In Memory of Kevin

In Loving Memory Of
Kevin Roger Bannister
June 8th 1978 - September 14th 2010



Tuesday evening my friend Melissa called me to tell me that another friend, Jeremy, told her our mutual friend Kevin Bannister had died, and to go look at his facebook page. So she did, and it had lots of people that had posted saying "RIP" "you will be missed" etc. So I jumped on there and started looking at everything I could find, e-mailing people, scanning people's pages to try to figure out what the heck happened.

But to back it up, Kevin was one of my very best friends when I was 15. And we stayed friends for years and years and years....

1993





1995





1998



He was such a huge part of my youth that most of my memories of a teenager involve him in some way. He was just one of my best friends.

Of course life happens, and somewhere along the way we lost contact. I can't even remember the last time I seen him, which makes me very sad. I can vividly remember the first day I met him in September 1993, but yet I can't remember the last time I saw him. I'm thinking it was somewhere around 2004, but I'm not sure. He would pop up on e-mail, or Myspace and most recently Facebook every now and again, but he had moved to Tulsa and we just weren't close any longer. But that doesnt change the fact that I love him so very much, and I treasure the friendship we had, and he was a huge part of my life at one point in time.

And in fact he was just in town in mid-august, and I was really bummed that I didn't see him. I had posted on his facebook to come see me, and he had said he probably would, and then he just never did and I never came back and asked why, I was just disappointed.

So through my obsessive search to find answers, I was reading his mom's facebook pages and posts, and his wife's posts and I was able to figure out from things they posted that he had taken his own life on September 14th, which was his wife's birthday. (They weren't married, but I'm just gonna call her his wife, because they were together 5 years, he had proposed, they had rings, they just never got married.)

Now I knew they had split mid-august right before he came here, because he had posted something about it. So I just figured he couldn't handle the split and he killed himself, which was crazy to me.

This was a guy that always was laughing and joking and being a goofball. I can still hear his laugh in my head, he was always laughing. And I can't imagine him in such a dark place that he would do that. And he has a 9 year old son who lives here in MWC with his mom, and a 2 year old son with his wife, and I can't see him wanting to leave them behind, it just baffles me. And to be so selfish to do it on her birthday, so that every year on a day that she should be celebrating, she will be mourning and grieving. I just don't get it.

And so I cried for 2 days, I couldn't even help it, I just kept crying. I pulled out pictures and old diaries and listened to old songs that reminded me of him, and I just cried and cried and cried.

The most recent picture his mom had on her Facebook account (only like 1 of 3 pictures she had on there)




After I found out I just knew I had to do something, I was sad it had already been a few weeks and we had missed the funeral and I felt like we needed to have a memorial and pay tribute to our friendship and his life. So I just decided that Saturday we were going to the park and I sent out an invite on facebook and had all of our friends post it on their facebook in case they had friends that i didn't that might know him and want to go. During this time I had also e-mailed his mom and his wife on facebook, and it took several days but they both eventually e-mailed me back. First it was his mom who said he didn't have a funeral, only a viewing before he was cremated, so she wanted to come to this, which of course I said she was welcome to do so. I just felt really sad that he didn't have a funeral. On friday his wife, Melissa, emailed me and told me that Kevin's step-mom said he didn't deserve a funeral since he took his own life so she refused to pay for one, and that Melissa was very disappointed in his family for that, and she was going to come. Now I was just angry, because I don't care how your life ends, everyone deserves to have a funeral and to have the people who loved them pay tribute to them. And who are we to judge? We may not understand, but obviously he was wrestling with some pretty heavy stuff and things he just couldn't deal with, so why would we punish him for being in so much pain that he couldn't see any other options?

So this was going to be Kevin's only "funeral", 3 weeks after his death. I thought, oh my goodness, if he can see us here on earth, how awful would that be for him? He thought no one was there for him, and it turns out mostly to be true. How awful that he was dead for 3 weeks before his "friends" even knew. How awful that his family didn't see that he was worthy of a funeral. How amazingly sad and terrible is that? My heart just aches. I felt like my memorial wasn't nearly worthy of what he deserved to have.

So Saturday came.

I scanned the 90 pictures I pulled out of photo albums of him and played a slideshow on my lap top at the park, but it was so bright out there you couldn't really see them. I had burned copies of them from his mom and his children though.




I had memorial programs printed up with pictures of him and some funeral poems on it. I got white roses and put little pictures of him on it with "In loving Memory, Until we meet again my friend" on each one. I had brought out balloons to release, and when we first got there and were setting up, the wind blew over the vase of roses onto the ground which not only got them muddy, but also got all the pics wet that had just been printed on the copmuter so the majority of them were now ruined, and in the midst of that the balloons came loose from the handle of the CD player where I had tied them and flew away. Deep breaths. Jamie was on her way so I had her stop and get more balloons, and we just cleaned up the roses as best we could. :(





I had printed up a picture of him and them put the "If tears could build a stairway" poem on it, and here is his mom Sherrie, and his older son Landon reading it together.




This is his ex Tiffany with their son Landon.




for the first hour we just talked, shared memories, looked at pictures....



