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This episode is brought to you by The Hartford, a leading provider of employee benefits and income protection products that is dedicated to standing behind U.S. workers to help them pursue their goals and get through tough times. For more information about The Hartford, visit thehartford.com slash employee benefits. We've also got a link in our show notes. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Whether you're selling a little or a lot,

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But obviously it's not always fine, and it's usually not even that good. This is a podcast that asks people to be honest about their pain. To just be honest about how they really feel about the hard parts of life. And guess what? It's complicated. I'm Nora McInerney, and this is Terrible. Thanks for asking.

What I've learned from making this show and from surviving my own grief is that in hard times, people can amaze you with their generosity or with their stinginess. Because some people have an unending well of compassion and love and kindness, and some people are

See compassion and empathy and kindness as non-renewable resources. Like there's a finite amount of empathy oil made from the decayed bones of sad dead dinosaurs, a certain ration you get to spend throughout your life.

And if that's how you feel about it, you might also feel that it's only safe to spend that empathy oil made from the decayed bones of sad dead dinosaurs on grief and struggle and loss that feels neutral and understandable and safe. It can be hard to spend that ration on something random or nuanced or unexplainable.

I have also learned that sometimes people are just jerks, even nice people, people who would otherwise be very lovely and kind. Let me give you an example. Every year, people trip and fall into the Grand Canyon and die. That is a resoundingly horrifying way to go.

And on a Facebook post about a death where a man fell off the Grand Canyon Skywalk while trying to take a selfie, something I do all the time, not the Skywalk part, but just taking a photo of yourself, having the audacity to document your brief existence on this earth. There were two comments I read on this Facebook post. One man said simply, natural selection.

Another woman said, do stupid stuff, win stupid prizes. Being an idiot should hurt. Yikes. I don't think these people, these commenters, would classify themselves as cold or rude or unempathetic. I do think that there are certain kinds of death, uncommon and unpredictable ones, that we hold at a distance because it's just too much to think that we or the people we love are

could go out that way. That could never be us. That could never be the people we love. And if we keep our noses upturned, if we laugh instead of grieve alongside the grieving, we will somehow be safe and we can save that compassion ration for another day. Today's guest knows a lot about that sliding scale of empathy and compassion because she has seen it in motion before.

and she has felt the effects herself. Feliz lost her sister Karina in February 2022, when Karina was just 28 years old. She's the funniest one out of all of us. She is always making jokes. You always hear her before you see her because she is just loud. And she always had a smile on her face. If we were having like a family gathering or a party, she was the one who was making sure everybody was feeling included, trying to plan games, those kinds of things that

Me as the oldest sister, I was just like, we just all made it. I'm just glad we're here. She's the baby. So she, you know, she kind of got away with things that maybe the rest of us didn't as much. But she also knew how to keep us all accountable. Like she would say, you know, like, hey, are you really that mad about it? Like, are you really not going to talk to, you know, Malaya, our other sister? Are you guys going to, you know, you guys need to work it out. Like stop being dumb. And she was very straight up about it.

But she was the one who always brought the desserts. She, you know, was always making all the fun stuff. She was like the fun aunt. If Feliz were to tell you this while you sat next to one another on a train or in line at the store, you would feel awful. Awful that she lost her fun, vibrant sister. Awful that her kids lost the fun aunt. And you would only feel more awful as Feliz painted the full picture of who Karina was.

She was a server. And so she had the personality to be really successful at that. She fell into that really young. And so she just became really good at it. Like she was training all the new servers. She was just really good at connecting with people and making people feel good and feel welcomed and feel like they belong there.

And when she was pregnant with my niece, Aria, she tried to do like a nine to five desk job. And she was like, this is not for me. Like, I am not, you know, getting to know enough people. I'm not around and, you know, bouncing around and having fun with people. Like, and she went back to her serving job.

So that's just how she was, very personable and wanting to get to know people. And so many people just had these stories of when I was sad, Karina came and she picked me up and we went and got coffee. Or she did these things for me when I was having a hard time. Or she helped me move. Or she helped me with my babies. All these things that I had never even heard before. And she was just everybody's good friend.

She had my nephew when she was 17. She had been through some shit, you know, and she was finally in this place where she felt secure in, you know, financially secure. She wasn't rich. She wasn't, but her and her boyfriend, they had good jobs. They, you know, had a place that they loved. It felt like home to them.

My sister, she had my nephew young, so she was very responsible going forward. And she waited and she planned and she planned things like to a T with that little girl. We didn't get to throw her baby shower. We got to throw her baby shower, but she planned everything. She was like, I'm going to wear this. I'm going to do this. Everything was to a T with this little girl. And I think it was in a sense because she didn't get to do that with my nephew. She finally felt like, I am a responsible mom. This is what I'm going to do.

