EP9 Honoring Heather Vennewald: A Tribute to a Cherished Friend

We invite you on a heartfelt journey as we remember our friend, Heather Vennewald, whose bright life was cut tragically short by suicide. As we navigate the painful reality of her absence, former roommate and close companion, Jill Collado, joins us in paying tribute to Heather's vibrant spirit and contagious love for life. As we repaint the picture of Heather, the prank-loving friend, we also highlight the importance of recognizing potential signals of mental despair and the significance of having open conversations about mental health.

Prepare to step into our world as we revisit when we first learned of Heather's suicide.  Struck by grief and trauma, we recount our experiences and the lessons learned through the healing process. Together, Jill and I shed light on how Heather's sudden departure has reshaped our perspectives, encouraging us to extend more understanding and compassion to those battling mental health struggles.

In the final segment, we honor Heather's joy-filled life and the priceless moments we shared. From humorous stories to the creation of the Heather Fund at the University of Rhode Island, we explore various ways her memory continues to inspire and impact lives. Jill shares her emotional journey post-college and the invaluable role of her friends and family during these challenging times. We encourage everyone to tune in, as we not only commemorate Heather but also underscore the critical importance of mental health discussions.

Are you or someone you know in crisis?
     Call or text 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org

https://web.uri.edu/counseling/heatherfund/

https://www.raceentry.com/uri-be-5k/race-information

https://www.samhsa.gov/newsroom/suicide-prevention-month

Transcript

Scott: 0:00

This episode deals with the sensitive topics of suicide and mental health. Although there won't be graphic details, please know that the discussion will venture into areas that may not be suitable for children. Therefore, parental discretion is strongly advised. The guest today is Jill Collado.

Scott: 0:16

Jill and I graduated from the University of Rhode Island together an unspecified number of years ago. That's a long time. I live with my three male roommates, around the corner from Jill and her four female roommates. The nine of us were extremely close and my roommates and I were always at the girls house when we were on campus. Before the beginning of last semester's senior year, one of those girls, our friend Heather Vennewald, took her own life. September is National Suicide Prevention Month and today Jill and I take some time to honor our dear friend while discussing the impact her loss had on all of us. This is an extremely important discussion, sometimes sad, sometimes humorous, and we urge you to please listen to the episode in its entirety. If we can save just one life with our discussion today, it will all be worth it. Jill, who was to you?

Jill: 1:04

Heather was my college friend, my like fun friend. She was a jokester. She liked to play pranks. Scott, I can remind you of some pranks that we played on each other's houses, many of which were Heather's doing she had this like sinister evil laugh that she would do in the background she said when I met sophomore junior year I can't even remember, but she was a friend of a friend and then for senior year we were roommates.

Jill: 1:32

We lived in a house of five girls down the line in Narragansett, rhode Island, and not only was she my roommate but she was my bathroom-sharing roommate, so our rooms were next to each other, we shared a bathroom. For, as friendly as we were beforehand, we were like thrown into this house together and on top of each other and became very close very fast, and that was September of senior year. So yeah, she was a fun, loving friend. She was laid back, she liked to have a good time, she didn't take anything too seriously. She was emotional, but I would say not anymore than my own self. I was in my own angst phase. I think every college student is so we weren't able to foreshadow is what I'm saying. She was a regular college student, regular 21-year-old who had crushes on boys and struggled in class, but who didn't and liked to have a good time. As we all were sort of already mourning the end of our college career Because nobody wanted to see it come to an end.

Scott: 2:30

We had talked before and I met Heather roughly around the same time and I met her because my buddies were friends with her brother and I would basically see her around campus in the center of a flock of people and people would just be hanging out and laughing and enjoying life and it was just something about this girl that I need to meet like I need to meet her and be friends with her. I want to be part of this fun that is going on around her at all times. You know, we ended up hanging out and meeting and she was amazing For me. She was just a fun loving jokester and definitely, you know, prankaholic. But there was also another side of her for me that she was a shoulder to cry on for me for a lot.