Then once we were sure everyone was there that was coming we got started with the memorial

I read a eulogy of sorts, about my memories of Kevin, and read a poem I had written about our friendship back in 1996. It was REALLY hard to get through, and I wasn't sure I was going to make it, but everytime I got choked up and started crying, I just took a few deep breaths and steadied myself and kept going, because I swore to myself that I was going to make it through it, I was going to honor his memory.

We played some songs that were his favorites or were just fitting.

we tried to have a candlelit chain, where we light one another's candles from someone next to us, in a circle, but the wind wouldn't let us.....

His wife melissa is in the flannel shirt, she is the mother of his younger son Kasey.




we wrote messages to Kevin onto balloons.....






and we sent them into the sky.....









We toasted mountain dew, because he used to love to drink it when we were teenagers....





And I can't figure out for the life of me why he would want to leave these two beautiful boys behind. How could he look at them and not want to see them grow up, and be a part of it? I just don't understand..... :(







His wife sent her son back to Tulsa with some family that came with her, and stayed for the night with Kevin's mom. Kevin was a pool shark that loved going to this tiny bar right by my house called Booger Red's (he in fact took me there for my 21st birthday, lol) and he had a plaque with his pic and name hanging in it for a pool tounrament he played in, and Melissa said he talked about this plaque all the time, and this place all the time, so she just wanted to see it. So we went out there,and we found the plaque and took pictures of it, and somehow, though we sat right next to the speakers and it was karaoke night and it was loud and crazy, we managed to talk for like 2 hours. And just talked and cried and talked and cried and told me all of these things.

She said he was the love of her life, he was her best friend, and she only broke up with him because he was just going down and down into this spiral, he just couldn't quit drinking and he had 3 DUI's and he had his license revoked and his family treated him poorly and he didn't have any friends and he was withdrawing from everyone, and he just couldn't pull himself out of this abyss, and she told him she was dragging her and the kids (she has an 8 year old daughter from a previous relationship) down with him, and that she couldn't let him do that, and she had tried everything she could and she couldn't help him, that he was going to have to find it in himself to help himself and that was the only way things were going to change. And so although she says she will not blame herself, that she fully understands it was his own choice and it wasn't her fault, she still feels like she abandoned him when he needed her most. He actually called her and the last words he said were "How does it feel to know you have the ablity to take someone's life from them?" and he hung up. She said she called the police and told them to get over there (he was staying at his dad & step-moms where his younger half brothers also lived), and started calling the house phone over and over again, It was 9pm. She said no one answered the phone, but they were all there. She said the step-mom said she heard it ring but just assumed someone else would get it. The brother said he had a test the next day in college and he was asleep. No one answered the phone. Kevin went into the garage and hung himself. The police got there and just asked to see Kevin (they hadn't talked to her yet so they had no idea why the police were there)and they said "Oh he might be down the street at a friends" just to get them to go away because they all smoke pot and didn't want the cop in the house. The cop left to go down the street, and the brother went into the garage to clean up their paraphanelia down there, and discovered Kevin. His whole family was there and they didn't notice.

But even as teenagers he didn't have a relationship at all with his dad & step-mom, and his one with his mom was pretty darn rocky. And I guess although he tried to be in his dad's life, they never really treated him like he mattered much, is what Melissa said. And he still didn't have a good relationship with his mom at all. Melissa said he had one real friend in Tulsa, and even then it wasn't a real close friendship. He felt alone in the world, and he felt like his kids and their moms would be better off if he wasn't a part of it because he felt to worthless and like he would never be anything or do anything with his life, and htat just breaks my heart. He left letters for his children and his wife telling them to do better, to make something of themselves and not to be like him. And it breaks my heart.

And I feel like this memorial I put on, is too little too late. That I should have let him know somehow that I still cared and that he still meant the world to me. And I was searching in my e-mail and facebook for some sort of proof that I had tried to reconnect, or let him know that I cared, and it wasn't there. I mean I did tell him I missed him and I that I wished he would come see me when he was in town, but when he didn't show up, I didn't say anything. I should have, because I really was disappointed, and I should have told him that, I guess I took it for granted that he would know. But I mean how could he? I can't even remember the last time I saw him, how could he know that I still cared about him? I should have checked to see why he didn't come see me, and let him know I was disappointed, because that would tell him that I cared. By not saying anything, it was like I didn't really care that he didn't show up. And I had invited him to several things over the last several months on facebook, BBQ's and what not and he would post that he couldn't make it, but I didn't respond back to him, not to say darn I wish he could come, nothing. And I figure by not saying anything, that meant to him I didn't really care. And I don't even know why I didn't, I just didn't do it. And I know, I know you can't blame yourself, and that I shouldn't feel guilty because I had no idea he was in such a bad place or else I would have reached out to him, but it doesn't change the fact that I am utterly heartbroken that I didn't let him know how much he still meant to me. That maybe if I had, that he wouldn't have felt so alone, and it might not have made a difference at all, I know that, but at least then I would know I had tried and I had done what I could. But I didn't. And I'm so very heartbroken by that. :(