<div>My heart is shattered into a million pieces. Monday morning, June 2nd 2025, Christopher J McGinty died at the young age of 33. Just a couple of minutes after I woke up for work, I received a call saying that my brother was in the back of an ambulance on the way to the hospital from choking on his breakfast. I thought that surely he was fine, and that the paramedic team would be able to clear his throat and give him some oxygen, and that would be it. Shortly after, we found out that he had passed. My name is Jessica, and my brother meant everything to me.
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<div>Chris was born with severe autism, and has needed full-time care every day of his life to carry out his activities of daily living. His main passions in life included food, rock n' roll, rap music, and good television. His favorite things were ice cold Dr. Pepper and anything from McDonald's. He also loved school. Although most of his speech was Echolalia (repetition of heard phrases), he could read almost anything that you put in front of him, and he loved learning addition and subtraction. When he was in his high school special needs classroom, he loved soaking up new information every day, and was happiest with a pen and paper in front of him.
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<div>When Chris was eighteen, my mother was forced to make the difficult decision of keeping him in our home, or sending him to a state home in Texas where we were living at the time. Ultimately, the choice was made to send him to state care for his safety. Common fixations among autistic children and adults are escapism and hyperphagia with binge-eating. My mother spent countless nights sleeping in front of his door and we had to ensure that every door and window was locked. Despite this, his escape behaviors and his increasing height and size, put our family in a lot of dangerous situations when trying to protect him. Throughout the years, he has stayed in different homes with security measures and full-time caretakers, and my family and I have always visited and called him regularly. He was staying now in a home near my father's side of the family in Texas.
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<div>Everyone in our family loved him so much, and we cherished all of the times that we spent with him. I want to take the opportunity to include some of our favorite memories of him throughout this page: He and I are only three years apart in age, and when I was a baby, he did not like to hear me cry. He did not speak much at that point, but instead of getting upset, he would just press his face into the mesh of my playpen and make silly faces to make me laugh. I have a photo of him doing this same thing when he was a baby, and it always makes me so happy. Another thing. I call him every three weeks to to talk, and although he never stayed on the phone more than a couple minutes, I would ask him how his day was and I was tell him "I miss you" and he always thought that those words meant that I was getting off the phone, so he would say "Bye Jessi" in the sweetest voice. I would just laugh and ask him to stay on the phone. My mother could give you a hundred stories of him getting into trouble as a kid but she always has, and always will think of him as pure, sweet, and innocent. She recalls that he would always sneak into the fridge, and that she had to clean butter and eggs off of many objects when he was a child. My dad loved to see that he was always happy, and he likes to think that he had a subversive sense of humor. When my dad would ask for a hug, Chris would half hug him until my dad would say "give me a real hug" or "act like you know me", and then he would laugh and hug him back.
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<div>Anyone who knows me knows that my main goal has been to obtain a shared guardianship over him with my mother, and move him back to a home near family. I now work as Registered Behavior Technician and get to work every day with children and adults on the spectrum to combat the maladaptive behaviors that are standing in the way of their own safety and the relationships that they have with their families. My dream was to move him here and sign him up for services to help him to combat some of the behaviors that were a barrier in the past. A major life change in the middle of 2024 caused me to have to start my life over in Oklahoma, and I have been working to get back on my own two feet, and despite all of the struggles that my family and I face, we have been speaking to a lawyer about regaining guardianship soon. I am having to now accept that that dream will never come true.
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<div>When I heard the news, my first instinct was to drive to Texas right away. I just wanted to be there and see his body for myself. As I have not had to previously deal with such a sudden death, I was unaware that the first time that we will be able to see his body is at a funeral home. So just a couple of hours after my family found out, we have been plunged into funeral planning, instead of being able to focus on grieving. I just want to see him and maybe gain some acceptance. Other emergencies within the family have filled the past couple of days, and I am rushing to share his story so that we are able to receive help in funding a proper funeral for him. My family and I need all the help that we can receive to deal with this sudden and unexpected tragedy.
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<div>In asking everyone to recount some favorite memories and qualities of Chris, my grandmother recounted on the time that she took him to the movies to see the Hunchback of Notre Dame as a child, and he was running up and down the aisles unable to contain his excitement. My sister Kindalin cherished the times that they spent watching Yu-Gi-Oh and other anime together, marathoning Disney movies, and listening to music together. My stepmom Jewel and her husband Richard spoke of how smart he was. He had an incredible memory, and was able to remember musician names, song titles, covers of songs, phone numbers, quotes from television and so much more. He loved all music, and Richard would always give him so of his most special band t-shirts, and Chris would smile ear to ear. They also mentioned how much he loved camping when he was a kid, and I also hold some of those memories very close to my heart. My brother Kiefer and my sister Sierra and I recently spent a lot of time taking him to coffee shops to hang out and work on his spelling and math. He loved when I would get him a pastry, and I loved watching Kiefer teach him tricks to help with his math. Sierra recounted on his love of writing and drawing and his sense of humor, but she specifically remembers when we ran wild and free as children in the backyard; swinging, jumping and playing in the mud with him. My grandfather Frank and Aunt Katie also mentioned how happy he always was any time that you saw him, and recalled on the games that he and I used to play together. A special memory for my stepfather Brett is when we all visited the Zoo together. Chris could not stop smiling. He was so amazed by all of the life around him.
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<div>I am still in complete and utter disbelief that I am writing this right now, and I am so incredibly sad to release all of the plans I had for him and our family. I will never get to take him to the beach and see his face the first time that he sees the waves. I will never get to drive a few minutes down the road to pick him up for Christmas. I no longer get to take care of him in his old age like I had planned. His timeline was cut short far too briefly, but his memory will never fade for me and my family. He was the reason behind all of my passions in life, and he was everything to us.
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