Scott: 3:06

I had a girlfriend at the time and I wasn't the greatest boyfriend and she was always there for me to kind of let me get it off my chest and then kind of give me some great advice, and it always was just amazing advice. All the time we would go down by the rocks and air against the University of Rhode Island. Partake in some marijuana. This is the first time I think I've ever admitted that I've done that. So there goes my political career. But you know we would just hang out and just catch the waves and enjoy life and just talk about stuff. And she was just amazing. And you're right, there was no foreshadowing. If you had a line, 15 people up and said, you know which one do you think is going to do something drastic, she would never to bring a million years been close to that.

Jill: 3:41

I'm already getting teary-eyed because we haven't talked about who she was just like at her heart in so long, so I'm already like emotional. The jokester stuff. I was just literally telling somebody the story about the forks and you got, I think you guys placed the forks. No, we placed the forks in your lawn. We went on the middle of the night and placed the forks like a fork graveyard all over your lawn and then you guys tried to tie the tree trunk to the front of our front door so we couldn't get out of the house. But like Heather was behind all of that and she was like a little schemer, right. Yeah, we were having a party at our house and I wanted to invite several boys that I had crashes on and she encouraged that and so we like made invitations and dropped them in mailboxes. There's so many memories of her playing jokes like she liked to have a good time.

Scott: 4:27

You'd mentioned earlier that laugh that, laugh that little giggle was you knew bad stuff was going on.

Scott: 4:34

Yeah, she had plans that she was going to go through with them and joking around in general. But yeah, she was amazing. She was a sister, she was a daughter, but for us she was just an awesome, awesome friend. 27 years later, I think about her constantly and I often think what would she be like today? And I think she'd be the same. I think she'd be an awesome friend, awesome brother or sister. I think she'd be an awesome mom too, and unfortunately we didn't get to see that. So today we want to not only celebrate her, but we want to also make sure that folks out there kind of look and listen for possible signs. You mentioned it. We would never in a million years think it was something that she would do. So, you know, maybe nowadays, if we can dig a little deeper and, you know, maybe see if we can, you know, help out one person, that would be great.

Jill: 5:20

I think about this all the time. I don't know, even now, with the, I am now in my 40s, I'm a mom and if I look back I still don't see the signs. So I don't know how easy it is sometimes to see the signs.

Scott: 5:33

Yeah.

Jill: 5:33

But I think what's important and what we can hopefully help even just one person do is recognize certain things in themselves and spread the message of a better day lies just around the corner. Or you can get help or you can talk to somebody, things like that. There's a, there's a campaign or there was this campaign for, like LGBTQ plus youth, like it gets better, and I thought that was a great campaign for everyone, right. Like there's so much that awaits you in the future that you have no idea about. Right, you're stuck in bad days. Now.

Jill: 6:04

Bad days don't last forever and there is always help and there's always hope, and sometimes it's hard to get that help.

Jill: 6:10

I know for my own self, for my family. It's not always easy when you're in a shit place to pick up the phone and try and find a new therapist and new psychiatrist. You're often hit with roadblocks, whether they're insurance or people don't have time on their schedule, and so that's when you reach out to a friend or a family member and let them help you navigate that. But there is always help out there and there are always brighter days ahead, and I I wish Heather could have seen the future. I think she had temporary problems that could have been solved and she, I would assume, has had deeper issues that Scott we talked about this earlier maybe would have been recognized now or dealt with in a different way because we know so much more about mental health and medication to chemical imbalance. It's not somebody's fault where we say, like if you were diabetic, you would treat your diabetes with insulin. Mental illness could be a chemical imbalance and people need medication to help them and that's okay, yeah.

