The Chain of Loss

By Tracy Newby Jr.

January 19, 2021

It should have been a milestone that day. Five years clean from opiates — half a decade of clawing my way back from the same haze that swallowed so many people I knew. That morning I thought about calling a few people who had helped me get there, maybe even Butch. I didn’t expect the phone to ring first.

It was Butch. His voice was heavy, the kind that tells you something is wrong before the words ever come.

“Steve’s gone.”

Steve was Butch’s oldest brother. We’d worked together on roofing crews, shared the same job sites, and sometimes the same pills. In those years, pills had a way of blurring the lines between friend, family, and co-worker. When I got clean, Steve and I drifted apart — not from lack of care, but because the paths we were on could no longer run side by side.

In the days after Steve passed, I spoke to Butch as often as he’d let me. Every conversation ended the same way — “I love you.” “I love you too.” We planned to see each other at Steve’s service in just a couple of days.

That day never came.

February 2, 2021

A day or so before Steve’s service, I got a message from Britney, the mother of Butch’s child, asking me to call her. When she answered, her voice cracked before she could even get the words out:

“Butch hung himself. He’s not with us anymore.”

Everything slowed. Breathing. Moving. Thinking. Even the smallest things felt impossible. Weeks went by, heavy and quiet. I needed something to break that weight, something that could pull me — even briefly — into a space that wasn’t all grief.

The Photoshoot

That’s when I called Rain.

We set up a shoot for Lowrider Scene Magazine. The concept was bold and unapologetic — the kind of shoot meant to grab attention. Guns, chrome, hard sunlight bouncing off a white Lincoln. It wasn’t about softness or reflection. It was about energy, confidence, and showing her in full control.

And Rain brought it. She slipped into the role with ease, switching from playful to fierce in an instant. Behind the camera, I saw her spark — that ability to own the moment, to take up space without apology. For a few hours, grief loosened its grip.

March 7, 2021

Less than five weeks after losing Butch, Rain was found dead from an overdose. She wasn’t alone.

The next day, mutual friends called to check on me, knowing I had just been with her. Their funeral was a shared service — two caskets in one room, and more hurt than air to breathe.

We never had a service for Butch. His mother, Ms. Linda, wanted to wait until his nephew Josh came home from jail. Josh was released on September 3, 2023. He wasn’t out for twenty-four hours before he overdosed.

Loss after loss, with just enough time between to think maybe the worst was over — until it wasn’t.

Reflection

Addiction doesn’t just take lives — it steals them piece by piece, long before the final breath. It takes brothers, friends, parents, children, and it leaves the rest of us standing in the wreckage, wondering how to keep going.

I’ve seen that wreckage up close. I’ve stood in rooms where the grief was so thick it felt like the air itself was heavy. I’ve watched strong people carry loss after loss until their shoulders gave out.

When you love someone who’s struggling, you never stop hoping. You never stop believing they can pull through. But hope alone isn’t enough. We have to be honest about how addiction works — how fast it moves, how it hides behind smiles, how it convinces people they have one more day when they don’t.

If there’s anything these losses have taught me, it’s this: say “I love you” every time. Say it like it’s the last time you’ll get the chance. Stay connected, even when the conversations are hard. And don’t wait until it’s too late to ask the questions you’re afraid to ask.

Because sometimes, there is no warning. And sometimes, the people who seemed the most alive in the afternoon are gone by nightfall.