Two funerals and a wake-up call
- cdavis884
- Jul 3
- 5 min read
By Patra Ann Taylor
On May 4, my husband and I awoke to loud pounding on our front door. I looked at the clock: 1:32 a.m. When my husband pulled open the door, a stoned-faced man stared back at him.
“Are you Mr. Bucher?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have a son?”
My husband hesitated. “I have three sons,” he said.
We both knew the son responsible for this wee-hours-of-the-night visit from an assistant county coroner, but our son’s name caught in my husband’s throat.
Beau.
That’s when we learned our first-born son, Beau Sebastian Bucher, was dead at age 42. His suffering from chronic drug addiction had finally ended. Our suffering continues. I felt as if the out-of-control Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, which I’d been stuck on for more than 20 years, had just thrown me off, the dreaded ups and down between hope and despair so exhausting, yet so familiar. As I landed hard in my new reality, I couldn’t imagine what to expect next.
The piling on of grief
Just two months prior to the death of our son, I received a call from my niece. She told me that morning, just as the sun broke the horizon in Hillsboro, Tenn., a man, jacked up on a concoction of illegal substances, put the pedal to the metal, swerved left of center and plowed into the vehicle driven by my great-nephew while on his way home from work. The horrific crash caused my nephew’s vehicle to burst into flames. Paramedics pronounced both drivers dead at the scene.
Trevor Douglas Reese, age 25, would never again wrap his loving arms around the woman he loved. He would never again brighten the day of his parents with his contagious smile. He would never become the fun uncle of his twin brother’s future children. A young man, on a diligent search, would never discover the purpose in his life he sought.
Two dead men. Both killed in the same damn war.
Cause of death
My son died of a fentanyl overdose. For years, fentanyl was merely an elusive ghost drifting through the wispy outer bands of my consciousness. Until 2019, when the drug’s horrific game plan finally broke through my thick skull. Chilled to the bone by the revelations, I wrote the following regarding the enemy inside our nation:
“In 2018, the Department of Homeland Security seized the equivalent of 1.2 billion lethal doses of fentanyl entering the United States illegally, enough to kill every American four times over. Despite this victory in our never-ending War on Drugs, 32,000 of our children and grandchildren, our brothers and sisters, our cousins and friends still died from fentanyl or fentanyl-related substances that same year. This ugly synthetic stepsister of heroin is 100 times more potent than morphine and 50 times more potent than heroin.
“Their tactic to kill us off on our own turf with fentanyl without us even knowing it is diabolical. China is the world’s most prolific manufacturer and exporter of illicit fentanyl, and we the people don’t even know it.”
Medically, doctors use fentanyl as an analgesic (pain relief) and anesthetic, but the drug’s amazing ability to induce immediate feelings of euphoria appeals to illicit drug users, luring them back for another trip, despite its alarming rate of deadly results. Fentanyl comes in every form imaginable, including being disguised as prescription pills or even candy, making it especially appealing and dangerous to our young people.
According to statistics from the United States Drug Enforcement Administration, more than 358,450 Americans died from a fentanyl overdose in the five-year span between 2019 and 2024. During those years, I often equated our war effort to baling out a sinking battleship with a red Solo cup.
The good news and the bad news
A precipitous downturn in fentanyl deaths between 2023 and 2024, a whopping decrease of 21,000 lives, teased my latent sense of hope out of its dark corner. Though too late to save my son, the Herculean efforts of the new Trump administration to continue pushing down the death toll from fentanyl and other illicit drugs continues getting traction, as local, state and national law enforcement work together against an enemy that’s wielded its powerful upper hand for years with little resistance.
During FBI Director Kash Patel’s early June appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, the discussion focused heavily on the fentanyl crisis, its global supply chain, and his agency’s efforts to combat the epidemic. Patel pointed out that drug traffickers are changing their routes in response to stricter U.S. border security. Under the old model, China produced the fentanyl precursors (the chemical building blocks used in the manufacture of illicit drugs such as methamphetamine, heroin, cocaine and fentanyl) and shipped them to countries like Mexico, where cartels produced the final products for distribution. Increasingly, those some Chinese-made precursors are now routed through India and even Canada to evade U.S. enforcement efforts. This is a moving target but one Patel and the FBI seem to have a handle on for now. Let’s hope.
In the early hours of June 1, a major law enforcement operation — dubbed “Operation Last Stand” — unfolded at El Alamo nightclub, an unlicensed venue in the Summerville/Hanahan area of Charleston County. The raid involved about 200 agents from federal, state and local law enforcement agencies who arrested 80 people and confiscated a large stash of drugs, firearms and cash. Though I’m grateful for the great work that went into this operation, this victory doesn’t signal the end of the war.
The wake-up call
Today, the DEA still attributes the leading cause of death to Americans between the ages of 18 and 45 to fentanyl. The details on the amounts of the drugs confiscated at the El Alamo raid remain under wraps, but it’s important to understand that drugs confiscated in Hanahan were meant for your children and grandchildren, your brothers and sisters, your cousins and friends. They were meant for you!
During the last year, heroin has virtually vanished from the streets of the Charleston and the surrounding area, and replaced by fentanyl laced xylazine, a drug used in veterinary medicine to tranquilize and sedate large animals such as elephants. Dealers often lace xylazine, referred to as “tranq” on the street, into other illicit drugs such as cocaine, heroin and even marijuana. This additive directly causes severe skin necrosis.
Because xylazine is not an opioid, it negates much of the lifesaving properties of naloxone (Narcan), an opioid overdose reversal drug that has a strong and well-documented record of saving lives.
Recent reports also warn of new synthetic opioids, particularly nitazenes, which pose severe poisoning risks. Significantly more potent than heroin and fentanyl, nitazenes have been implicated in increased overdose fatalities in both the U.S. and the U.K.
Since losing of my son to fentanyl, I often sift through my memories, searching for something I coulda, shoulda, woulda done differently that might have changed the outcome of Beau’s life. It’s a useless activity, I know. My son awaits me on the other side, and I wouldn’t bring him back to the miserable existence of his last few years on this earth, even if I could. By speaking out will change an outcome for someone else.
This is your wake-up call.
Patra Ann Taylor is the author of Christmas Angels, and Edge of Summer, the first book in her Anna Ghere Mystery series. The former managing editor of the Charleston Mercury, Patra embraced a happy semi-retirement writing fiction. The death of her son changed everything. She invites you to email her at patraonpurpose@gmail.com.