Scott: 7:04

Sitting down and researching for a chat. I did some kind of stats and I thought about how, back when we were in school you know, we graduated in 1996, there was a stigma about it, about mental health in general, but also from a suicide standpoint. That was not talked about at all and if you did talk about it, it was seen as you promoting it. You know, don't even put the idea in someone's head, don't mention the word suicide, because that's going to make someone do it and that was such a wrong idea for all of us. You know, now, over the years we've expanded our knowledge of mental health. We've expanded our potential chemical imbalance treatments. We've done a lot and you think that that would diminish these numbers and these numbers are growing at astronomical rates.

Scott: 7:42

You know, one of the numbers I looked at was the suicide rate in 1996 for 15 to 24 year olds I was 13% of the deaths were suicide. There was 31,000 people in 1996. In 2023, with better knowledge and the stigma being kind of withdrawn and you know medicine and all sorts of things were designed to really help folks that number has climbed to 49,500. That's crazy, you know. I know the world's kind of tough, but there's so many other options and hopefully we can get there and open people's eyes. You know, without getting into the specifics and the graphic details, you unfortunately were the one to find Heather. You know, again without getting into detail. Would you describe that to people listening?

Jill: 8:26

Yeah, and I hope you don't mind that I like go into the spiritual a little because I don't know if you remember this story, but it is a little freaky element to it. Yeah, but it was Christmas break between our first and second semester senior year and Heather went back to school early I didn't know why and our other friend, mike, was up at school. So they were the only two up in Rhode Island. The rest of us were home with our families and I was just sort of growing bored of being at home. And so I called Heather from my dad's house and said hey, I'm coming back early. If I was supposed to come back on Saturday, I was coming back Thursday. And we got into a little bit of a argument and I didn't realize why. It wasn't really an argument, but she's like why are you coming back early? Little attitude, I don't know. And coming back early, I want to come up. So I drove up four hours. It was snowing.

Jill: 9:14

I was very emotional because I was driving up to my last semester of senior year and my four years at URI had been amazing. I never wanted to leave. I'd still go back, happily Same here, and I was. I was very emotional about going back. And then I remember I got off the exit, for you know, to go towards our house. I stopped at the Wendy's drive-through. I had a car phone. It wasn't a mobile phone, I had a car phone. Oh, big time I know. Yeah, I had some swagger back then called Heather from our, called the house, and I left the message on the answering machine, on her voicemail, the answering machine saying hey, do you want anything?

Jill: 9:50

I'm coming home. Anyway, I got to our house and I parked in the driveway. I took my key. I went up to the front door Same key that had been used from September through December when we left for Christmas break and the key didn't work. The key would not go into the door. Now I knew that the same key was not used for the garage, but I was tired and 21. I went to the garage door and tried to open it. It didn't work. So I went back up to the front door, tried the key again. It did not work. I then took out my green, fabulous Nokia car phone and called Mike, who was at his house, you know, and they had been together. I called him and I said hey, my key is not working. You guys have a spare key. I don't know where Heather is. Can you come over with your spare key? He said Sure, I'll be over in a minute. He pulls up and he says my spare key is gone. Didn't realize why at the time, but his spare key was gone. He takes my key, he goes right up to my front door, puts it in and it works. And it hadn't worked five minutes earlier to this day.

Jill: 10:47

Believe somebody was looking after me and was making sure I did not go into that house alone. So we go into the house and nothing seems off and we're like Heather. Heather, we didn't know where she was. Her car wasn't out front. We go into the kitchen and there's a note it says Jill, so sorry, put the paraphernalia away. And I'm so sorry, and I was like what is going on?

Jill: 11:07

We then go into her room looking for her and there's cards on her bed, one addressed to the four girls and one addressed, I think it was Mike. I don't remember exact details. A little fuzzy, yeah, and we open up the card. It didn't say anything other than like I love you. I don't remember the specifics and Mike, unfortunately, had had a grandfather who passed from suicide and we both looked at each other and sort of knew he's like I'm going into the garage.

Jill: 11:33

Oh, I think the note in the kitchen said something like Don't go into the garage alone. There was a reason. We knew she was in the garage. So we kind of knew. He said I'm going in the garage. I said I'm not going in the garage. I said I'm calling 911. I called 911 and I said I think my roommate killed herself. I don't remember the conversation much.