And I'm choosing this, you know? So she reposted this meme. It says, dude, when I say I'm a strong ass bitch, I'm a strong ass bitch. I don't know how I'm getting through the shit I'm going through right now, but I am. And I'm surprising myself like, wow, mama really didn't raise a weak bitch. A sad one? Yes. But weak? Never. And so she reposted that and she said, there's been a few times I didn't think I'd make it through, but for once in my life, I'm so happy. I came out stronger each time.

And that was less than a month before she passed away. And so like she was happy and she was so proud of herself. They planned a Friendsmas in 2021. And my sister is the kind of person who nine days before she can invite a bunch of people to her house and say, hey, we're going to do brunch. We're going to do mimosas, bring the kids. We're going to have presents. We're going to have a white elephant. We're going to do this. Be there or I'm going to be upset with you. And people showed up like five days before Christmas. Yeah.

And she was the kind of person who could do that. And so she had this friends miss thing and she was giving a toast, you know, just for fun. She's like, you know, 2021 sucked, but 2022 is going to be the best year ever. And, you know, that was two months almost to the day before she passed away.

And she was just so optimistic for what life was going to bring for her. And I get where my mom's coming from when she's like, why would she do this? Why would she do something so stupid? And I just always try to remind her, remind myself, like she didn't think she was being stupid.

So that's Karina, a mother of two, a loving partner, a spoiled youngest sibling, and a cool aunt. An ace server who loved working in the restaurant industry and was always training the next generation of servers. But there's one thing that you don't know yet. One thing that could suck all the air and empathy out of the room. One thing that Felice is careful to share when talking about Karina because...

Well, we know how people can be. Karina's death was headline news. And the headlines changed as more information came out about how Karina died. And as the headlines changed, so did people's reactions to Karina's death. But this is not breaking news. This is not news. This is the story of a family and a community who lost a light. Like everyone, Karina was much, much, much more than how she died.

So before you get to know just how Karina died, you get to know who she was. Being able to share adulthood with your siblings can be such a cool thing. You saw each other in your most vulnerable stages of development growing up through taunting and teasing or maybe ignoring potential physical violence over a remote control. Some siblings grow apart as they grow up.

But despite their age gap, Feliz and Karina grew towards one another. So I have three siblings with my mom, and my older brother has his dad. I have my dad, and then my two younger sisters have their dad. So it's like all over the place. And there's a big age gap between all of us. My older brother is eight years older than me, and then I'm 10 and 11 years older than my sisters. As we grew older, my brother moved. His kids were older. He got to move and

be all over the place a lot sooner than any of us. But me and my sisters started to be really close because they're 22 months apart. So they're like this. They slept in the same bed until they were like 16 years old. But we were always really close. I watched them when I was old enough to do that. I was their babysitter. I was their

nagging older sister. I was the one in college who would bring them when they were in middle school up to visit the campus where I went and stuff like that. They started seeing me less as the nagging older sister when we got older. And I think that really, because Karina and I have the biggest gap because she's 93 and I'm 82. So 11 and a half years is what we are apart. And

And when she got pregnant with her daughter or right before that is when she stopped feeling like so young, like little sister, you know, she was more like, okay, like, like she, we had the kind of relationship where she would be like, oh my God, like I got an update. My credit score went up. Look, it's up to this point now. And she was just like, finally like growing up, growing up. You know what I mean? And we were finally just getting to that like grownup stage of siblings where we're all sharing what like adult life is like, you know?

You hardly ever know when you are in the last moment of your life as you know it. But once that moment has passed, once you've crossed that invisible portal from your normal life into the alternate universe, even the most mundane details can stand out to you. And on February 19th, 2022, Feliz had the last moments of her life as Karina's big sister. She had just gone back to work. My niece was four months old.

And so I was watching her that night, that Friday night, and she was doing a shift where she was training to run the bar or else she probably wouldn't have had a night shift because the baby was so young. But there was a woman who was going to be going on maternity leave in the summer. And so they were training her to run the bar and close down the bar and everything. And so I was watching my niece and she came over.

Ended up getting to my house like probably 11:30, close to midnight to pick the baby up. And she sat on my floor in my living room and my oldest daughter was still awake and my youngest was asleep. And my oldest daughter was just holding the baby and we were just talking and her boyfriend, Sam, he worked overnight. So he called her on his lunch break. She was sitting on the floor with my dog, the yapper.

