SOUTH WAYNE — Linda Williams tried to talk to her son about his heroin addiction. She implored him to talk to her, to his dad or to anyone. She told him there was no shame in getting professional help.

“Nobody’s gonna make fun of you or laugh at you,” she recalls saying to him.

But he clammed up. “You just don’t understand,” he told her over and over.

Not long after, he overdosed. Feb. 20 marks three years since Timothy J. Williams Jr. died at age 31 in his home on West Center Street in South Wayne.

Linda and her husband, Tim Williams, are still trying to understand what happened. In November, they began offering a $1,000 reward for information about their son’s death.

Timmy, as they call their son, wasn’t alone when he overdosed. Police responded to a 911 call at 3:38 a.m. from another man at the residence, according to the Lafayette County Sheriff’s Office. Whoever made the call then left, leaving Timmy in the house, dying or dead, with no one else at home with him but his 4-year-old daughter.

Police have so far been unable to determine who made that 911 call, or who gave Timmy the heroin that killed him. In Wisconsin, a person who supplies the drug that causes an overdose death can be held criminally responsible.

“It’s been a pretty active case for us,” said Lt. Troy Loeffelholz of the Lafayette County Sheriff’s Office.

“We’re kind of at a standstill right now,” he added. “Right now I think our biggest thing is identifying that male caller.”

Timmy was one of more than 3,000 people who died from an opioid overdose between 2012 and 2016 in Wisconsin, and the rate of such cases is only increasing, according to statistics compiled by state and federal authorities.

The markers of Timmy’s descent into addiction are all too familiar with the rise of opioid abuse across the country. His health deteriorated to the point that he started having seizures and stomachaches. He lost the welding job he’d kept for a decade and pawned nearly all of his belongings to support his habit, even his beloved guitars.

But statistics don’t console a grieving family. His parents and siblings struggle to reconcile the happy and caring son and brother they knew with the sick, withdrawn person Timmy became toward the end of his life.

“We never raised him to be like this,” Tim said. At the same time, he noted, “We don’t love him any less.”

Timmy grew up in South Wayne and Gratiot and graduated from Monroe High School in 2003. His family remembers him as a loving father to his two children, a talented guitarist and enthusiastic music lover, a “huge” Packers fan and a respected welder who was asked to perform a lot of difficult welds at his job.

“He made a really bad choice in life, but I don’t think that a single bad choice defines who he was,” said his older sister, Tracy Williams.

Tim and Linda’s living room in South Wayne is filled with family photos. Dozens of frames hang on the walls, line the shelves and cover their upright piano, including many photos of Timmy. There’s one of Timmy with his two siblings a few years ago, all three with big smiles, posing in front of the bowling lanes at Leisure Lanes in Monroe.

Linda has set up a memorial display in Timmy’s honor in the front corner by the TV. She draped his jacket from Cummins, his longtime employer, over his acoustic guitar, along with his guitar picks and hats. Above the guitar on the wall is a freehand drawing Tracy did of him from memory on their first Christmas without him.

The family has Timmy’s acoustic guitar only because Tracy acted quickly to retrieve it from a pawn shop. She and her father were cleaning out Timmy’s house after his death when they realized his collection of guitars was gone.

“So I immediately started calling every pawn shop within a few hours radius with my brother’s information,” Tracy said. “When I found it, I dashed off to Dubuque to recover it.”

Remembering Timmy

Connecting through music and art are two ways the family has found comfort and catharsis in their grief.

Tracy is a tattoo artist, founder of Art Haus Ink of Monroe, and has given her mother and father both memorial tattoos of Timmy on their arms that depict him playing guitar. Linda has no other tattoos, and her first reaction was “I’m too old!” But she came around to it.

“If I ever want to see my son, he’s right here,” Linda said.

“It seems like for a lot of people that I’ve tattooed, and I’ve done a lot of memorial tattoos during my career, it really does give them some peace of mind,” Tracy said.

Tracy herself has a tribute tattoo, a replica of a tattoo Timmy had of his favorite band, the Swedish metal group Amon Amarth. She and her brother attended many concerts together over the years, and a co-headlining tour of Amon Amarth and another Swedish metal band, Sabaton, was the last concert they attended together in November 2014 at The Rave in Milwaukee.

She remembers driving to Milwaukee for the concert that night. Her brother was already in Milwaukee and kept calling her excitedly to see if she was there yet. When they met up, he had a gift for her. Earlier in the night he ran into the members of Sabaton at a McDonald’s, and they gave him a guitar pick as a souvenir. He passed the pick on to Tracy.

“I want you to have this,” he had said. “I just want you to know how much I love you.”

Losing her brother was devastating.

“I think about my brother constantly. My brother was pretty much my lifelong best friend,” Tracy said.  “Part of me died with him. It’s hard to continue to live a normal life when there’s such a huge void.”