Jill: 11:50

I do remember, a few minutes later, hearing the sirens. Mike went into the garage. He couldn't see the light had burnt out, so he couldn't see anything. So we didn't really see anything. Yeah, I heard the sirens coming, the fire, the fire truck arrived. There was snow on the ground too. So the fire truck arrives, firemen go in, they go down into the basement. We showed them where, and one comes up like a few minutes later and I said is she down there? And they're like yeah. I said, is she dead? And they said yes, from that point on you're just numb. Yeah, we waited for cops to arrive. We had to wait for the medical examiner and his car was stuck in the snow somewhere. And so they came into our house oh my god. And we sat down at the kitchen table You're in a fog. And they said we have to open all the windows. There was so much carbon monoxide in the house Also that if I had come in by myself, hadn't figured it out and gone to sleep, I probably would have been killed myself.

Scott: 12:43

Yeah.

Jill: 12:43

That is what they told me. I then had to call my other friends, so I think I called Marissa first. The rest is fuzzy. Who called who? It's fuzzy, I know the girls remember their individual stories and called my parents, my dad three, four hours away, and they packed up the car and drove up. It was like you were just going through the motion. I remember certain things, I can visualize certain things, but all of it is a fog. I will say there's also a funny memory in there. I like to try and add humor where we can or remember. There's always light in these moments. Heather's brother was friends with this guy, carl, who was a cop in town, and we called him Carl the Cop, ctc.

Scott: 13:21

I remember Carl the Cop.

Jill: 13:22

Carl the Cop, CTC. We had his picture hanging in our house. I don't know why, but it was on the refrigerator and the sheriff comes in and he looks at me and goes why is Carl hanging on your fridge? I was like Heather did that, Like that was back to the jokester theme. I was Heather, we had a picture of Carl the Cop hanging on a refrigerator and so there was a moment of levity in all of this. Oh my gosh.

Jill: 13:47

I mean, yes, I never saw her, thank God. But the PTSD that came along with that and the anxiety. I would have had anxiety and PTSD regardless. But I think the added piece of finding her in that moment has changed my life. The path went in a just totally different direction. But also the story of knowing somebody was looking after me. I've never known. I'm agnostic, I don't know what I believe in, I don't know if I believe in God, but I do believe there was some sort of force looking after me that day. But I was not alone when I walked into that house.

Scott: 14:17

That's so amazing.

Jill: 14:18

I guess. And then crazy things happened after that, even when all the girls got together, like there were stories of weird things happening that we looked at as a sign. I mean, maybe in the time we just needed it. We needed a sign because we were just 421-year-old kids who thought we were adults. Looking back now, as a mom, I can't imagine my child going through something like that or the way in which my life changed in an instant.

Scott: 14:43

So I had actually come up earlier. I was still working Don't want to brag Worked at a video store. People were like, what's that old guy? I had stayed up at school and I was working at the video store and one of my friends from home who didn't go to school that's came up to visit. We'll go out to some of the bars. There's some folks still floating around and we ran into Mike and Heather at Charlie O's that night. I never knew that. Yeah, we ran into them. Heather was very emotional. I introduced her to my friend and she was kind of sniffling and I was like what's the matter? She was like nothing, nothing, nothing Must be allergies. And Mike was like, yeah, she just drunken, she's just being emotional. And she gave me a hug, goodbye and excuse me, my buddy.

Scott: 15:23

I went back to my house and he was like I don't feel like hanging out here. There's no chicks, there's no nothing. I'm going home. I'm like really Just going to drive home in the snow and after a few drinks, you know, we're all juggernauts and we're all immortal. At that point we think and he's like yep, I'm just going to leave. And we left. I said, well, I'm not ready to go to bed and what we do. I got in the car and I drove around to your house because that's what we would always do, even though we lived like 100 feet away, we found it necessary at all times Drive, yeah, to get in the car and go around the corner. So I actually drove by your house and Heather's car was not out front, there were no lights on and I just kept going.

