“Your Brother Is Dead” — The Call That Changed My Life Forever

Four years later, I'm barely uncovering just how much the unexpected death of a loved one has affected me.

One of the last times I saw Riley in person, driving around Okahumpka, Florida.

Note: I wrote this last year on my personal blog on the three-year anniversary of my brother’s death. That was before I found Substack, and now that I do most of my writing here, it’s been kind of weirdly stuck over there, all alone on WordPress as an “orphan” post.

One year later, I’m bringing it over here so the memory of my brother can rest with all the other content I create.

If you’ve already read this, I’m sorry for sharing it here again (well, kinda, sorta, but not really). If you’ve never read it before, well… this was the event that got me started writing long-format content like this in the first place. So, here’s the story behind that.

Exactly four years ago, to this day, I got a call that changed my life forever.

On a hot Friday night, September 25th, 2020, I was playing with my kids outside in front of our house in Yuma, Arizona.

At our house, Friday night is “family night,” when we spend the evening together talking, playing games, watching a movie, socializing, and just hanging out.

The rules are pretty simple: no friends, no meetings, no obligations, only Stauffers are allowed, and we just spend time together.

We don’t always have a plan, exactly, for what we’re going to do, but it’s one night each week, and we always know for sure that we’ll all be at home together.

This night, the kids were riding their bikes in the street with the other neighborhood kids, and I was playing catch with my oldest son, Kendrick.

The sun had already set a few hours ago, and it was dark, but our house had a streetlamp out front, which gave us plenty of light to keep playing into the night. The stars were out, and I could smell the earth in the air. It was a wonderful evening.

We called him “Smiley Riley” because that little man had quite a smile.

For context, Yuma is one of the hottest cities in America, and this night was no different. It had been over 100 degrees that day, and even into the evening, it was still nearly 90 degrees even after sunset.

I’ll admit, I was feeling a bit loopy from running around, throwing baseballs back and forth with my son, breathing heavily, and getting winded while also sipping on a beer to stay hydrated.

I had a cold, IPA sweating in one hand, and a baseball glove in the other. It was all so gloriously American… a 21st-century version of a Norman Rockwell painting. Just good, clean, wholesome family fun.

We were all running around, talking, laughing, and just doing our thing. Then, out of the blue, I felt my phone ring in my back pocket.

That’s weird, I thought. Who would call me at this hour?

I was annoyed. I set down my beer and baseball glove and fished the phone out of my pocket and looked at the screen.

It was my dad.

“Missed call,” my phone said.

Hmm… that’s strange, I thought as I glanced at the clock. It was 9:13 p.m.

Oh, no, I thought.

My dad is an early riser and an early sleeper. He turns into a zombie around 8:00 p.m. But he was calling me after 9:00, which was very weird.

Dad lives in Florida, and I live in Arizona. He’s three hours ahead of me, so, doing some quick mental math, I realized that 9:13 p.m. my time meant it was 12:13 a.m. his time.

Whatever he was calling me about, it was going to be very bad news.

I noticed that he didn’t leave me a voicemail. That was also weird. I stared at the screen, trying to think of what to do next. Should I call him back?

As I was mulling it over, the phone rang again. It was him again.

For context, I do not like being surprised in life, especially with bad news. So, my mind was rapidly calculating every scenario I could possibly think of, trying to guess what on earth he was going to say before he could say it.

If I beat him to the punch, and I’m already prepared for what he’s going to say, it will make it easier to accept, I thought.

The phone call I wish I had never answered.

As I pressed the phone to my ear, I anticipated what he was going to say.

He’s going to tell me that Grammy or Grandpa died.

That was it. That had to be it. What else could it be? They’re both in their 80s, and Grammy’s already had multiple bouts with cancer.

This is the call I’ve been preparing myself for over the past few years, I told myself. It’s time to be brave.

“Hi, Dad,” I said, shaking with nervousness.

I just knew that whatever he would say next would change my life forever. But nothing—nothing—could have prepared me for what he actually said.