Last summer, in memory of Timmy, Tracy and her dad went to the music festival Rock USA in Oshkosh and saw many of his favorite bands.

Even Linda, who never listened to metal music before, has found solace in her son’s music collection. After his death, she started going through his CDs and listening to his albums.

“Now I know the songs by heart,” she said, noting that she had even “cranked it up and sang songs to him” at his grave at Union Cemetery in South Wayne.

Lorali, Timmy’s 7-year-old daughter, listens to his favorite music, too. Timmy’s older brother, Steve Bergum, who lives near Portage and took in Lorali after her father died, said she recognizes “The Rooster” by Alice in Chains whenever it comes on the radio. The lyrics are about a soldier trying to survive.

“That’s my daddy’s song,” Lorali will say when she hears it, Steve said. Other music from the same era, like Stone Temple Pilots and Nirvana, “will trigger memories of her daddy.” Lorali knows her father was sick but doesn’t ask many questions about it; she just talks about missing him, Steve said.

‘He was ashamed’

“A lot of times, addicts don’t want to tell you where they’re at,” Tracy said. “They don’t want to be judged. They already feel terrible. I think one of the most important things for people to realize is that addicts are no different than you or I. ... They’re human beings.”

Steve said seeing Lorali and Timmy’s 9-year-old son Darren, who lives in Florida, grow up and “become their own people and develop their own personalities” helps ease the loss.

“You kind of see Timmy living on in his children, just in the way they love to laugh and smile,” Steve said. “My brother just had a certain smile. It made you want to smile. It was infectious.”

Steve suspected his brother had a drug problem about three years prior to his death. He said he tried talking to Timmy about it, but these talks with his younger brother went nowhere.

“He didn’t want to hear it; he was ashamed,” Steve said. “He would always say that he wasn’t doing anything like that, (and) not to worry about him.” 

Tracy said watching Timmy’s decline left her feeling “so helpless.”

“It was sad to see him go downhill,” Tracy said. “The night he passed away, he tried calling me ... and I had my ringer off. I know it’s a coulda, shoulda, woulda — but you can’t help but question. You can’t help but sit and question if you did enough.”

Linda remembers the night her son died like a vivid nightmare. One block over, at their son’s house, red lights lit up the area.  Tim went down to check what was happening. Linda was still changing out of her pajamas when her husband returned with the news: they couldn’t save him. 

“I started screaming and screaming,” she said. “I was shaking and shaking and shaking.” 

She said medics had worked hard, and the family feels grateful for their attempts.

The family marks his passing by the holidays he’s missing. The first flowers Linda put on his grave were tiger lilies, the same flowers Timmy gifted to her on his last Mother’s Day. She has the last Christmas card she received from him in 2015, signed “Love, Timmy.”

Linda was feeling too heartbroken to put up a tree for their first Christmas without her son in 2016, but after a psychic told her Timmy wanted them to put up a tree, they did. The same year, Timmy’s family built a big snowman and hung a toy guitar and one of his hats on his grave. They decorated again this year, this time with a plastic snowman because of the lack of snow.

“It helped us get through that day,” Linda said. 

‘Love them’

In the years since Timmy’s death, Linda and Tim have learned to recognize the pain in the eyes of other parents who have lost children. But mostly they have felt isolated and alone in their grief.

Their advice to help those who’ve lost a family member or friend is simple.

“Just be with them, listen to them,” Linda said.

It’s similar to the family’ advice for helping an addict.

“Love them. Just do your best to support the individual,” Steve said.

Looking back now, Steve wishes he and his wife had invited Timmy to live with them to help him get out of his environment. They heard it had worked for a friend. 

But he has also learned that there’s only so much loved ones can do to help an addicted person. Ultimately, “they have to want to make the change to change their life,” he said.

‘I’m one determined mama’

Linda’s idea to offer an award for information about Timmy’s death came to her one recent fall day.

“My cogs were turning. What were we missing?” she said. “Finally, one day I said to my husband, ‘I know it’s not much, but how do you feel if we would offer a $1,000 reward?’ We thought it would spark someone’s memory if they heard something.”

Linda is working with the Lafayette County Sheriff’s Office and Crime Stoppers to collect information. Tips can remain anonymous and be submitted through the Crime Stoppers P3 Tips app on a smartphone, or by calling Crime Stoppers at 800-606-TIPS (8477). The reward can also be claimed anonymously.

“I just wish if somebody out there knew something, they’d say something,” Linda said. “I’d be forever grateful.”

Linda started putting up posters announcing the reward before Thanksgiving and has been circulating them all over the area, from Dodgeville and Platteville to New Glarus and Monticello.

“I kind of kick myself for not thinking of it sooner,” Linda said. “I’m one determined mama.”