Jill: 15:58

I never knew that, Scott, and all these years I never knew that you saw her that night. You must have told us like 100 years ago, but I didn't know.

Scott: 16:04

I dealt with it for a good five, six years. You know, in my head I was like I would have driven through the garage door. I would have done this. There's no way. I would have known. There's absolutely no way.

Jill: 16:14

How could you have known?

Scott: 16:15

Kind of like a weird survivor's guilt that you deal with.

Jill: 16:18

I determined the date of her death. I was supposed to come back later. She had to do it early because I came back early. Scott, I've lived with that for 100 years. I have said this 100 times. I have talked about her suicide millions of times over the years.

Jill: 16:33

Every single person who's going to listen to this has had bad days. Every single person has said like I just don't want to go on. There is a huge difference between feeling depressed, feeling anxious and not wanting to deal with your life and actually taking the steps necessary to end it. There is something very different in that mind. It doesn't mean anything was wrong with her, but back to the whole point of not knowing as much about chemical imbalances and mental health. People can talk about all right, I don't want to live, shoot me, whatever. But it takes a very different person to go through what she went through. She methodically thought it out. She took a key from Mike's house so that he couldn't come save her if he had caught on. She wrote letters. She went into that car and turned on the ignition and sat there. She had time to get out and she did not. She really wanted to not be here anymore. That is the saddest thing, because we all know we could have helped if we had known, but there was no way to know.

Scott: 17:30

Yeah, yeah, I ended up coming back and I just went to bed and then a couple of my roommates came back that next day and I think it was you who called. You called us, evan picked the phone up. He just went white, just gone the color out of his face. And then he told us I mean, we were all obviously shocked. I was so unbelievably shocked because I had literally seen her that night. And you start putting the pieces together after the fact. It was just the tears, the hug, the driving around the corner and it was just so much. And you mentioned the 21. We were all 21. And that's such a fuzzy stage of life because you're technically an adult, you're like legally an adult but you're not really an adult. And we literally had to grow up. Like that minute, yeah, the minute we all found out that Heather had done that, we all had to grow up immediately. That's a lot for kids to do, you know. That's just. It's an astronomical amount of time and maturity to go through in 25 seconds.

Jill: 18:36

We were there like scary, or two days later. I can't imagine their grief. I do remember speaking to Mrs Benelog. We called her Mrs B and like she asked, like what you know. She was just looking for any answers and we didn't have them. I was fortunate that I kept up a relationship with Mrs B. She, unfortunately, has passed in the last few years. You know, 10 years later I saw her. 15 years later I saw her. She was still looking for answers and there were answers I still couldn't have.

Jill: 19:03

But yeah, I mean immediately after we all gathered at the Benelog House, I mean it was my first wake. I'm Jewish, you know we don't look at bodies. Well, this is another crazy story. But we get to the wake and we all, like we literally held hands and walking together. I mean I wouldn't. This is when I like learned to lean on my girlfriends. I mean I've always leaned on my friends. But we literally held hands, walking together, and we walked up to the casket together and she was dressed in Marissa's outfit. Sorry about that, but like her brother and sister had gone up and we all shared clothes, so Marissa's clothes had been in Heather's room and so they took a skirt and a shirt and they put it out. You know, that's what they buried her in and it was Marissa's. And Marissa got up to the coffin. She's like that's my outfit, and not in a mean way. She was emotional about it that her best friend was going to be buried in her outfit.

Jill: 19:58

And I think I said something like I think this is the last time we'll all be together and somebody everyone looked at me like fuck you, like why say that? It just added fuel to the fire? I know, but then in the back of my head I was still a 21 year old I remember the boy I was like hooking up with at the time had come from Rhode Island or wherever he was, and come to the wake and I was like, look who's here, like my crush, but Heather would have wanted that, of course. And then her nails were painted a funny color and we're like, oh my God, she would be fucking miserable that her nails were like salmon's ink and her lipstick was not a color she would wear. You know, yeah, the thing I was going to say about talking about growing up we I think our parents called our landlord, we didn't want to move back into that house and we had no choice, yeah. And so once again, the four of us went up together, held hands and walked through that front door. The bravery that took to do that and the props that I give my younger self and all of us to walk into that house after what had happened is amazing.

