The Truth About Aaron

by Jonathan Hernandez

  When we reached the waiting room outside the ICU, a dozen family members had already gathered. A few were kneeling together, circled in prayer. Others were on their feet, crying. Our dad’s sister sat in her wheelchair with her face in her hands, yelling, “He’s not going to make it! He’s not going to make it!”

  We continued past them to my father’s room. I threw the curtains off to the side in time to see the doctor yell “Clear!” as he held the two defibrillator paddles to our dad’s chest.

  The three of us stood with our hands clasped, five feet in front of the footboard, watching helplessly, in horror. The doctor again pressed the paddles on our dad, causing his chest to jump and his legs and toes to kick toward us.

  “Clear!”

  They shocked him again.

  “Clear!”

  They shocked him again.

  Aaron squeezed my left hand tighter. “Please, DJ, please, DJ, help him!”

  I felt my mom begin to fall. I grabbed both of them harder.

  “Everything is going to be okay,” I said to them. “Keep fighting, Dad!” I shouted to my father. “Keep fighting!”

  “Come on, Dad!” Aaron yelled.

  The doctor paused, the paddles held up in midair. There was no response. Only the steady beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep from the heart monitor. Flatline.

  Time of death: 12:05 p.m., January 6, 2006. He was forty-nine years old.

  The three of us walked forward to our leader. I put my left ear on his chest, hoping to hear one more beat. Aaron’s head rested on the other side of his belly. Our tears pooled in his belly button.

  Our mother kissed him on his forehead and rubbed his thick black hair. After about twenty minutes, I finally let go.

  I softly told Aaron that when he was ready we needed to leave. Aaron kept his arms around our dad, unwilling to move. I hugged Aaron. He didn’t want to let go. “It’s time,” I whispered. After several minutes, Aaron released his grasp.

  That night, after family and friends had left our house, Aaron and I went to our room. In the dark, we whispered to each other from our beds about never hearing Dad’s voice again. I slid into Aaron’s bed. I held my cell phone between us and we listened to our dad’s voice mail greeting over and over and over.

  Chapter 7

  JANUARY 2006

  THE LINE STRETCHED OUT the door of the funeral home, onto and around the spacious front porch, through the parking lot, and up Lincoln Avenue for a quarter of a mile. The director estimated that more than one thousand people came to our father’s visitation on January 8.

  My mother, Aaron, and I stood next to the dark wooden casket, waiting to greet everyone after they said their final good-byes to Dennis Hernandez. I was in a black suit and one of my father’s favorite black-and-yellow ties. To my right, my mother, in a long black dress and sweater, wept during the four-hour wake. “He’s at peace now. He’s at peace now,” she repeatedly said.

  To my left was Aaron, outfitted in a gray pinstripe suit—the first suit he’d ever worn. Our dad never had the chance to teach him how to tie a tie, so that morning I assisted Aaron, putting another one of our father’s ties into a single Windsor for him.

  All afternoon, Aaron stood still and silent, looking straight ahead, as if his eyes were locked on to something far in the distance, past everyone in the room, past the walls of the chapel in the funeral home. He never cried.

  Once the room was empty, I shut the doors, so the four of us could be together one last time. Aaron and I took a knee in the pew in front of the open casket, holding hands. Our mother stood behind us, caressing our shoulders. After several minutes, my mother and I kissed my father on the forehead. Aaron couldn’t bear the sight of our father; Aaron tapped him on his hands and looked away so he wouldn’t see his face.

  That night the three of us slept together in my parents’ bed. My father used two pillows; Aaron and I each buried our heads into one of them, trying to hold on to his scent. Several times during the night our mother ran to the bathroom to vomit. After the first time, we followed her in, rubbing her back and holding her hair as she knelt over the bowl.

  THE FUNERAL SERVICE WAS the next morning at St. Joseph’s Church in Bristol. The three of us sat in the front wooden pew. Aaron’s chest was out, his shoulders back, and his eyes focused forward, rarely moving right or left. Holding my left hand, he felt the jerk from my body when I cried, which caused him to squeeze my hand tighter. Midway through the funeral, my mother leaned in to us and asked us if we wanted to say any words about our father. Aaron closed his eyes and shook his head. I whispered, “I can’t, Mom. There’s no way I can talk right now.”