And she's like, oh, Sam, I want a dog. And they lived on a third floor of an apartment building. And he's like, you're not going to take that dog out. And she's like, but you love me. So you'll take the dog out. And they were just joking around. And we were just talking about all these different things. She was talking about her son and how he had gotten in trouble at school the week before and how he was with his dad. And she was always bugging me because she wanted another baby. She wanted one more to be done. And she was like, you have to get pregnant with me.

And I'm like, I don't really want to. I was almost 40 years old. I don't want another baby. And she's like, you can do it. Eventually she, you know, she was tired. The baby had woken up because, you know, obviously her mom was there. And so she was like, okay, I got to get her home. She's like, all right, I got to go. Love you. And she left.

That night, as soon as she got home, I asked her, "Let me know you made it home safe." The baby was still awake and she was just so excited to see her mom. They stayed up for a little bit and she's like, "I don't mind. Sam will be off work a little later. I probably wouldn't go to sleep anyway." We were talking about all these different things before we went to sleep. We talked throughout the day on that Saturday. Her boyfriend didn't work on weekends and that was their time together. I talked to her here and there throughout the day, but not a lot.

And that was it. You know, it was just very normal. It wasn't like a, all right, you know, love you, see you later. Those were the last words Feliz would hear from her sister. Love you. Bye. Feliz goes to bed. Karina goes home. She has plans with her boyfriend, Sam, and Sam's sister, Cora. It's Saturday night. When did you realize that something was wrong?

So she and my sister Malaya, they have babies who are four months apart. They were always at night, you know, when they would be up feeding, they would talk, they would text each other. And so they were constantly in contact with each other. They were constantly with each other. And so Malaya hadn't heard from her overnight.

And she figured, you know, she knew that she had gone out to dinner with her boyfriend and some of his family and that maybe they were going to go have drinks after or whatever. She knew they had plans. So she was like, okay, maybe they're sleeping it off, you know, whatever. So my mom and my sister lived in a townhome community. They lived a building away from each other. And so my sister had gone to my mom's house and was just like, hey, have you talked to Karina? Yeah.

And my mom was like, no. I tried to text her to see if she wanted these shirts that I have or something. And I didn't hear back from her. So she calls me and she's like, hey, have you talked to Karina? And I said, no. And I was deep cleaning my house that day and I had just found this pack of onesies. And I was like, hey, do you want these? They're just the right size for the baby, whatever.

So, I looked back at the message where I had sent her about the onesies and I saw that it hadn't been delivered. And I was like, well, that's weird. You know, it's already like two o'clock in the afternoon. She would be up by now, you know. And so, my sister just got that like spidey sense and she was like, something's wrong. I'm going to call Cora. Forget Liam Neeson. Forget Jason Bourne. If you have older sisters, they will find you faster than anyone on earth. Malaya calls Cora.

No answer. She calls Sam, who she always calls when Karina doesn't answer because he will. No answer. She checks Facebook. Cora and Karina have both been inactive for the same amount of time, 13 hours. Again, this is something only a sister would notice. And she just thought it was weird. Like, they were together, and then, like, are they sleeping? Like, what is going on? So Malaya calls the last person she can think of.

Sam's mom, Sue, who had been watching Karina and Sam's baby on Saturday night along with Cora's kids. Cora's kids are having a sleepover with Sue, but Karina's baby is still a baby and she's not doing sleepovers yet. Sue would have seen Karina on Saturday night. Sue would know what was going on. And the video turns on and Sue is just freaking out, like crying, freaking out. And she's like, they're all on the floor.

I don't know what's wrong. They're blue. I'm freaking out. And so my sister is like, what? And so she tells my mom and her and my mom get in the car and they start driving over to my sister's apartment and they called me and I was like, we got to go. We start driving and I'm like, they're fine. They're fine. They're totally okay. And they're good. They're fine. And the whole way there, I was saying it, it's a straight shot pretty much from where my townhouse was to where Karina's apartment was.

We're both right off of this major street. And so it's about 15 minutes away. And the whole time I'm just panicking, freaking out. And then I would come to the realization that my six-year-old is in the back seat. And I'm like, sorry, baby. I'm not trying to freak you out. Mommy's just scared. I'm just really worried. And I would go from screaming and freaking out and not being able to sit still in my seat to trying to console my five-year-old and saying, hey, I'm

