Hallie Twomey was devastated after her son CJ committed Suicide. Then she discovered an unusual way to remember him.
In November 2013, three years after she and her husband John lost their 20-year-old son, an Air Force veteran, Hallie published an uncommon request on her Facebook page: Would someone be willing to take some of C.J.’s ashes on a trip? “I hoped our son could see places he never got to see,” Hallie says.
Since she called out on Facebook, over a thousand people — mostly strangers — have brought C.J.’s ashes to over 750 locations worldwide, including the Antarctic coast, Easter Island, and even space on a private rocket.
“There’s not a place in the world where we wouldn’t be close to our son,” says Hallie, 52. “They are gifts keeping his spirit and memory alive. For a mom who doesn’t want him forgotten, that’s pretty amazing. It brings me a measure of peace.”
Peace seemed unattainable 12 years ago when their lives were shattered in April 2010. C.J. had returned home to Auburn, Maine, with his parents after receiving an honourable discharge from the military but “didn’t have a sense of what he was going to do next,” Hallie says.
C.J. stormed out to his car with a gun his parents had no idea he had one spring day after an argument. C.J. killed himself in front of his mother and father. “Every day, I blame myself,” Hallie says. “We’d give anything to go back in time and assist him.”
For a long time, “we were just numb,” says John, 53. Says Hallie, “Suicide is a hideous beast. It leaves utter devastation behind. The ripple effect is never ending.”
The Twomey’s hope to open the conversation about Suicide through their project and a newly released documentary, Scattering C.J. (airing nationwide on PBS stations on September 16 and streaming now on pbs.org). “We need to teach our children to ask for assistance,” she says.
Andrea Kalin, the documentary director who followed the family for four years while filming, wants the film to be a tool for change: “I hope people come away with their assumptions challenged,” says Kalin, who was changed by the experience.
During her work on the film, her son lost his friend to Suicide. “Because I was making the film, I felt better equipped to navigate through this, but it was so painful,” Kalin says. “Hallie teaches us to hold hope and grief in the same space. This story restores your faith in humanity. It’s extraordinary. Something full of life came from so much loss and pain.”
The Twomeys have become close to several of the “scatterers,” as the helpers have come to be known, like diver William Stevens who, eight years ago, left a plaque containing C.J.’s ashes near an underwater statue of the Virgin Mary in Lake Ouachita, Arkansas. “I told Hallie, ‘Mary also lost her son and probably felt the same way you do,'” says Stevens, 53, an Air Force and National Guard veteran. “We dive down and visit him all the time.”
And for Kelly Vella, an Australian, scattering C.J. was a family moment. Vella, her children, and their extended family — a total of 12 people — hiked to a waterfall on Viti Levu Island, Fiji, in 2015 to scatter C.J.’s ashes.
“It’s a beautiful global connection to think he’ll keep moving through the air, the water,” says Vella, 43, a graphic designer who sent the Twomeys a video of their journey. “It’s sparked discussions in our family.”
Despite the outpouring of love, Hallie and John believe their family will never be complete.
“The sickening feeling never goes away,” says John. Says Hallie, “He’s there every day. When I open my eyes and brush my teeth, it’s my first thought.”
However, they attempt to progress. Hallie donated a kidney to a stranger nine years ago (“I knew C.J. would be proud of me.”) and the couple relocated from Maine to Florida in 2018. Their son Connor, 28, will marry in Maine in September: “He made a conscious decision to make his brother proud and live every bit of life because C.J. can’t.”
While Hallie no longer seeks volunteers to accompany C.J. on his final journeys, she still sends ashes out every few months to people whose stories have touched her, measuring out teaspoons of C.J.’s remains into tiny plastic bags and asking scatterers to tell him his family loved him — and that his mother was sorry.
“I desperately want my son remembered for more than that last moment,” she says. “I want his legacy to be that other C.J.s don’t follow in his footsteps.”
