Lauren Sisler still puts on the VHS tapes. They transport her back to old gymnastics meets after long drives alongside her parents and her brother Allen.
‘We’d jump in the car and travel for hours,’ Sisler explains. Even now, she can still pick their voices out from the crowd. ‘I can just hear my parents screaming,’ recalls Sisler, now an award-winning reporter for ESPN. She can make out her nickname – Woe – and her dad’s piercing whistle.
What she never heard? A cry for help. Not on those videos. Not at home. Not even in the darkest hours, as opioid addiction tightened its grip around both her parents ‘and ravaged their lives’. Not until it was too late.
‘They just felt so much shame and they wanted to keep putting on that persona that everything was fine,’ Sisler says. ‘But everything wasn’t fine.’
In March 2003, when Lauren was just 18, her dad called. Mom Lesley had died at just 45. By the time she had flown home to rural Virginia, her father was gone, too. George – known as Butch – was only 52.
ESPN reporter Lauren Sisler has opened up on losing both her parents just hours apart
Lesley and George ‘Butch’ Sisler died back in March 2003. They were 45 and 52, respectively
‘It’s like someone takes a baseball bat to your life and shatters it into a million pieces,’ she says
He had taken a patch of fentanyl from the freezer, sucked on it and overdosed – hours his wife had done the same. George was found on the kitchen floor, Lesley on the porch.
It was a devastating end to a downward spiral that began – many years earlier – with routine surgery and regular medication. A tragedy that unfolded without anyone really noticing. One that left Lauren – who had $50 in her bank account – and Allen with a funeral bill but very little else. The family house went into foreclosure, the contents were shipped off for auction. Sisler barely recognized her parents in their caskets.
‘It’s like someone takes a baseball bat to your life and shatters it into a million pieces,’ she says. Two decades on, Sisler is 39 and based in Birmingham, Alabama. The scars of that day still linger – in her response to the smell of cut grass and her reaction to college football stars popping pills. The questions she asks coaches, the way she gives birth and the conversations she wants with her 15-month-old son, Mason.
For a while, the ESPN reporter ran from reality. She chose to concoct her own story that left out both addiction and overdose. She has spent the last few years, however, filling in the gaps and answering lingering questions.
Sisler enjoyed a happy childhood even while her parents fought a secret battle with addiction
The ESPN reporter has her own family with husband John Willard and baby son Mason
Earlier this month, Sisler released Shatterproof, a book detailing her journey from shame to the ‘Sideline Shimmy’ she performs on ESPN every Saturday.
‘It forced me to dig into things and areas that I had never wanted to open the door on,’ Sisler explains. ‘Sometimes when you put things on the shelf, it’s easier just to walk away from them.’ But? ‘Opening up those boxes, looking in them and discovering what was behind all of this has really been so healing for me.’
What has become clear: the signs were always there. ‘My parents would walk around the house – or we’d be traveling to gymnastics meets – and they’d have the fentanyl suckers in their mouth,’ she recalls. ‘I’m sitting here thinking: “Oh, this is normal”‘
So was her mom writing $10 checks to the power company – just to keep the lights on. Lauren never joined the dots and discovered that the family finances were in ruins.
Nor was she concerned when her dad watched ‘A Knight’s Tale’ on repeat. ‘I remember those closing credits playing over and over for like a month.’ She was just a little confused (‘It’s a good movie, but not that good’). Only later did reality hit. ‘He would fall asleep every ten minutes, remote in the air, just pointed at the TV,’ Sisler explains.
As a teenager, alarm bells did begin to ring when arguments between her parents ratcheted up. ‘I later found out my dad was taking my mom’s medication,’ she says.
Sisler watches old VHS tapes, where she can hear her parents supporting her in the crowd
She went on to earn a gymnastics scholarship at Rutgers before the family tragedy struck
But the ESPN reporter still believed the cover stories. On the eve of Thanksgiving in 2002, Sisler was back from Rutgers – she was on a gymnastics scholarship – when her father was found on the couch. He was blue, he was not breathing. He had sucked on a fentanyl patch – knowing it could kill him. Sisler was told he simply had a bad reaction to medicine for blood pressure and cholesterol.
That was among the final warning signs before tragedy stuck. But she had good reason to assume all was well. Sisler was born in Guantanamo Bay; her father struggled with alcoholism and PTSD after serving in the military. He could be ‘loosey-goosey’ and spend money they didn’t really have. Her mom, though? ‘So by the book.’ Hence why Sisler never worried when she underwent surgery to her neck and was prescribed medicine to treat the pain.
Nor did she sense danger when her dad had back surgery and began taking opioids after visiting a pain-management doctor. They had built such a happy home, after all.
‘When I smell fresh grass,’ Sisler explains, ‘I think about jumping on the trampoline (or) being on my balance beam… me and my brother were always loved. I think sometimes maybe to a fault,’ she says.
‘I just wish my parents would have been more open.’ That could have stopped the spiral. All Sisler wishes they said? ‘We need help.’ So she is determined to have a more open, honest relationship with her own family. She has already paid too high a price.
After her parents’ struggles, she wants to have a more open, honest relationship with her son
‘I was not in the house when my parents passed away,’ the ESPN reporter says. They had spoken on the phone a few hours earlier. When her dad called back in the early hours – ‘Lauren, your mom died’ – she slumped to the floor. Sisler’s roommate began to shake her, thinking it was nightmare. Soon the pain had doubled.
By the time Sisler was in high school, regular shipments were arriving at the house containing 90-days’ worth of pills, opioid lollipops and fentanyl patches. By the time they died, her parents were racing through them. Police, it’s said, found empty bottles for 348 OxyContin pills, 60 oxycodone pills and 82 other painkiller tablets.
Part of the writing and healing process involved piecing together that tragic day. ‘The only thing we had to go off was three paragraphs from when my dad called 911… and then what was shared at the hospital,’ Sisler explains.
For a time, she would fake phone calls – ‘just to escape the reality that they weren’t here’. She eventually told people her mother died of respiratory failure and her father had a heart attack. Rumors swirled around Giles County that it was murder-suicide.
One fact no one could hide? Her parents didn’t have a will. ‘So their cars were repossessed, the house went into foreclosure, and literally everything we owned was boxed up… and shipped off to an auction.’
Sisler, now a sideline reporter for ESPN, chats to legendary Alabama coach Nick Saban
The award-winning journalist visits the grave of her parents with her young son, Mason
Her brother, then in the navy, managed to bring some heirlooms back. Thanks to the local community – who raised a few thousand dollars – and a message that went around the auction house: don’t bid against the family.
Allen secured some jewelry, their dad’s dog tags, his coin collection. And his guns, too.
Sisler also took some important lessons from the tragedy. Now, at work, the focus has shifted from the game to the stories. ‘It has really helped me to dig under the surface,’ she says. Her own relationship with medicine, meanwhile, has never recovered.
‘I do everything I can to stay away from painkillers,’ Sisler explains. When she gave birth, the reporter was adamant that she wanted to avoid opioids. On the sidelines, the 39-year-old is ‘triggered’ whenever she sees a player taking medication immediately after an injury.
‘Everyone is chasing that dream,’ she says. And that might mean ‘taking something that ultimately can alter your life.’ The problem? ‘You can’t see that far in front of you’. Not everyone can see that a quick fix can lead ‘down a dark road that ultimately could end in a tragic situation like my parents.’