I'm sorry. Like, look, I'm smiling. And it was probably totally delusional for me to do that. But, and my boyfriend is just like, it's going to be okay. We're going to get there. We're going to get there. It felt like the longest ride of my life. And we turned off the main street to where their apartments were. And as you're coming over like the hill to, before you turn in, you can just see fire trucks, ambulance, police cars, like everything. And I, I was just like, move, get there now, like hurry up. And so he turns in and he hadn't even stopped the car. And I was like,

opening the door, running out of the car. And I saw a woman when I very first walked out and she's like, they're all dead. They're all dead. And I was like, who the hell are you? What is going on? So I go to find my mom and my sister and I'm like, who's that woman? What's going on? And my mom and my sister, my sister is just shaking. She can't speak. She can't talk. And my mom is like, mom calm. Like,

trying to keep things level, but also trying to figure out what's going on. She had just gone to the ambulance because right before I got there, Cora, who's the sister, Sam's sister, she lived. They had just taken her away and they had taken the baby because the baby was home with them. And they put him in the ambulance. And my mom went to go see the baby at the ambulance and the baby lit up. She knew my mom. And so my mom was like, they just took the baby. They're going to the hospital. We're trying to figure out what's going on upstairs. And I'm like, okay.

It's fine. And there's just cops everywhere. And obviously the people from the apartments are all coming out trying to figure out what's going on. And I remember asking one of the officers, I was like, hey, can I go up there? That's my sister. That's my baby sister. I got to go up there. And he's like, you do not want to go up there. And I'm like, okay. And I remember just everybody yelling and demanding of the detective who showed up. And I remember thinking, maybe if I go up to him and ask him really nicely-

You know, and so I went up to him like, hey, I know everyone's really yelling at you. I'm really sorry. I'm just really worried. And can you just, you know, are you sure that my sister is not okay? And he's like, nobody in that apartment is alive and you do not want to go up there. I can't let you go up there. It's chaos. Feliz doesn't know who was in that apartment, but the officer is saying that everyone in that apartment is dead. Five people. Everyone. But who's everyone? Karina? Sam? The baby? No.

Nobody knows. And nobody knows why. Maybe carbon monoxide? The officer is wrong about some of it. Five people are dead. And Karina and Sam are two of them. But Sam's sister Cora is alive and on the way to the hospital. And so is Karina and Sam's baby. And when I realized the kids weren't there, you know, obviously that was a sense of relief. But also, like, my sister and her boyfriend, they're gone. Like, what do I do, you know?

So we sat around the parking lot just trying to figure out what's going on. And news crews started showing up right away because it was a huge call. Five people dead in an apartment. Like, what is going on, you know? And I remember asking the detective, like, hey, can you make them back up? You know, our family's here. We're just trying to figure out what's going on. Can you make them back up? And he was like, I can't make them go any further than the police tape, right?

By this time, it was around 4 or 5 o'clock and news was coming on and it was live. And so there we are on the news from a distance, but they're showing us and people start calling us like, "Hey, we saw you. That was you, right?" And my mom started calling people, calling friends of hers or close family members and just saying like, "Hey, my baby's gone. I need help." We asked the victim's advocates to take my mom and I to the hospital.

to be with the baby and they put us in a car and they were going to drive us there. And then all of a sudden they just wouldn't move. And my mom was freaking out. She's like, you got to go. Like we got to go to the hospital. Let's go, let's go, let's go. And she kept talking to people on her radio, stepping out and talking to people in the car. My mom's like, I'm getting out of this car. And I'm a very, I'm very much a rule follower. I'm like, she said, he's going to take us. We're not in a state to drive. We need to stay here. Like, that's it. You know, like, and it's so silly now thinking back, like,

If there's one time in your life when you can not follow rules, it's in a time like this when you don't have any information. So I convinced my mom to stay in the car and they ended up taking us to the police station where they had made it as kind of like a meeting place for our family to get away from the cameras and everything. And it was a holiday weekend. It was Presidency Weekend. It was a Sunday night. And that building, it was more like the civic center where the detectives and the court and everything, there wasn't like a full police presence there.

And it was empty. And so it's just my family. Sam's family had gone to the hospital to be with Cora and the other families didn't know anything yet.

they were still trying to ID the other three people. So it was my family in this, this closed down police station. It's like haunted. It feels haunted because it's just, you know, completely empty. They went and they found like her Facebook was pretty locked down. I remember my brother calling while we were at the police station. He was in Florida and he was like, you need to get her phone and you need to lock down any of her social media. This is going to be a big story and people are going to find it. And I was like, what are you talking about? Like,

Why are you even talking about her phone? Like our sister just died. What are you talking about? Like I remember being pissed off at him and then later like, oh, you had a point. But they went and like silly random memes that were public on her Facebook. I remember just like shaking and I think that – I don't know if it's like the woman in me or whatever. I was like, okay, if I'm not super emotional, I need to turn that off for right now. I need to just talk level with these people now.

