Five Beads

Five beads.

Scott.

Kristie.

Kevin.

Bennett.

Logan.

Five small gold beads, perfectly imperfect, strung along a delicate gold chain. Each one slightly different from the next. Just like Scott, Kristie, Kevin, Bennett, and Logan.

My grandfather, Papa, gave my grandmother, Nina, this necklace the day she gave birth to Scott. A single bead to mark the beginning. Then came Kristie, and another bead. Kevin, and another.

Years later, when Kristie had the first grandchildren, Nina added two more—for Bennett and Logan. She always meant to add more, to honor the other four grandchildren who came after, but time has a way of slipping past.

My dad never came home early from work. Like clockwork, he pulled into the driveway at exactly 5:30 p.m. every evening. He left at the same time every morning, returned at the same time every night. It was a steady, predictable rhythm.

But that day was different.  

On May 31, 2016, I hopped onto the bus at Charlotte Latin School, ready for the 25-minute ride home. It was our last day of school, a day of relay races on the field and eating buttered popcorn until our stomachs felt like they would explode. It was the kind of day where you could feel summer just around the corner. I was ten years old, days away from our “fifth-grade graduation,” giddy with sheer excitement. 

My brother and I jumped off the bus at Christ Church, our usual stop, and spotted our babysitter, Karina, waiting for us. We took off running, eager to get home. James, who was in the first grade at the time, always seemed to be running on five Red Bulls, his energy unstoppable. We hopped in the car and drove off, the short 0.7-mile drive home feeling like nothing. 

As we pulled up to the house, I saw it—my dad’s car.

That wasn’t right. He was never home at this time.

My mind started racing. Maybe he came home early to surprise us on our last day of school? Maybe, for once, he got out of work before the sun started setting. But beneath that hope and excitement, there was a pit in my stomach that I couldn't ignore. 

The second we stepped inside, I started searching. 

“Dad?” I yelled. Nothing. My heart started beating faster. “Dad, dad, DAD?!”

Silence. 

I sprinted to my parent’s bedroom.

There he was.

Sitting in a cream-colored armchair with black trim, his head buried in his hands, his entire body trembling.

I froze.

I had never seen my dad cry before. Not once. And I haven’t seen him cry since. 

Whatever this was, it wasn’t just bad. But for years, I wouldn’t know how bad.

“Dad?” my voice barely made a sound.

Slowly, he lifted his head. Tears streaming down his red cheeks, eyes bloodshot and glistening. 

“Aunt Kristie passed away,” he whispered.

My brother and I were told that she hit her head on the nightstand in the middle of the night and never woke up. She was living alone at the time, having separated from her husband a few months prior. I didn’t know that. I had assumed they were still together, still a happy family. That realization alone came as a shock. 

A few days later, we packed up and drove to Raleigh for the funeral. Obviously, at just ten years old, I didn’t have a full grasp of the real situation at hand. I didn’t pick up on anything out of the ordinary. I spent time with my cousins, Kristie’s sons - Bennett and Logan. Something felt off, but of course it did. Their mom had just passed. That was the reason, right?

Wrong.

Years passed. I grew up. I began to pick up on a sense that something was going on with my dad’s side of the family. The summer vacations had stopped. The holiday gatherings had come to a screeching halt. We became distant. But no one talked about why. I tried to make sense of it on my own, piecing together faded memories, searching for something I had missed. But nothing ever clicked. 

And then, one day, when I was about fifteen, I finally worked up the courage to ask my parents more about it. We were sitting at our kitchen table - me, buried in homework; my parents, chatting about their days. It felt normal. Safe. 

I swallowed hard. Just ask.

“Hey, Dad,” I said, my voice quiet. “What really happened with Kristie?”

The room fell silent.

My dad stared at the table. My mom’s gaze snapped to me, then back to him.

“Why don’t we talk about this later?” she whispered.

That night, my mom came to my room to say goodnight. We had our usual conversation -  the typical “sleep well, I love you,” but this time, she hesitated.

“Do you want to talk about Kristie?” my mom asked.

A lump formed in my throat. “Yeah,” I replied. “I’ve been kind of curious.”

She sat down on my bed with me, held one of my hands, and finally, told me the truth.

Kristie had a spark to her that was impossible to ignore. In high school, she could outrun most of the boys, her competitive spirit shining through in every challenge she took on. Outgoing and endlessly talkative, she had a natural ability to draw people in, making friends everywhere she went. At Wake Forest University, she had that same energy, becoming the kind of person everyone wanted to be around. With her golden blonde hair framing her face in soft waves and a radiant smile that could brighten any room, she exuded warmth and joy. Whether she was playing sports, at a party, or simply talking to her friends, Kristie had an undeniable presence - vibrant, engaging, and full of life.

But at some point, things changed. My dad remembers Kristie began to behave differently when she married her first husband, Chris Jones. "He was kind of an asshole," my dad said flatly. "Very pompous. A med student working 110-hour weeks. She was stuck in an apartment alone, and I think that’s when she started drinking,” he recalled. 

The signs were subtle at first. Odd stories that didn’t make sense, then wild ones that didn’t happen at all. “People who are going through it make up a lot of stories, and they'll tell you one, and they'll tell me one, and they'll tell you one against me and one against you,” my dad said. Then there were also the physical symptoms - stomach issues that Kristie insisted were stress-related. But as my dad looked back, he realized it was more than that. “In hindsight, I think it started probably in the late ‘90s, early 2000s,” he said. “We didn’t piece it together until much later.”

