‘Never give up hope’: York County woman shares message of hope after losing her son

Rustee Furst leaned into the tiny little rear view camera on the trunk of his mother's car just before she drove away from his house one evening. When she saw his face on her dashboard, it startled her into a laugh, and she took a photo of him.

It was the last time she saw him. 

The following day at home, he ended his 24-year life.

"He was my everything," his mother, Amy Furst, said with tears in her eyes. Sitting in the living room of her East Prospect home, Amy is surrounded by his photos and mementos; one of them is that final photograph. 

It has been four years since Rustee died - Jan. 17, 2016 - and his mother can laugh about his crazy antics one minute and cry the next.

These are the days and nights she endures, the never-ending heartache of loss. Grief doesn't end; it just becomes a part of who a person is.  

Just this month, she found a special way to honor him and - she hopes - to help others save themselves from his fate.

An unbreakable bond

He was Amy's only child, and as a single parent, she raised him with a village of family members - both blood relatives and good friends who implanted themselves in the Fursts' lives.

He played baseball for most of his life and never missed school, but at 16, severe headaches and fatigue wrecked him. Doctors diagnosed Chiari malformation, a condition in which the spinal canal is blocked by brain tissue. It required surgery and a long recovery.

He wasn't able to get a driver's license for another year (a good thing, Amy thought), but six hours after getting his license, Rustee called with bad news: He'd rolled her car over. 

He told her it was a deer that got in his way, and she started to believe it, until he told her the buck had an eight-point rack. Then, she knew he was telling a tall tale - a hallmark of his stories. 

"I said, 'Eight points? And my car rolled?" Amy recalled, questioning his ability to count the points on the antlers while her car rolled into a field. It turned out, he had taken a curve too fast.

"That was him," she said. "No fear."

He graduated from Dallastown in 2010 as part of ROTC and rose into a welding job.

A "rough and tough cream puff" was what Amy called him; everyone else called him Tank. He gave the best hugs and helped any friend - "brothers and sisters" to him - in need, but he could also carry a washing machine across the room. Anything he was told was impossible to do, he would try.

What she had from her Rustee was immeasurable - the steady and precious gift of a boy who loved her back.

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Every morning, he sent her a text message: "I love you, Mama. Have a great day." And she would answer: "I love you, too, Son. Be safe."

Despite that strong bond, she didn't really know the depth of his burden. But does anyone ever know how hard someone fights to live in this world? 

A couple of months before he died, Rustee told his mother, "It just doesn't go away, Mom. It just doesn't go away."

Amy knew what "it" was, but she didn't know the full weight of its burden on him.

The accident

Rustee called his mother one Saturday afternoon in 2012, panicked and hysterical.

"Everybody's just gone," Amy remembers him screaming into the phone. 

There had been a car accident, on Routes 11/15 north of Duncannon. A woman drove her pickup truck into oncoming traffic, hitting a Chevrolet Cavalier head-on.

In that Cavalier were Rustee's fiance and a woman who had been like a sister to him. Jessica Bennett and Jasmine Burns, both of Windsor, died at the scene along with the woman in the pickup.

Rustee watched the whole accident from his car. Rustee, Jessica and Jasmine had driven to Perry County to pick up Jasmine's car from the shop, so Rustee followed them home. In the car with him was his newborn son, Alaric Furst. Jessica had given birth to him just one month before the accident.

When Amy arrived at the accident scene, the Cavalier and the pickup truck were blanketed. Rustee and Alaric had been taken to Penn State Hershey Medical Center.

Their lives had just taken a tragic turn.

The aftermath

Rustee and Alaric - so much like his father that Amy referred to them as "twins" - moved in with Amy and her partner after the accident. Amy's partner at that time was also Jasmine's mother, so they had actually lost two family members in the accident. 

Amy worked during the day; Rustee worked second shift. They didn't see much of each other, and they had so much to juggle - jobs, the baby, and a lawyer to handle the accident aftermath.

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Occasionally, Rustee would seem troubled about the memories of that day and say, "It just doesn't go away." But when Amy talked to him about seeing a therapist, he would answer, "I got this."

He eventually started seeing his old girlfriend again, and they married. Their baby, Gunner, arrived in 2015. 

On the night he died in 2016, Rustee had already packed his lunch for work the next day. Amy had seen him just one day earlier, and he seemed fine to her, the goofy boy she had always known, now 24 years old with three sons. One of those sons was Jessica's son Micheal; Rustee had adopted him. 

He didn't leave a note behind, just millions of memories.

Her last words to him: I love you.

How can she help?

Amy attended grief support classes after Rustee's suicide, and the group talked about the suicide crisis in York County, she said, but she didn't feel enough was being done to save people.

In 2018, 92 people died by suicide in York County, according to the coroner's office. That was the third-leading cause of traumatic death in York County last year, and the highest number of suicides in the history of the office, coroner Pam Gay reported.

As a grieving mother, Amy has wanted to make a difference, to change the trajectory of someone else's life before a tragedy occurs.

The pain of living, though, can sometimes overwhelm the desire to help. She keeps busy, works a lot and builds things at home in any free time she has.

"If I stay still, I think," Amy said, and thinking to a grief-stricken mother brings tears and hours of sadness.

She and her partner of nearly four years, Wanda Wilkerson, live in a house in East Prospect that she originally bought for Rustee and his wife. Now, Amy and Wanda take care of Alaric full time and have weekend visits - that Amy fought in court for - with Micheal and Gunner.

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Another mother who lost her own son to suicide once told Amy: "You live two lives: the life you let everybody see, and the life that's real."

Amy had thought so often of how she could help others but didn't know where to begin. Overwhelmed, she would put it out of her mind. One idea was to turn her pickup into a message of hope and a memorial for Rustee.

So, recently, she walked into Image360 - York with a jumble of thoughts. She wanted a wrap done on her truck with photos of her son, a memorial of him, words of hope for others. Somehow, they turned her ideas into an art piece.

One side of the truck says: "You are awesome. Believe in yourself." The other side: "Know your worth. Never give up hope." On the front and back of the pickup are photos of Rustee Furst and a phone number:

1-800-273-8255.

It's the national Suicide Prevention Lifeline.

Amy said, "If it saves one life, it's worth it."