I'm not going to get any answers if I'm just being the crazy emotional, which is insane, obviously, right? Like my sister and four other people are dead, you know, a hundred feet away from me. But I'm like, okay, turn off the emotions. Let's be business. I'm the one in my family who handles things like this. Like, you know, I'm the oldest daughter. So I'm like, okay, I'm going to go be the representative. I'm going to talk to them. I'm going to just be strong and I'm going to, you know, do all these things. But I remember just feeling like shaking inside.

C.S. Lewis wrote, No one ever told me that grief felt so much like fear. Feliz and her family are feeling grief and fear. Because it's terrifying not to know how your sister and her boyfriend died. And because it's terrifying to learn how. Karina and Sam and Cora and two of their friends had a little party on Saturday night. Just a few friends hanging out at Karina and Sam's apartment after they put the baby to bed.

Someone, and we'll never know who, brought cocaine. And in the perceived safety of their home, surrounded by safe people, they all took it. They all took it. And five of them died. And there, right there, is where the empathy ran out and the headlines and comments ran wild.

It's easy to see things and make quick judgments because we see a million pieces of media, whatever, every day. And so it's easy to say, oh, why would you do that? Or why would you think that that's okay? And I took a step back several times and I was like, okay, if I...

Saw a story where a four-month-old baby was there. And there was a news story. It was done by Daily Mail. They would say it was this drug-fueled party where a baby was left orphaned and just all these crazy things, right? These parents were known to party and it was drug-fueled and they...

didn't care that there was a four-month-old baby in the room. They left orphans and blah, blah, blah. It was horrible. And they took pictures of my niece, took pictures of my nephew, and she was four months old. My nephew was 10 years old. And that was one thing I was upset about. I was like, you know what? These kids have no say-so. They're not giving any consent and they don't have the ability to do so. And it's gross and skeezy to include their faces in this story that's become an international story.

You know, they have the right to that privacy regardless of what their parents did. You know, like it's just, it's so gross. And I had known my sister had like dabbled in that here and there before, but I didn't know that was something that she had done since she had the baby. You know, she had recently stopped nursing. And so I know that she had had some drinks and, you know, I live in Colorado. So marijuana is legal. Like they had, you know, smoked here and there. I knew that she had done it once or twice when she was younger and that was it.

And for me, it just didn't make sense. I'm like, what do you mean? And they're like, yeah, there was like a mirror out and it was Coke. But it wasn't Coke, not even a little bit. This little gathering of friends became at the time the largest fentanyl poisoning in our country's history.

They have, it's called a spectrometer, I think is what it's called, where they can test drugs. And it came up as, I won't tell you the breakdown, but it'll tell you it's cocaine and something else. And it just came up pure fentanyl. They had no idea that what they had was pure fentanyl. They thought they were just going to do a line of coke, have a night at home where they're safe in their own home.

and hang out with their friends and then go to bed. And they had no idea. The police officer said that they probably didn't even, because of the strength of it, they probably didn't even have a chance to realize what was happening. They said it was probably within minutes of when they did it that they were gone. Depending on how, like, what order they all did a line or whatever, they wouldn't have had a chance to call for help or anything like that. ♪

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My friend's still laughing at me to this day. Not everyone gets B2B, but with LinkedIn, you'll be able to reach people who do. Get $100 credit on your next ad campaign. Go to linkedin.com slash results to claim your credit. That's linkedin.com slash results. Terms and conditions apply. LinkedIn, the place to be, to be. Feliz has lost her sister. Karina's children have lost their mother. And hundreds more people have lost a version of Karina that held significance in their lives.

The grief of Karina's death is a wave that only grows bigger as it heads towards shore. But there's something else that's growing bigger. The story of her death and the judgment around it. You know, obviously it's a huge story. I don't fault them for that. It's a big thing that happened in our community. And like my mom saw her face on the screen and she

just was livid. I don't even know where she got the number for the newsroom, but within a few minutes, she was on the phone with the newsroom at two different stations and was yelling at people. And she's like, you don't have any permission to take my daughter's picture down. And even people who would say things like, I know some of the people who were there and they were known for this and

It's just like, who are you? And I remember there was a minute where Malaya and I were fighting anybody we could in any comment section we could because I was livid. That's my sister. And if there's anything that I know, I can say what I need to say about my sister to my sister, but no one will speak about my sister. It turned into this fighting strangers on the internet for a while. Yeah.

Fighting strangers on the internet is a time-proven tactic to get through the anger of grief. Grief is compounded when you have to defend the honor of the person who died. That is a whole other task on top of grieving. We all want the people we loved and lost to be remembered, but we don't have any control over how they are remembered.