Kristie and Chris’ relationship soon fizzled out and after their divorce, she moved to Atlanta and started dating Ben. It was then that my parents began noticing more red flags. Kristie would drink, as would many others in their 20s, but Kristie would take it to another level. She wouldn’t stop. The stories continued, so did the drinking, and my dad started seeing patterns.

Then came the moment. The moment that would change everything.

My dad was away, and my mom was home with me - barely a toddler at the time. Kristie had come to visit, helping out my mom and spending time with us. But one night, she passed out on our kitchen floor. “That’s when we knew,” my dad said. “That’s when all the pieces came together.” 

From that point on, things unraveled. My parents tried a variety of methods to help her. They confronted my grandparents about it, but they wouldn’t do anything. “My parents had always said, ‘Yeah, we try, but she won’t go to rehab.’ I’m like, ‘Well, how are you trying?’ They would get real mad at me,” he recalled. The family tension worsened, and when my dad finally confronted Kristie directly about her issues, it led to a year of silence between them. But he refused to let it go. He kept pushing and pushing, striving for her to get her life back on track. For our family, for her kids.

Finally, enough was enough. “I called her at work and let her have it. I said, ‘I know what you’ve been doing. I’m taking your boys from you unless you go to rehab,” he said. 

It was an ultimatum that finally worked. Within five minutes of that conversation, my dad was on the phone with Ben, her new husband at the time, and that night, Kristie was on a plane to a treatment center in Tennessee. But even that wasn’t a perfect solution. She left after two weeks. “She was supposed to be there for four, but she just couldn’t take it,” my dad said.

She got better. For a week. Then the drinking resumed. Her kids, Bennett and Logan, would call my dad crying, saying their mom had passed out on the front porch. My parents found empty bottles tucked under her bed during a family vacation. 

The final breaking point came after Ben had asked Kristie to take some time off, to detach from the family. He could only endure so much and couldn’t continue watching her ruin her life in front of her children. Hence, she moved out. But she spiraled. A few weeks later, my grandfather found her on the morning of May 31, 2016, lying on her bedroom floor with bottles of vodka scattered about. She hit her head on her nightstand and passed away.

Alcoholism didn’t just take Kristie. It took our family. “It tore everything apart,” my dad admitted. “My relationship with my parents has never been the same. Your mom and I tried to help, but Nina and Papa didn’t want to hear it. It was easier to be mad at me than to admit what was happening.” 

Even before Kristie’s death, my dad’s relationship with his parents had taken a turn. Growing up, he was quite close with them - fishing trips with his dad, family vacations to the beach. But once the reality about Kristie’s alcoholism became undeniable, the dynamic changed. “They didn’t want to acknowledge it,” he said. “They were in denial, and when we tried to push them to help, they just got angry. And when Kristie died, it didn’t bring us together. It only made things worse.” 

Now, years later, my dad’s relationship with his parents has turned into something almost transactional. He helps when they need it, but the wounds between them are still raw. “It never really got any better,” he admitted. “But now they need my help.”

As their health declines, my dad is the one they call. “When they needed help with the house, finances, just getting stuff done, it was, ‘Oh, Kevin, we need you.’ And I did it because I’m their son.”

Still, the shadow of the past lingers. Although the passage of time has softened some tensions, there is no doubt that memories can never be erased. “I know there’s only so much time left with them,” he said. “So harping on everything that happened, it’s not going to do anybody any good.” But that doesn’t mean he’s forgotten. “I’ll never agree with how it was handled,” he admitted. “I’ll always be upset about it.”

I didn’t realize I had been crying until my mom wiped a tear from my cheek. At that moment, lying in my room, my safe place, my heart had just cracked in half. But at the same time, everything was finally making sense. 

That’s why I don’t receive any cards on my birthday from my grandparents anymore.

That’s why we don’t go on family vacations to South Carolina anymore. 

That’s why we don’t gather at our home in Charlotte on Christmas Eve, snuggling by the fire and trying to set up the camera for a poorly executed timer picture anymore. 

That’s why.

Despite everything, I still want to have a relationship with my family. The past is complicated, but I refuse to let that define the future. I don’t want to live in this uncomfortable silence with my own family.

I talk to Bennett and Logan. We check-in, we laugh, we hang out. Being close to Raleigh makes it easier to see them, and when I do, it feels normal - like we could have been just another set of cousins, untouched by the chaos of our family dynamic. But deep down, we all know better. We understand what’s been lost, but that’s why I don’t want to lose them too.

I was the first person Bennett came out to in our family a few months ago. It was late one night, just the two of us talking, lying on the roof of my apartment building looking at the stars. I had always thought he was gay, but he had never said anything. At this moment, while I wasn’t surprised, I was elated. Not because of his sexuality, but because he chose to tell me. Me. 

And then there was Logan - the day he helped me move into my freshman dorm, the day I ran into him on Franklin Street, sharing laughs and conversation. It was different with him, more reserved, an unspoken boundary between us, but we got along.

But I was there, just like I always wanted to be, just like I hope they know I always will be. 

With my grandparents, it’s different. They don’t call, but I still reach out. I leave voicemails on their birthdays, on holidays, on the days that are supposed to mean something. I don’t know if they listen to them, and I don’t ask. 

It’s strange to feel love and grief at the same time. But I still find ways to carry my family with me. Around my neck, I wear my grandmother’s necklace. While we may not be whole anymore, I carry around the pieces. 

Scott.

Kristie.

Kevin.

Bennett.

Logan.

All five beads, none left behind.