  Once the service concluded, we stood up from the pew and wiggled our legs to loosen up. We didn’t know what to do next. The funeral director waved to us and we followed our mom down the center aisle outside to a black town car waiting for us at the curb. I looked out the back window as we began the drive to the cemetery and saw a long trail of cars in the procession, their hazard lights all flashing. A police cruiser led the way.

  At the grave site, we took our seats about eight feet from where the casket would soon be lowered. As soon as the short ceremony began, I grabbed Aaron’s thigh to let him know I was there for him.

  I eventually lifted my eyes from my lap and saw mourners piling flowers on the casket. The three of us waited in our chairs, shivering in the cold, for every last person to lay their rose. Then we slowly placed our own roses onto the casket before returning to our car.

  A large group gathered at Nuchie’s, a local restaurant, to celebrate our father. I didn’t understand why people were laughing as they shared stories over lunch. Only one hour earlier, we had left our father to be buried into the frozen ground. I turned to my mom and whispered, “Why are they talking?”

  “People are telling good stories about your dad,” my mom said softly. “They’re sharing stories about the amazing man he was.”

  “THE GOOD DAYS WITH him were so exciting,” she told me in the days after his death. “He was so nice, he was funny, he was beautiful, he was a great dancer, and he made me feel special. He also was a big football star. He had a great smile and muscles. He became a great father. There was so much about the man I loved.”

  But she also hated him at times. “On our wedding night, I caught your dad going to the bathroom and snorting cocaine,” she said. “We got into a fight and your father ripped off my wedding ring, picked up a hammer, and smashed it, bending the ring and dislodging the diamonds. The next morning he apologized. ‘It won’t happen again,’ he told me.”

  She had held in a lot. “There were two sides to your father—when he was clean of drugs and when he wasn’t,” she said. “The night after Aaron was born, your father didn’t even show up at the hospital. He was so fucked-up, he left you with someone and went out to party. He wasn’t there for Aaron and me that night.

  “I went through a lot of shit with him, and I’m sorry, because I took it out on you kids. I look back now and think, How the hell did we ever survive that shit?”

  IN THE CAR, MY mother asked Aaron if he wanted to play in his high school basketball game that evening.

  “What do you think Dad would have wanted me to do?” Aaron asked.

  “He would have said, ‘Keep moving forward,’” my mom said. I agreed.

  “But who will I hand the ball to if I score my one thousandth point tonight? It was supposed to be Dad.”

  When we got home, Aaron called our uncle David, our father’s twin brother, who was battling liver cancer but was able to attend the funeral. Aaron asked him if he could come to the game and accept the ball. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Uncle David said.

  A few hours later, my mother and I entered the front glass doors at Bristol Central. As we were walking through the hallways, one person after the next approached and offered condolences—almost like another receiving line leading into the gymnasium. When we entered, the crowd fell silent; suddenly the only sounds were the bouncing of t
he balls and squeaks of the players’ shoes during warm-ups. We felt every set of eyes turn to us.

  I spotted Aaron dribbling a basketball in the hallway outside the locker room, preparing to enter the gym for pregame warm-ups. I went to him, wished him good luck, and asked how he was feeling.

  “I’m doing alright, D,” he said.

  Returning to my seat, I thought how different this night was going to be from when I had scored my 1,000th point three years earlier, when I had handed my milestone ball to my father. If he had been here tonight, he would be sitting next to me chewing on his right thumb, commenting on the game and Aaron’s play. He would have been the happiest guy in the gym.

  Before tip-off, the public address announcer asked everyone to stand and remove their hats for a moment of silence for our father. I didn’t want to close my eyes because they had been shut from crying for most of the last two days. From the bleachers, I looked at my brother six rows down on the wooden court. His eyes were closed, his hands were clasped behind his back, and he was gently swaying left to right.