When Karina's death becomes a media story, that biggest fentanyl poisoning ever in the country at the time, it's not just old colleagues and friends whose opinion Feliz has to hear about. It's everyone's. One article from the Daily Mail is titled, Four-month-old girl orphaned after her mom and dad took her to drug-fueled house party in Colorado where they died after taking, quote, fentanyl-laced cocaine.

And this is some of the commentary that nameless, faceless strangers from around the world chose to leave on that article. The mother liked to get high. One can deduce that this community has a tolerance for drugs in general and very little education. I pray she finds new parents that value her life and their own and have no intention of destroying their chance of years of happiness. I pray this little girl lives a long and happy life with no remorse for her idiot biological parents.

And if you have ever left a comment like this, on a story like this or any other, it's not too late to delete it.

It's not too late to consider that on the other side of the screen are people who have forgotten more about the person you're judging than you could ever know from a stupid article in the stupid Daily Mail. So because the baby was there when they died, a caseworker from like human services, social services had to be involved.

from child protection and just to make sure the baby was safe and that, you know, everything like that. And she told us, you know, you guys should be careful. She's like, have you Googled your sister's name? Have you Googled Sam's name? And that's what I did. And I was like, oh my God, like someday these kids are going to see this, you know, they're going to have access to the internet and they're going to be able to see, you know, Karina Rodriguez, you know, drug fueled party, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so that's when I kind of started to

Kind of go off the deep end and really start looking at everything that was coming up when you would Google their names. It was crazy because I've always, I mean, I have a very unique name. You know, if you Google my name, it's like my jobs and like my Facebook profile. And I don't even share a name with, a last name with my sisters. But I had, my phone was ringing off the hook. I would get probably 20 friend requests on Facebook a day.

just all these like random phone calls, text messages, messages on Facebook, messages on social media, people who just wanted to know, like who wanted to, it felt like people just wanted to be like witness to our family's pain. And going through the most traumatic event of your life is hard, obviously. But when you have like the eyes of the world speculating and picking apart every little thing they can see that's public of these people's lives, it's,

It was just another layer of just devastation. We can't even settle down and grieve. It was, you know, going into protection mode, like, big sister, you are not going to talk about my sister like that. It's normal to be curious. But the internet has also given us an abnormal amount of access to things that are none of our business. And the ability to voice our often uninformed opinions about any and everything.

And it's hard because people say, well, they shouldn't have been doing that. No, they shouldn't have. But how many people do most of us know who have been to a party and someone pulls it out? It used to be like a very white collar drug. You've seen the Wolf of Wall Street. You've seen these things where it's like the rich...

You know, more upper class people are the ones who are doing cocaine. And, you know, I always tell people they shouldn't have been doing that, but we're supposed to be able to learn from our mistakes. We're not supposed to die. You know, my mom always questions, like, how could she do something so stupid? How could she, you know, do this? And I'm like, she was happy. When you're that happy, you don't think, hey, this next thing is going to kill me. You know, like, you don't think that way. You think, like, I'm having a good time with my friends.

I'm at my house. My baby is in her bed. We're here. We're safe. And I'm going to just do something that I wouldn't normally do because life is good and I'm going to enjoy this time. In my mind, I was like, you know what? They probably thought we're doing the safest thing. We picked up our daughter. We hadn't had any drinks yet. So we're going to go home. We can have a couple of drinks at home with our friends. And then a friend shows up with the stuff and

fine, we'll try it. We're at home. You know, like she is safe. We are safe. We're not going anywhere else tonight. And it just, it didn't turn out that way. And that's not, it's not fair. You know, when, I mean, it's never fair, but it feels like when she was really trying and really trying to be in this place, my sister, you know, she was a young mom. She was having fun. She was 28 years old, you know, with people she loved and this never should have happened.

This podcast is supported by FX's English Teacher, a new comedy from executive producers of What We Do in the Shadows and Baskets. English Teacher follows Evan, a teacher in Austin, Texas, who learns if it's really possible to be your full self at your job, while often finding himself at the intersection of the personal, professional, and political aspects of working at a high school. FX's English Teacher premieres September 2nd on FX. Stream on Hulu. ♪

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Countless incendiary comments from strangers who either don't know the nuances of that story or don't care enough to withhold their judgment or haven't heard of simply scrolling by and writing their thoughts in a journal. Please, people, get a journal. And the thing about posting comments online is that you don't know who is seeing you.

Because Feliz is seeing the hundreds of comments about Karina and it makes her grieving family wonder who they're close to in real life that could be feeling the same way. And Feliz is not saying, you know what, everybody? Go do drugs. Go get some cocaine and do it. She's instead asking a more important question. Should you die from a mistake? And should you be judged for it forever?

