you? What do you do? Wave your arms around and try to keep the knife off you, or pull on the handle. If he let go and she was pushing it away from herself it could of easily, accidentally went into his neck. Her first instincts were to protect herself. Why did Wyoming immediately press charges? Cause she is poor and female? I hope she can get good representation. SELF DEFENSE is not a criminal offense WYOMING.
This comment is the perfect example of the falsity of a Mediated Culture. In her statement where she comments by saying that the, “News stations said man was DRUNK,” the person making this comment is instantly directed to believe that everything the media states is true. Even though in Chapter 11 of this book you will read testimony under oath by the Medical Examiner that stated, “The Victim (Jeff) had no Alcohol in his system prior to his death.” Furthermore, the commenter went on to assume that the acts of domestic abuse were actions caused by the male and not the female; in fact, her entire statement is based on this assumption. However, as you will later discover in Chapter 10 of this book, studies show that women are more prone to use violence and hit first before men, though again this information is not normally reported by the media and thus unknown by most.
In any event, this comment was followed by another person shortly thereafter with the user name Enginmangr, who stated, “This could be all in self-defense but it's not the police's job to determine that. Their job is to find the body and a suspect, not to sort out whose right, wrong, or why. The prosecutor is responsible to determine what, if any, charges the suspect will face. If she was acting in self-defense, that will be worked out in court. Your theory though has one large hole in it: how would the knife have entered this man's neck if he were pointing the blade at her? Fair warning to the casual observer: supposed self-defense in domestic violence situations tends to end up in voluntary manslaughter convictions, which can still land a person in prison for 15 years. Better than life without parole but still a bad deal for the true victim of domestic violence, that is why it is crucial for anyone in such a relationship to get out ASAP before events like this happen.”
Shortly thereafter, a person also by the name of Jeff who had known Jeff for some time went on and posted, “that person that was stab at the crossroads apartments is a close friend of my family! The suspects will pay! He is a brother to one of my brother's friends and he will be missed!” These were followed with several other comments from Jeff’s friends wanting the public to know how great and compassionate a person Jeff Dryden was and what he meant to them and how he helped them get through some hard times in their life.
One commenter went on to add, “I want everyone to know that Jeff was a good person and did not deserve to go down like this. He was a great friend; my heart is very heavy, right now. This was not a case of self-defense. He was Murdered, Jeff we all love you and miss you. I will never forget you.”
For the most part, every one that commented that first day said their peace; gave their thoughts in a constructive non-confrontational manner. Sadly, this only lasted the first day as once Chiquita’s supporters seen the comments, the war between the innocent and the guilty, the battle between the accused and the true victim began and the line between right and wrong was drawn. The power of words typed across the electric highway began, and anyone that did not choose a side was either protected or harshly threatened.
CHAPTER 2:
AUGUST 2008
The First Encounter
There was nothing romantic with how Jeff came to meet Chiquita Fizer. No gazing at her from afar as she walked gracefully across a room, no illumination of the moon casting its heavenly rays upon her, hitting her in just the right way as to tantalize Jeff’s mind with euphoria as she swayed her hips in an erythematic pattern.
No heart-pounding, earth-shattering moments or hypnotic glances; nor visions of them strolling down the beachside hand-in-hand feathering through Jeff’s mind, no, there was nothing that would clue the average person to assume the two would ever become, nor ever desire to become that vision of the ever-loving, ever-lasting couple.
Nothing that would suggest the morals of their thoughts and feelings would ever be intertwined with the other. In fact, their first meeting, their first encounter was something more primal than romantic, more physical and instinctual than emotional. Their first encounter occurred on a sex based website where Jeff, to put it bluntly, was looking for nothing more than the next flavor of the week.
“Jeff met Chiquita a few months after his longtime girlfriend, Nicole, broke up with him,” Jason Dryden, Jeff’s twin brother expressed when I interviewed him for this book (Dryden, 2011). “Jeff was looking for nothing more than a booty call, a friend with benefits, put plainly; Jeff wanted nothing more than sex and Chiquita knew that from the start.” Jason added.
To some, what was just expressed may bring certain readers to cast Jeff in a bad light. In fact, a few of you may even go as far as to say or to think that Jeff deserved what he got, however, when you really think about it, Jeff was doing nothing more than filling a primal, instinctual urge. An urge, a desire that all of us at one time or another share, an impulse, a yearning that all classes, all races experience, nothing less, nothing more.