Jill: 20:57

And, as I mentioned, I'm Jewish. In the Jewish religion, we sit Shiva, and we decided we didn't want our house to be the place that people like wouldn't go to. So we decided we were going to have like a sit Shiva and we were going to invite people to our house, invite everyone to come in and say like there's nothing creepy about this house, this is our house. And we did that. I think it was helpful for us.

Jill: 21:17

Once again, like I don't know which one of us thought of that we were acting older than I expected us to be. But then again, a week later, we were all in therapy together. We should have kept going, but we didn't. And then that last semester, I mean, we used to sing the go-go song. Do you hear them? They talk about us. People would whisper about us because we were the girls who friend had committed suicide and I only had one class, so I had a lot of free time on my hands, which is not good when you're dealing with something traumatic, so I was basically inebriated 24 seven and that was the only way I could get through that last semester of college.

Scott: 21:52

I remember going to the wake and looking around and seeing everybody cry and I couldn't. I don't know why. I remember she wanted to ask me if I was okay and I was like, yeah, I'm fine and I wasn't fine, you're not fine, you just don't know how to process any of it. It didn't hit me until I was still working. At two or three days later I had to go to work. I had broken up with my ex-girlfriend at the time and she walked through the door and she was like hi, I heard, are you okay? And that made it real Like that was. You know, we knew.

Scott: 22:23

But once you know, the campus started to hear and you mentioned your bravery and I've said this to you girls a hundred times, well, maybe one time, but it was. I mean, that got me through that year, just watching you all take it in stride and, you know, just keeping a smile on your face as much as you could. And you live in your lives and it was. It was just really inspirational to me because I had a lot of cracks and we all did.

Jill: 22:52

We were just hiding it. I mean, yes, we had bravery, we got through it. None of us failed out. And it's a rumor you don't get all A's when your roommate dies in college. That was a bad rumor. People always ask me that.

Jill: 23:03

But I think about all of us. I mean to the degree, like my girlfriends. I know like the trajectory of our lives all changed in that moment and I can sit here and do you know a masterclass on which direction everyone went and how it affected their lives in some good ways and bad. I think you know we talked about this beforehand, but there were plenty of times in my life where I felt like at the end of my rope, but like suicide was never an option, because I know it gets better. I know that. So in some ways, heather saved my life. I know a few people I'm not going to mention names who are related to our friend group. Heather saved their lives too, for sure, because they knew the impact it would have and they realized it wasn't the answer.

Jill: 23:44

And so there are pros there that she ended up saving people's lives, but there are cons too. I mean I have two children, one's 15 now and one is 12. There are no children out there who don't suffer from anxiety and depression. But I'm a catastrophic thinker now. So if something is really bad, I worry that they're going to take their lives and that is no way to go through life and no way to go through parenting. They are aware, they know about Heather. I talked about her. I literally last month we were up in Rhode Island. I drove past the house. They know about her. It has affected my parenting 100% and my husband and I talk about it. He's like you think every problem they're going to commit suicide. It's a real issue.

Scott: 24:21

Yeah, no, I thought I had the same conversation. You know, I'm always concerned. You know, did we push this person's buttons too much? Did we do? Did we say something that was too mean? Or you never know, because we were in a situation where we didn't know. And it's interesting because there are almost textbook examples of what depression looks like and crisis thinking and that sort of thing. Nothing ever happens. And then you have somebody that there were no signs from our view and something did happen.