That anger, you know, had me up at night. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't do anything. And so I started just writing to people. I would find my state senator, state congressperson, you know, national, everybody. I was just writing to everybody like, hey, why aren't you doing something about this? Why is this even a thing? And I ended up getting some responses. And that led me to groups that were like, hey, actually in Colorado right now we are trying to pass a law that

to be more stringent and more strict on fentanyl laws. And so in April, not even two months after my sister was gone, my sister and I both testified to our state legislative committee about the law on fentanyl. She was not a person who struggled with addiction. And she said in the week before her death that she was the happiest she had ever been.

The night she died, she was with friends and family in her own home and had no intention of touching the fentanyl that took her life. We did that twice. And then when the bill passed, they asked me to speak at the bill signing. So I spoke at that. And it just made me feel like, okay, if my sister's name and her story has to be out there and people have to know this, it made me want to

have other good things tied to it. Granted, my sister, what happened to her will never, ever be okay. But in my mind, I was thinking about 10 years, five years from now when the kids can Google their mom's name.

And they're going to see that, yes, she died and it was horrible and it never should have happened. I've heard of people who thought they have a joint and it's just marijuana and it ends up having fentanyl in it and they're gone. And there's just such a stigma around it. And most of these people are doing things that they had no idea had any fentanyl in them. And that makes it so sad for me because those people feel like they can't speak out and they can't talk about their loved one without any shame. And I just really feel like...

One decision, one moment, one night of their lives does not get to define everything for them. It really just makes me want to get out there and provide education on what else we can do and how we can prevent this. I have no judgment. People are going to do what they do. We've all done our own things that maybe didn't align with our morals for the rest of our lives. But if you're going to use, be safe. There's ways to test it. There's ways to...

use safely. And to be aware that if you're around people, even if you're not using any kind of drugs, to know the signs that, hey, this person might be experiencing an overdose, a poisoning, whatever it is. Just the distinction between overdose and poisoning has been huge for me. Like even there was a news station who was covering it

And she tweeted something and I was like, hey, my sister was actually not, she didn't overdose. She was poisoned because overdose is when you know what you're consuming and you do too much of it. My sister had no idea. It would be like her going to the bar and ordering a beer and getting like something with arsenic in it and totally not what she ordered. She was poisoned. And so just even making those distinctions and being able to talk about it in that way so that families feel safe.

okay to say, you know, my child, my sister, my friend, my whoever, this doesn't define who they were. Obviously we all have to process it, but I can't, I can't stay there, especially because my girls see that. And now I have this extra pressure of this girl who I love so much, who's not biologically mine, but she's mine. And I have to protect her from all these horrible things she's going to know later in her life. What is it like to raise your sister's daughter? Yeah.

It's hard. She's this amazing little person. She's so smart. All parents say that, but she is just – she's smart and she's insightful and she's funny. But she looks so much like my sister when she was little. Someone said, oh, Karina really just gave birth to herself, huh? Because she looks just like her. And there's days when I look at her and I'm just like, oh, you look so much like your mom. Or she'll do something that's funny or –

And I'm like, oh, I hope they're seeing this wherever they are. I hope they see this. I have a seven year old. And so Aria obviously hears her call me mom. And so she'd be like, my mom. And the first time she called me mom, I had to like walk out of my house and like get ahold of myself because it was just, and I didn't, it was very unexpected. She's like, hi, mommy.

Because she calls me auntie and, you know, we show her pictures of her mom and dad every day. She can pick them out. She's like, mommy, daddy. You know, she talks about them all the time. And so, and I tell myself, like, she's two. She doesn't know what these words mean. She just knows that I'm her safe adult. And my mom is one of her safe adults. My boyfriend is one of her safe adults. But...

It tears me apart, you know, either when she does things that I wish they were here for, when big events come, you know, her birthday was last weekend. And, you know, I still bring this picture of them, you know, put it on the table with the cake because they're here, you know, and I, I stress my older sister. I stress myself out about the future and what that's going to look like. Like, am I loving her enough?

to be able to get through this trauma that she doesn't even know she has yet? Am I loving her enough to make sure that she's going to be okay? Am I doing too much? Am I making her this piece of her parents and not letting her be herself? And thank God for my therapist because she's like, you're loving her. And that's the important thing. Those things may come up later and you'll deal with them then. Future Felice will take care of it.

But right now you are loving her. There's nights that I go to sleep and I'm just like, she really wanted me to have another baby. And here I am taking care of hers, you know, and I make those jokes with her. I talk to her all the time. Yesterday I was giving Aria a bath and this song came on and it just made me cry. Made me think of my sister. And she looked at me, she goes, why crying auntie? Miss sister?

