My Why

Father’s Day, 2015

I’m sitting on my back deck in a trance-like state, exhausted.

A hectic business trip culminated in me “sleeping” inside O’Hare Airport overnight to ensure I’d be able to board a flight early enough to celebrate Father’s Day with my family.

My phone buzzes.

It’s my brother. He apologizes before delivering some devastating news.

“Metzger is gone.”

Brian had struggled with addiction for years and I don’t remember if my brother told me or if I felt the need to ask.

The news didn’t snap me out of my trance, though. If anything, I fell into it deeper.

A minute or two later, I knew I had to call Macker.

As close as I was with Brian, his relationship with Chris McDonald predated my own by at least a decade.

For the first – and last – time in my life, I prefaced what I had to say by seriously asking somebody to sit down. My stomach turned during the momentary pause before Macker soberly asked, “What?”

It was as if he was torn between wanting to know immediately and a desire to remain in this moment as long as possible, seeming to realize that whatever I was about to tell him was going to come in the form of a wrecking ball to some portion of his life.

My pain simultaneously lightened and became heavier with the realization that what I was feeling paled in comparison to what Brian’s parents and brother must have been experiencing.

I also realized it was my responsibility to inform our closest friends from UMass and that I’d need to do so one by one. Text messages were certainly out of the question.

For some reason, by the time I spoke with Craig, I was in an upstairs closet.

Craig, who we all call Tooch, is one of the most gentle, compassionate people I’ve ever met. He had an especially close relationship with Brian.

It crushed me to be the one to tell him and as I did, the tears burst out for the first time.

May, 2018

I never realized how grateful I was to my brother for bracing me and thankful I did the same for Macker until a text message lit up my phone three years later devoid of any such consideration.

The careless tone gave me momentary hope that this was a mistake, a misunderstanding or even possibly some sick joke.

I immediately called Rocky, who erased any hope of that, confirming there was no misunderstanding.

Christian Diaz had passed away.

Christian too had struggled with addiction and while I would eventually learn the details of exactly what happened, I didn’t need them at the time.

Once again, my own pain felt trivial as I thought of the pain of my friend’s family, which for Christian, meant his twin brother, Antoine, his longtime girlfriend Tania and especially, his two daughters.

Aside from the loss of a child, it’s difficult to imagine a loss as painful as that of a twin.

In 20-plus years, I can’t think of a single instance when I would use the word “relaxed” to describe Antoine and it became obvious the passion he was feeling after Christian’s passing was bringing him peace.

In the immediate aftermath, I heard countless people caution Antoine to slow down and take a break for himself. At one point, I gave him the same advice, but it didn’t take long to realize the fuel that was pushing him wasn’t going to burn out anytime soon.

This wasn’t Antoine keeping his mind occupied to avoid confronting a painful truth. No, he truly felt called to honor both Christian and Brian, who was also a dear friend.

He didn’t know what he wanted to do. He just knew he wanted to do something and he wanted to bring attention to the Forest Park neighborhood they all grew up in.

The Forest Park Project actually had a name before it had a defined purpose.

Given their personalities, it was no surprise there was a long list of people eager to help.

If you didn’t know both Brian and Christian, you might not recognize the similarities between a white kid from a family well-known in the city for generations and a Dominican kid who bounced between a crowded home with his Abuela and his adopted father.

But if you knew them both, the list of similarities is probably too long to list.

The commonality that sticks out most to me is how they seemed to know everyone. They didn’t just know who everyone was, they knew everyone.

They took active interests in getting to know anybody who crossed their paths because they were genuinely interested in everyone. It’s hard to imagine anybody who knew them considering themselves mere acquaintances of either.

And if you were one of their closest friends, you cherished that relationship.

They didn’t just make you feel comfortable opening up and being vulnerable, they proved they cared and could be trusted so much that you actually felt you were betraying the relationship if you held back.

“I know we need to do something, I just don’t know what.”

Antoine said some version of this dozens of times during the initial weeks of the Forest Park Project.

Eventually, myself and Pat Gottschlicht sat down with John Evon and Steve O’Neil of the Hampden County Sheriff’s Department for guidance.

The establishment of a sober house was one idea that’d been kicked around during meetings in the Hunter’s Room of the Munich Haus, albeit a daunting one. But after speaking with Evon and O’Neil, that vision was crystallized.

It hit home with me because I can vividly remember conversations with both Brian and Christian about how much they valued the homes they’d been in and how passionate each was about the need for more.

Evon and O’Neil also put us in touch with the Michael J. Dias Foundation. Our collaboration with this group of extraordinarily talented, compassionate and generous people from Ludlow ended up becoming a merger of sorts.

They welcomed a handful of the Forest Park Project members to their Board of Directors and together, we embarked on the mission of establishing Christian & Brian’s House.

After a great deal of fundraising and hard work, Christian & Brian’s House was officially opened in the Summer of 2020 and currently hosts more than 20 men working seriously on their recovery.

I’m inspired by all the members of the Forest Park Project and the Michael J. Dias Foundation as well as the stories of hope, achievement and gratitude from the residents of not just Christian & Brian’s House, but also Michael’s House and Sean’s Place.

Personally, I’m grateful to both Christian and Brian for being the conduits to me being surrounded by these people.

But if Christian and Brian were to ask me why I’m involved – and I gave them the honesty they deserved – I’d offer three reasons.

It makes me feel closer to each of them even though they’re gone.

It makes me feel like I’m honoring their memories by working on something they valued so dearly.

But, perhaps most importantly to me, it shows my own children just how much of an impact my two friends had and still have on my life. And how much I miss them both.

That’s My Why.

What's Yours?

-Christian McCollum
Board of Directors, Forest Park Project & Michael J. Dias Foundation