"Just hours earlier, the then-college freshman had received a devastating late-night phone call: her mother, Lesley had died. "My dad was like, 'Lauren, get on the next plane and I'll pick you up," Sisler, 40, tells TODAY.com. But when she arrived, it was not Butch who was waiting at baggage claim. It was her uncle with even more unimaginable news: Butch had inexplicably passed away, too."
"Sisler, 18 at the time time, remembers feeling frozen, the words barely sinking in as her mind struggled to process what she was hearing. "I'd talked to both of them the night they died and they sounded totally normal and happy," she says. "It just didn't make sense." Her older brother, Allen, was equally bewildered. He, too, hadn't noticed anything amiss. Butch and Lesley had been in good spirits and appeared to be perfectly healthy."
""I was in total shock," she says. The questions and confusion lingered for months, until ninety days later, when the toxicology reports arrived, bringing answers that Sisler had been desperately waiting for. The revelations would upend her world. Lesley and Butch had each ingested an entire pack of fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid. Their deaths, at ages 45 and 52, respectively, were ruled accidental overdoses."
Lauren Sisler received a late-night call that her mother had died and then learned upon arrival that her father had also died. Both parents had appeared healthy and in good spirits in recent conversations, leaving family members bewildered. Toxicology reports revealed that Lesley and Butch had each ingested a full pack of fentanyl, and their deaths were ruled accidental overdoses. The parents had been silently struggling with an addiction to pain medication that was hidden from their children. Sisler recalls a supportive, close-knit childhood and strong family attention to the children’s pursuits.
Read at TODAY.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]