  Minutes into the game, Aaron had the ball on a fast break. He soared into the air for a rim-rattling dunk. The packed gym erupted. A few possessions later, Aaron slashed to the basket for a right-handed layup—his 1,000th career point. The scorekeeper buzzed the horn as the ball dropped through the net.

  The officials whistled to stop the game and asked Aaron to come to midcourt, where they acknowledged his accomplishment and presented him with the ball. Receiving a standing ovation, Aaron jogged up into the bleachers toward our uncle and handed him the ball before the action resumed.

  A few days later, preparing to drive back to college to begin my spring semester, I talked to Aaron. “If you need anything, I’m only forty-five minutes away,” I said. “Dad would have wanted you to remain focused and keep working hard. Mom might need your help more around the house. After basketball season is over, maybe we can plan something and you can come spend time with me?”

  “That would be amazing, D,” he said.

  Aaron sat on the front steps, watching me drive away.

  Chapter 8

  FEBRUARY 2006

  THE SECOND WEEK OF February I returned to Bristol for my father’s birthday. On the way, I stopped at Family Dollar and bought his favorite candy, Red Hot Dollars. I planned to leave the box on his headstone.

  I asked Aaron to come with me to the cemetery, but he insisted on staying home. “I’m not ready, D,” he said. “I’m not going until I win a Super Bowl.”

  It was too early to press him, so I went to the burial site by myself. Standing on the hardened dirt, I bent down, wished my father a happy fiftieth, and placed his candy next to a birthday card my mother had left the day before. The headstone wasn’t in place yet.

  Before going back to my dorm the next day, Aaron caught me off guard with a question as I was exiting the house. “D, do you think I’m good enough to play somewhere besides UConn?” he asked.

  “You’re good enough to play wherever you want. You being committed to UConn is a huge deal for our program and everyone is excited about you coming. You’re going to dominate when you get to campus. I can’t wait to play with you again.”

  Two months later, I received a phone call from Aaron. “I don’t want you to be upset,” he said, “but I am going to visit the University of Florida.”

  “Have you told Coach Edsall yet?”

  “No,” he said.

  “You need to tell him before you go,” I said. “Dad would be pissed at you if you visited Florida behind Coach Edsall’s back and you know that.”

  “Please don’t say anything, D,” he said.

  “Aaron, it’s not my place to say anything, but you need to tell him,” I said. “And do not commit to Florida during your trip. Wait until you’re home so we can discuss everything.”

  I hung up the phone and called my mother.

  “What’s going on with Aaron?” I asked. “He’s visiting Florida?”

  “He’s excited about going,” she said. “I called one of his old youth coaches and asked him to go on the trip with him. I need a man’s perspective now that your dad is not here. He knows more about football and recruiting than I do.”

  A week later Aaron and his youth coach, Tom Wagman, flew to Gainesville for Aaron’s unofficial visit. “We were sitting on the plane and we made a pros-and-cons list on a sheet of paper to compare all the colleges that were recruiting Aaron,” Tom told me. “I looked over at Aaron and said, ‘Do not make your decision until we return home.’ I reminded him that he was committed to UConn. Before we got off the plane I said it again.”

  Aaron and Tom drove to the Gators football facility, where they spotted hundreds of Winnebagos parked in the lots in anticipation of the spring game the following day. Fans covered in orange-and-blue gear walked near the stadium.

  They were greeted by two assistant coaches and taken to watch practice. Hundreds ringed the practice field. “The atmosphere was electric,” Tom said. Afterward, the coaches took them to Ben Hill Griffin Stadium—the Gators home field, known as “The Swamp.”

  Once they arrived at the Gator Walk, the coaches described how on game day, when the bus doors open, thousands of fans line the brick walkway to cheer and snap photos of the players as they descend from the buses, the fans reaching over the ropes to slap the players’ hands.

  Aaron stepped out of the tunnel and looked at the steep bleachers and at the orange walls as music blared from the speakers. It was the biggest stadium Aaron had ever entered, and he couldn’t stop smiling.