Jill: 24:48

You always say you never know what's going on inside somebody's mind. I mean, there have been a few high profile cases of college suicide. There was that one track athlete. She was from New Jersey, she had everything going for her and she jumped off a building at college. I think it's those ones that shock you the most, but those are the ones you have to look after, those who appear to have everything, appear to have it all together. You know they look like there's no cracks in their foundation. Those are the ones where you should make sure you're checking their foundation. But how can you right and to be their prying friend and annoying friend? I think it's very difficult to really then decide these to tell you the signs that people are getting their stuff away. Heather didn't give her shit away. She didn't give us anything.

Scott: 25:30

She took more of his clothes. We all have each other's clothes.

Jill: 25:32

But yes, you know, those signs weren't there. I don't know what the signs are anymore, but I do think social media and today's world is not helping our youth. They look at everyone's lives and think everything's perfect and I try and tell my kids like it's Instagram versus reality. It's not Instagram for them, it's like Snapchat, I guess. But I can't imagine the added pressure if we had that when we were in college. But I think that's adding to it.

Scott: 25:57

Most definitely so. The wake of the funeral or over, you come back to school. Does the university contact you or do anything specific to help out?

Jill: 26:05

No, the president of the Pan-Hellenic Foundation because some of us were in sororities came to the wake. After that, there was nothing, not one phone call, not one letter, nothing. I actually wrote to the school years ago and made mention of it, but there was nothing. They did not reach out to see if we were okay and I think that's. I mean, look, it wasn't literally 100 years ago. They should have known better and I think they just wanted to brush it under the rug.

Scott: 26:29

I mean, when you think about it, it's a huge PR issue for recruiting and our landlord, our landlord's like please don't tell anyone.

Jill: 26:36

He wanted to make sure he could fill his house the next year. Really, Nobody wanted to talk about it. I mean, now there is this Heather Fund. It is started at URI by the Venowalves. There is a walk every year where they raise money for the Heather Fund. It's through the counseling center and they offer different services. Stuff exists, but I still don't know if it goes far enough. We need to continue the conversation, continue the dialogue, which is why my friends and I are going up October 15th to URI to do the walk. I also happened to be in possession of all of the albums that were put together for Heather's family at the time of the funeral. I have them here. Heather's sister sent them to me. Me and my friends have never all been together to look at them all together. So we are going to do that. We're going to toast to Heather and throw some drinks back also and celebrate her life and do what we can to raise money to help the Heather Fund. That's fantastic.

Scott: 27:28

I had borrowed a CD from Heather back when we had CDs after she passed away. I still had it and I selfishly kept it because I wanted something of hers. I used to pull it out all the time and pop it in. Do you remember the band Second Step? No, it was a funky reggae band that used to play at the bars all the time. Well, maybe it rings a bell, but I ended up keeping it and I would pop it in every so often. Now I don't have any technology to pop it in too.

Jill: 27:51

No, you do not.

Scott: 27:53

I'm like what do I do with this thing now? Yeah, so I have to go to the thrift store and see if I could buy a CD player. It was something that I didn't think of at first, and then I just wanted to keep. Obviously, I think of her all the time. I wanted that piece to keep for myself.

Jill: 28:04

It's interesting. She had a ring that I remember and I know, karen, her sister had it afterwards and I can picture it and for the last how many years since we graduated I've looked for a ring similar to it and I've never found that exact ring. But literally every time I go online or in a store I look for something similar to that ring and I've never found anything that quite matches it.

Scott: 28:24

So one of the other brave things that you all did was you had a graduation party in the house?

Jill: 28:29

Yes, and there was video proof.

Scott: 28:31

There is. I saw it. It's shocking. I have it on YouTube. What was I mean? You had obviously had people over. We had gone over. It took us a little while to just kind of get settled back in, but it was very interesting. It was just nice to have that party and that was something that people all over were having parties, but we wanted to make sure that that was what we went to. That was the part that we went to. That was where we were going to spend our kind of last night as college students. What were the emotions like? Do you remember the emotions of that setting that up and actually go on without Heather?