You know, I just lost it. Like, how does she know? You know, obviously we talk about it enough and she picks up on things, but she's two, like two in a week. How do you know these things? How do you know? But I feel like it's also that her parents are so ingrained in what we do that she knows, you know, she knows everything.

those emotions. And I just tell her, auntie's sad. I miss my sister. I miss your mommy. And she's like, sister, my mommy? Her broken little two-year-old words. But yeah. So days like that are really hard. My sister's middle name was Joy and she hated her middle name, but she gave it to her daughter. She was like, I'm going to make it something new. And so

I always tell my sister, you know, when I have my little talks with her, like you made such a good choice. Like this little girl is just pure joy. Like I said before, my sister was always telling me, let's have another baby with me. And I was done. Like right now I have a college freshman and a second grader. And then I also have Aria. So it's like, I am starting over from the very beginning. But in my mind, there was no other, no other choice. There's nothing I wouldn't do now.

for my sister. And if that meant changing everything in my life, selling the house that I had bought and buying a bigger house and making sure she had her own space and having a space for her brother when he wants to be here to visit, that's what I was going to do. And so that's what we did. But it's always been my goal to make sure that she doesn't, without erasing them, doesn't feel the loss of them.

I don't want it to feel like she has this huge hole in her life, which she does. They're not here. But I also want that hole that she has just to be filled with love instead of everything else that is out there. I always debate what is harder, that Aria doesn't have any of her own memories of her parents or her brother Josiah who has 10 years of memories of them.

and now doesn't have any more. And I don't know what's more sad to me. And I don't think there's a way to really answer that. You know, they're both incredibly hard and heartbreaking and not fair. There are very few fair deaths. You are lucky if you can say someone I love died at the exact right time in the exact right way and everyone involved was ready for it. And once you cross that threshold into the world without your loved one,

Time moves differently. You're counting the hours, and then the days, and eventually the years. But Feliz counts Sundays, because even though it was Saturday night, technically, Karina died at 2 a.m. on Sunday morning. I just go by Sundays. Like, it was the 86th Sunday yesterday that I haven't had her. And, you know, even all this time later, I still can't drive down that street anymore.

the main street between my house and her house. I avoid it at all costs. I take like little short little journeys on it because it's a very main road in our town, but I still can't do it. It's just, I just get so many, like my body knows and, you know, in the same way that my body knows it's Sunday, it's supposed to be a day of relaxing. It's supposed to be a day of all these things, laundry, whatever, you know, your Sunday looks like.

And for me, even though I do those things, like I'm at the point where I get them done, you know, but I always know it was that day. When we spoke to Feliz, she had lived without Karina for 86 Sundays. When this episode comes out, it will have been 99 Sundays. In 2022 alone, there were 200 deaths from fentanyl every day in the United States.

That's over 73,000 people, a stadium full of lives, gone. And in their wake, countless people like Feliz and her family, counting the days since they've gone. Sunday by Sunday by Sunday. I'm Nora McInerney. This has been terrible. Thanks for asking. Thank you immensely to Feliz for reaching out to me with her story and for sharing her memories of Karina with our team.

Karina's life and the lives of Sam, Steffine, Humberto, and Jennifer were taken from this world too soon. We are honored to be able to spread the light of their lives just a little bit further.

Fentanyl, opioids, they're such huge topics. There are so many different ways that people have been affected by it. It is not unlikely that you have been or will be affected by it in some way. This is our first time talking about this on our show, but it certainly won't be the last.

If you haven't yet, consider joining our Patreon community. We have bonus episodes twice a month, and we also do regular mailbags where we take your comments, your questions, and we talk about them as a team. You might also get invited to a table read for one of our shows where we go live and

the middle of a workday. Felice is actually in our Patreon, so she saw and heard this episode before it came out. We are an independent podcast. It has never been more important in this version of the podcast industry to have listener support. Special thanks to David Farr, Jamie Zimmerman, Lillian Campbell, and Rachel Humphrey for being supporting producers of this work. Special

Supporting producers are Patreon members who support us at the very highest level, which is absolutely amazing. We've been making this show for over seven years at this point, and I'm very grateful to continue to be able to do this.

Terrible Thanks for Asking is an independent production of Feelings & Co., a little independent podcast production company, a little un-network of people who believe that your feelings matter. Our team is Marcel Malikibu, Megan Palmer, Claire McInerney, Michelle Planton, and Grace Berry. Our theme music is by Joffrey Lamar Wilson.

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