  He bent down and skimmed his hands over the short-cut grass field. “Is this really grass?” Aaron asked, accustomed to the turf we played on in high school. The Florida coaches laughed and confirmed that the grass was real.

  After touring the facilities, Aaron met with quarterback Tim Tebow, who told Aaron how excited he was that Aaron was considering Florida. Aaron immediately liked him.

  Aaron wanted to be wearing the school colors for the game, so the next morning Tom took him shopping for a pair of blue shoes. He wanted to look like he was a part of the team.

  Aaron watched the game from the sideline. Afterward he met with the entire Gator coaching staff in the football facility. The coaches were sitting around a long table and Aaron took a seat with them.

  “Well, how did you like that?” Urban Meyer, the head coach, asked.

  Aaron stood up from his seat and blurted out, “I am coming here.”

  The Florida coaches high-fived each other and hugged Aaron.

  But Aaron’s youth coach, Tom, was shocked. “No, no, no,” he said. “Urban, it’s not happening like this. Aaron has to make two phone calls right now. The minute we leave here, it’s going to be on the Internet and everywhere. He has to call his mom and he has to call Randy Edsall at UConn.”

  My phone started to ring as I was driving back from Hanover, New Hampshire, where I had watched the Dartmouth College spring game.

  “Hey, D,” Aaron said. “I just want you to know that I committed to Florida.”

  “Did you tell Coach Edsall?”

  “No,” he said.

  “What did I tell you, Aaron?” I said, raising my voice. “You’re a fucking idiot. I can’t believe you did this, Aaron.”

  Just then my flip phone began vibrating and ringing. I looked at who was calling: Coach Edsall. I ignored the incoming call and remained on the line with Aaron. Edsall phoned a second time. “Edsall is blowing up my phone right now,” I said. “You need to call him, Aaron.”

  “What should I say to him?”

  “That’s your problem now,” I said.

  Coach Edsall called a third time. I was finished speaking with Aaron, so I answered. “DJ, what is going on with Aaron?” Edsall said, his voice frantic. “What the hell is going on?”

  “Coach,” I said, “I’m still trying to figure this all out myself.”

  I was pissed. I didn’t care that Aaron wanted to check out Florida. I was disap
pointed with how quickly everything transpired considering the limited amount of information he had gathered. He could have gone to virtually any top program in the country and I wanted him to put some thought into his decision.

  In Florida, Aaron paced nervously as he dialed Edsall’s number. Edsall answered the phone and Aaron informed him of his decision.

  “Edsall chewed him a new ass, up and down,” the youth coach said. “Aaron took the phone and held it away from his ear because Edsall was screaming so loud.”

  Then Aaron called our mother. “Mom, I like it here,” he said. “I committed to Florida and I’m happy about that. But I’m also upset because it seems like I let Coach Edsall down.”

  Aaron handed the phone to Coach Meyer, who spoke to my mother for a few minutes, assuring her that Aaron would be in good hands.

  After leaving the facility, Aaron and his youth coach went to celebrate by getting ice cream. As Aaron dug for his second spoonful, a fan approached. “You’re Aaron Hernandez,” the fan said. “You just committed here!”

  On the way back to the hotel, several local reporters called Aaron’s cell phone, asking for a comment. A few other reporters showed up at the hotel, where they interviewed Aaron outside the lobby.

  Once the media left, Aaron relaxed in his room. “This is the best place for me,” Aaron said to his youth coach. “It’s where I have to go to get to the NFL. And I’ll have a chance to win a national championship here.”

  When they returned to Connecticut a few days later, Aaron changed his mind. “I think I want to go to UConn,” Aaron told his youth coach.

  “I will back you on whatever you want to do,” the youth coach said. “You think about everything that happened. You think about it.”

  Aaron wavered again: he was going to Florida.

  I RETURNED TO UCONN, feeling like I had done something wrong. I went to Coach Edsall’s office to speak with him. I didn’t want this to fester.

  “I’m so sorry, Coach,” I said. “I hope my brother’s decision doesn’t affect me in any way.”