OD death has Foxboro fam heartbroken
‘We’re living in evil times’
“Please,” his heartbroken grandfather pleaded, “use his name! Mary and I are not only praying to God for the strength to get through this, but also asking that somehow our grandson’s death might be used to help other families.”
Terry Bisesti, who’ll be buried this morning, was 26 when he died last week from an overdose of fentanyl, a powerful narcotic analgesic, in an upstairs room of the family home in Foxboro.
“He had taken my iPad with him when he went to bed,” Vinny Bisesti, 72, recalled. “So the next morning I went up to get it and found him half on the bed, half on the floor, with his face down. I turned him over, trying to wake him, but he felt so cold and those beautiful blue eyes had already turned gray.
“I screamed for Mary who called for help, then she ran in, fell on the floor and sprawled across him, praying, while I was trying to perform CPR until the EMTs arrived.”
It’s not a new story. Stories like these are commonplace in communities across America.
“We’re not talking about terrible kids,” Vinny, who like Mary is deeply grounded in his faith, points out. “These kids are not without people who love them, not without talents, abilities and promising futures.
“But we’re living in evil times. In the streets, in the colleges, there’s an evil that’s out to destroy our children and destroy our country.”
Just two weeks ago, celebrating their 53rd anniversary, Vinny and Mary took Terry and his mom, Sharon, out for dinner and there wasn’t a hint of the grief looming on their horizon.
“We had a wonderful time,” Vinny recalled. “Terry looked so good, and he’d just had a great talk with Gary (Burgess), one of our pastors at Victory (Assembly of God, Sharon), making a lifetime faith commitment. Then this happens.”
Like much of his generation, Vinny, who came from a tight Italian neighborhood in Saugus, is dismayed by what’s happening to our culture.
“It sounds so innocent now,” he said, “but when I was a kid, if you got caught with a beer you were dragged home, where your old man would kick the daylights out of you. My father knew all the Irish cops because they were the ones dragging us home.
“Terry was part Irish, and I used to kid him, telling him it was forgivable.
“I’ll tell you what he was like. Someone we know left a house key with his son, and you know what happened next. A bunch of kids had a big party and when one of them went a little nuts with a weapon, Terry decked him just to stop him from hurting anybody. That boy he decked was one of the first to call us when word of Terry’s death got out, telling us what a great kid Terry was. What does that say?”
It’s simply overwhelming. “Where does it start?” Vinny asks rhetorically. “A lot of it starts in school where kids like Terry are given stuff like Ritalin, like speed or uppers, to deal with attention deficit disorders. They end up with robots in class.
“Pretty soon the kid’s looking for something else because Ritalin is addictive. For Terry, it led to marijuana, then heroin, then to suboxone to get off the heroin, and finally to fentanyl, which is what killed him.”
Terry’s death has left Vinny with so many questions he can’t answer.
“This was a quiet, sweet, gentle kid who, it seems, just couldn’t handle what the world was throwing at him. That’s how most of these kids would be described by the families who loved them. It’s as if they’re empty inside, looking for fulfillment they can’t find anywhere else.
“Now we’re talking about legalizing marijuana? Dear God, what’s happening to us? How can anyone say there’s not a progression?”
Vinny is the first to admit he’s no expert on matters such as these.
But it’s not his head that’s pounding this morning, it’s his heart.
“Mary was the very first one to hold him when he was born,” Vinny remembered. “This is so difficult to accept. He’s gone, leaving us with a sadness that will never go away. But there’s a joy, too, secure in knowing we’ll see him again, thanks to the future the Lord has promised. Terry believed that, and so do we.”