“Hi Ron, this is your father. I have some very bad news.”

Okay, here we go, I thought. Brace for impact.

I noticed that he was speaking in a shockingly cold, mechanical, almost alien tone of voice. He sounded like a robot or a stranger I’d never spoken to before. It was like he was a messenger who didn’t know me and had some bad news to share, but he wanted to make sure I was the right person to deliver the message to first.

I swallowed hard as my heart beat furiously in my chest. I tightened my resolve and prepared for the worst. “Okay… I’m ready,” I said, lying to him.

“Today, your brother Riley was visiting Colorado Springs. He was hiking around in the Garden of the Gods…”

Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on… WHAT? I thought.

I was completely confused: this had totally taken a weird turn. Why was he talking about Riley, the youngest person in our family?

I could feel my blood pulsing hard through my eardrums as I tried to contemplate all of this in a split second.

He just told me he had bad news… why is he getting distracted and talking about Riley? What does that have to do with Grammy or Grandpa dying?

“He was taking pictures of rocks and flowers and he fell over and had a heart attack… and now he’s dead.”

Of all the things I had ever been told in my entire life that took the breath out of my lungs, this was the most shocking.

I heard the words coming out of Dad’s mouth, but I couldn’t possibly comprehend what he was saying.

Wait, what? I wondered. Riley? RILEY?!

My baby brother? The one who had barely turned 18 years old just two months ago? Dad was now telling me that Riley was dead? From a HEART ATTACK?! DEAD?

WHAT?! NONE OF THAT MADE ANY SENSE AT ALL!

Here I was, having prepared myself to hear about the death of a family member I knew and loved who was very old, but now my dad was telling me about the death of a family member I knew and loved who was very young.

It was all so shocking, so bizarre, so sudden, and so… utterly pointless.

I couldn’t have been more dazed if I had gotten an uppercut to the face from Mike Tyson himself.

My youngest brother was dead?

Of all the nine kids in our family, how could it possibly be the youngest who died first?

Honestly, I don’t even remember the rest of the phone call. I just know it was very short.

Dad relayed a message. I received the message. That was about it.

I may have said something like, “Okay, thanks for telling me,” and hung up. I literally don’t recall anything I said in response.

What I do recall is hanging up the phone and looking down in astonishment, at Austin, my youngest son, who, by now, was visibly unsettled by my tone of voice on the phone and knew something was terribly wrong.

I reached out to him and grabbed him, squeezing him very tight.

Tears flooded my eyes. My dad just told me that his youngest son had died. I looked down at Austin and thought, “This is my youngest son. This is my Riley.”

If our roles had been reversed, and I had to call my dad with this kind of news, I would be telling him that Austin had died.

But Austin hadn’t died. He was alive; I was holding him right now.

I cried as I squeezed him tight. He looked up at me, and he started crying too. I hadn’t even told him what happened, but he knew it was very bad.

It felt like my head was spinning, so I let go of him and walked toward the house.

Almost numb and nearly unable to comprehend what I had just been told, I entered the front door, found my wife, and told her: “I need to make an announcement to the whole family. Please tell them all to come inside.”

She sensed the urgency of the moment and called all the kids inside the house. I heard the inevitable chorus of “Awww, Mom! Why do we have to come inside? It isn’t even bedtime yet!”

I sat down at the head of the table as the kids slowly sauntered into the house, annoyed, then sat down for what they were sure would be some obnoxious “family announcement” I was about to make.

But when they saw my face, they all got very quiet and very serious. I told them what happened.

“Kids,” I said, “Uncle Riley was out hiking today in the mountains in Colorado… and he fell over and died from a heart attack.”

They all looked at me with shock on their faces. At first, they thought I was joking, but it was immediately apparent that I wasn’t kidding.

We discussed it further, in more detail, but once again, I really don’t remember what happened for the rest of the evening.

Clearly, “family night” was ruined.