Jill: 29:00

I feel like it was a conscious decision to have it. We I mean talk about emotions. Like I said before, it was the culmination of four years, the best four years of my life, and I can still honestly say that, even with this tragedy that occurred and leaving the place where Heather had been with us and she didn't get to graduate, I think all of us were trying to be positive and, like, honestly, like, celebrate our accomplishments, celebrate ourselves I think we realized we were brave at the time celebrate life and also, like I don't know, pour one out and celebrate the amazing four years we had and, like sort of say goodbye to the end of that era. I don't think we had any second thoughts about throwing that party. That's not the right word. Like we said, we should do a party. We made the decision to do it and we never looked back. One roommate wasn't able to really be there as much. It was just too much for her. We had to try and go on with life as best we could, and maybe we were faking it and we were probably just really drunk to just get through that. I mean, like I said, my whole last semester is sort of a blur, but I remember thinking well, life is short, we have to do this, we have to celebrate and we need to go on.

Jill: 30:09

The real depression honestly came after leaving school. I left my entire support system. I moved home to New Jersey Mike was nearby and Mike and I were like attached at the hip, as we had been since. We have gone through this whole thing together. But my entire friend group was gone, my entire support system, everyone who knew what happened and, like you, leave these four amazing years and leaving this tragedy and leaving all your best friends. And I have to get a job. I mean, it was like all the shitty things happening and that's when my real depression came in. And about a year later, I moved into the city and I would say I became like a wild one. You know, within reason, but I was like making up for something, filling holes in my heart. I wasn't in therapy at the time and I was partying to fill those voids.

Scott: 30:51

Yeah, that's probably like the darkest time for me too. I was still hurting and reeling from Heather and I just was not prepared to grow up and I remember, you know, having those terrible thoughts myself and thinking, you know, it's just easier to get rid of the whole situation and I thought about the impact that the loss of Heather had on us and I couldn't do that to my friends and my mother and my family. I just I couldn't. So in that regard it definitely, you know, saved me as well. Wish there had been a better way to save me.

Jill: 31:23

Of course, yeah.

Scott: 31:24

Well, jill, this has been awesome, catching up with you talking about our friend and she's one of a kind, and I hope that if anybody's listening, that there's help out there. There's friends, family. I'm going to make sure that I put all the numbers in the show notes, but the one to remember is 988. That is the suicide, financial, suicide prevention hotline. There's someone to talk to, there's someone to listen. Please give that a shot before you make any other decisions, because there's a lot of pain that goes around with all that, but you're definitely not alone.

Jill: 31:58

I feel like I didn't do this topic justice. I feel like I can talk about it forever, but I feel like we did header justice. But I don't know that you could ever do this topic justice. Everything in my mind just keeps going back to you never know what lies around the corner. Right, you think you're at the end of a dead end street, but then there's something waiting for you. It might not be tomorrow, it might not be the next day, but things always turn around. Things can always get better. Yeah, it's tough, Life's tough, and I think you also have to realize life's tough, but there will always be good moments too.

Scott: 32:28

Yeah, well, thanks again, jill for being on. This is great. Heather, we love you, we miss you.

Jill: 32:33

I can't say something like that without breaking down.

Scott: 32:37

Yeah, that was a tough one.

Jill: 32:39

We leave sunflowers for her at Coast Guard whenever we go. Yeah.

Scott: 32:43

It's funny. I plant sunflowers, big skyscrapers, sunflowers in my backyard every year For her. I can never grow good ones, they always die and I always think she's messing with me.

Jill: 32:52

She's for sure messing with you. Like I said, there's a whole like another podcast of all the ways she messed with us. After the fact, there were so many things that were like, oh my god, this had to be her. But she's definitely looking down on us now, Scott, and honestly laughing at the fact that we're both sitting here crying. We're both sitting here crying and she is making fun of us.

Scott: 33:12

Rolling a rise at us, as always. Absolutely All right. Well, thank you again and again. Everything will be in the show notes and we thank you for listening.