Furthermore, I will be honest and say it now before we go too far into this book, that Jeff, though flawless in the eyes of his mother was not a perfect Angel; he had his faults just like everyone else in this world. We all have our errors as no one, no matter how much we put ourselves on a pedestal, no one is beyond error; we are all imperfect creatures, dependent on our own needs, addictions, and desires. As for Jeff, he liked using marijuana as his recreational drug of choice, though this use of Marijuana may have been illegal, and he may have been wrong in using it, he did not deserve what came to him in the end.
So too, at that time Jeff was the typical 20 something single male, who didn’t want to get into another dramatic, long-term relationship. Who may have thought more with the head between his legs than the one between his shoulders, regardless of these faults; however, no one deserves death for such small imperfections. Thus, though imperfect, he was a living, breathing, thinking human being, able to feel not only his own pain but the pain and joy of others as well, he was unique.
As such, knowing or rather thinking at that time that it would be sex he would be having with his friend with benefits, he wanted to try something of the “Chocolate flavor,” and thus he met Chiquita on a local adult sex-dating site. “Jeff’s first encounter with Chiquita went as expected, and things seem to be going well for the first few times they met,” Jason stated. “Shortly before Thanksgiving of that year, I think, Jeff said that Chiquita was asking him for things, such as paying some of her bills, and buying her stuff that wasn’t right for a friend with benefits relationship,” he added. Sadly, it would be a few weeks later that Jeff would come to realize Chiquita’s true intentions. Intentions, which would lead him to the path of his own demise.
CHAPTER 3:
JULY 19, 2010
Arrangements
Sipping her hazelnut coffee, she gazed up at the gleaming rays of sunlight as they slowly slipped away from the gloomy clouds above. “Mmm,” she sighed throatily, swallowing her coffee, allowing the slight sugary tang; the enticing, thick aroma and the enriched flavor to cast over her, awaking her senses from the sleepy despair; the dismal nightmares which were at the forefront of her mind falling back to random thoughts.
Taking a deep breath, she allowed the slight humid air to fill her lungs, heartening her with a minor renewed energy before casting it out, exhaling it slowly, only to again be remembered of the sadness that was to follow in the coming hours, days, weeks--years. The pain and hatred, the tears, which would rain down the faces of her and each of her sisters as they fought to stay positive and supportive for their saddened sister, fought to stay composed and strong for their fallen
nephew, all the while thinking of their own children.
Their minds racing through memories of the past troubles, past moments of regret, feelings mixing with shards of the past, the death that shadowed around them hovering like a cloak of despair every time they thought of their parents. Every time their memories of the past came to bear. Yet still, she knew they would all try to stay positive, try and block out the thoughts of dreaded loss each would feel if it were they in her place, if it were them that had to go through the same trials of death; despair of madness and regret.
Them who would have to pick out a coffin for their own beloved child; to gaze down at the lifeless body and remember every fleeting moment, every happy thought, every smile upon their face.… remember the last time they told them they loved them. The last time they heard those words of love upon their child’s lips, never thinking for a moment--it would be the last.
“Just breathe… remember to breathe,” Roxanne thought to herself as she prepared for the things to come, things she did not want to do for one of her own sons or daughters. The pain, the sadness and the chaotic thoughts that seemed to be with her from the night before, the horrid visions, the dreams she dreamt, just hours before. “Just breathe,” She said to herself, tears streaming down the sides of her face as the clouds above once again caught up with their morning prey, “just… just breathe.”
The Posting Wars Part 2
“It started with a few simple condolences from strangers, people that only read what they saw in the paper and the words of those few of us who knew the truth. It started with words, just as all wars do…,”
Early in the afternoon Chiquita’s aunt (who would eventually become a well-known figure in this matter) got online and wrote something to address those of us who, (apparently) didn’t know what “the hell” we were writing. What follows is taken from what she said word for word as she wrote it, (with some captioned thoughts of my own added to help you along) you should take note, that some of it may not make sense, this is taken from one of the main news message boards that allowed public comments on their articles:
The Murder of Jeffrey Dryden: The Grim Truth Surrounding Male Domestic Abuse Page 2