I think perhaps some of the kids went outside to play again, trying to process the announcement that was, at that time, the most serious news they’d ever been told.

But I just sat at the table in utter shock, trying to regain my bearings about the new reality—my new reality and our new reality.

After this awful night, my life began a long season filled with intense retrospection and confusion.

How on earth do you make sense of a life that ends before it really begins?

Riley had just celebrated his 18th birthday in May. He was barely even a legal adult. I looked back on the 18 years my youngest sibling had on this earth, and I was stumped.

I felt angry and cheated.

What was it all about? What did it all mean? WHAT WAS THE POINT?!!!

I was consumed with a big question: why would God bring someone into this world and then take him away just when his life was getting interesting? …when it was just starting?

Over the next few weeks, I helped coordinate the many details for the funeral home, including death certificates, airplane rides, and all the logistics for bringing dozens of family members from multiple different states across five different time zones to meet in Colorado and have a remembrance service.

I created a fundraiser on GoFundMe and was humbled to see just how many generous people donated to help pay for the unexpected financial costs that piled up very quickly as I dealt with the aftermath of a surprising death.

The whole time, throughout paying the bills, making phone calls, and writing thank you notes, I just couldn’t stop thinking about Riley’s life.

I felt like his life had been leading to something that could have been so great but was ended… so completely, pointlessly, prematurely.

I played “what if?” games in my head over and over again a thousand times.

What if he hadn’t died… what could he have done with his life?

All of this made me think even harder about my own life.

What had I been doing when I was just 18? How much living had I done by the time I reached his age?

One month before I got this terrible phone call, I had just turned 35. That made me nearly twice Riley’s age… and that forced me to ask myself a horrible question.

“What had I done with my life in TWO of Riley’s lifetimes?”

This self-critical line of inquiry sent me into a downward spiral of thoughts, emotions, memories, regrets, and, eventually, a full-blown mid-life crisis.

I had a lot of questions but very few answers. I pondered it all, trying to make sense of his life, but even more, trying to make sense of our lives as siblings and of my own life.

The four remaining Stauffer boys, with Riley being conspicuously absent.

And that was four years ago. Today, I’m still pondering that question.

His death still doesn’t make any sense to me. It still makes me angry. It still confuses me. I still have more questions than answers, and on this side of heaven, I don’t believe I’ll get any answers.

I discovered many things through the experience of managing a GoFundMe account for a person who has died. One of the most important lessons I learned was that most people don’t have anything intelligent to say when someone dies.

That was annoying at first. “I’m sorry for your loss” seemed as cold and uncaring as a jerk who says something offensive, then says “Well, I’m sorry if you were offended” as their non-apology apology.

But really, that doesn’t bother me anymore because there’s nothing good to say when someone dies.

There’s nothing funny to say.

There’s nothing smart to say.

There’s nothing clever to say.

There’s nothing intelligent to say.

Attempt to do any of the above, and you will come across as rude, uncaring, or like you’re an insensitive asshole. Basically, the only thing you can say that makes any sense is: “I’m sorry.”

No, it doesn’t help. It doesn’t make anything better. But it’s the only truly honest thing you can say.

Perhaps you can follow that up with: “Let me know if I can help,” if you actually know the family and feel like you can do something genuinely helpful.

But that’s about it. There are no good answers. There are just questions.

Today, I’m reflecting on all of this. I’m not ashamed to say that even four years later, I still don’t have a lot to say.

I even feel like what I’m writing here is unhelpful or inconclusive. I don’t have any way to wrap it up nicely with a bow. There’s no big lesson to share or nugget of wisdom for anyone reading to take away.

It feels horrible to even add my normal “click here to share this article” button. Because if people want to share it, that’s fine, but that’s not why I’m writing this. Honestly, I don’t even know for sure why I’m writing it.

All I know is that four years ago, my brother died.

And I still can’t believe he’s really gone.

And my life has changed forever.

And I’m still not okay with it.

And I’m still heartbroken.

And I’m still not over it.

That’s all.