Tim Toman, 32
Tim Toman could build and fix almost anything. Plumbing, flooring, wiring or busted cars – show him once how to install it, lay it down or get it running, and he’d pretty much have it mastered.
He was handy in the kitchen, too, a whiz with lasagna, steak and bacon-wrapped scallops. When his dear friend (and on-again, off-again romance) Beth Cella turned 50, he baked her a five-layer frosted cake.
Tim was a perfectionist, which was a mixed blessing. Whatever he did, he did well. But whatever he did, he did slowly, and if the work didn’t meet his exacting standards, he’d undo it and start over. That drove his father, Ronald Toman, crazy.
The two worked together for more than a decade in the elder Toman’s flooring business. But if they bickered, they were also very much alike, his sister, Joanie Toman Binette, says.
Last June, he took his father out for Father’s Day. Two days later he was dead.
Tim had more than his share of accidents. At 11, he was hit by a car while riding his dirt bike and was taken to the hospital in critical condition. At 18, he broke his neck in a car accident. He survived. The driver, his best friend, did not.
While recovering, Tim got hooked on oxycodone. When his doctors realized, they shut off his prescriptions, Beth says. From then on he suffered from addiction. He used anything he could get – oxycodone, Suboxone, booze, crack, heroin.
Loving, capable Tim alternated with paranoid, mean, crazy Tim. He blew through the $300,000 settlement from the car accident, spending some of it on drugs. He lost his driver’s license, his friends and his girlfriends.
His older sister kept her distance. He spent time in jail. One frigid February day, he nearly lost his feet to frostbite, when he ran around outside barefoot, crazed on cocaine.
At least once and probably twice, Tim overdosed and was revived. Just four days before his 33rd birthday, he overdosed again. This time, his heart stopped for good.
– PEGGY GRODINSKY