The Concussion Diaries: One Football Player’s Secret Struggle with CTE

By Reid Forgrave

Zac Easter texted his girlfriend shortly before 10 A.M.

"Can you call me when you get out of class? I'm in hot water right now and idk what to do"

He typed as he drove, weaving Old Red, his cherry red 2008 Mazda3, down the wide suburban boulevards of West Des Moines. He'd already been awake for hours, since well before sunrise. At 5:40 A.M., he texted Ali an apology: "Sorry about last night." Then he started drinking. By now he was shitfaced and driving around the suburbs. She called as soon as she got out of class, and he was slurring his words. Ali was scared. She wanted him off the road. She talked him down and into a gas-station parking lot, and then he hung up.

"Do not leave," she texted back at 11:27 A.M.

Ali Epperson was nearly 700 miles away, at her contract-law class at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law in Cleveland. In football terms, Zac had outkicked his coverage: Ali was an ex-cheerleader but no vacant princess. She had a diamond stud in her left nostril and a knifing wit. They were a pair of scrappers whose jagged edges fit. Zac loved Trump; he kept a copy of Trump: The Art of the Deal in his bedroom. Ali was a budding progressive: a first-year student at a good law school who'd interned at Senator Tom Harkin's D.C. office. They were just friends in high school; she used to cut fourth-period music class to hang with Zac. After they graduated, they became more than friends.

Sometimes he called her Winslow, her middle name, and only Winslow knew the full extent of Zac's struggles in the five and a half years since high school: the brain tremors that felt like thunderclaps inside his skull, the sudden memory lapses in which he'd forget where he was driving or why he was walking around the hardware store, the doctors who told him his mind might be torn to pieces from all the concussions from football. She knew about the drugs and the drinking he was doing to cope. She knew about the mood swings, huge and pulverizing, the slow leaching of his hope.

"I'm not leaving," he texted back.

"Promise?"

He pulled into a Jimmy John's and ate something to sober up, sending Ali Snapchats every so often to prove he wasn't driving. Then, a couple of hours later, he texted her again:

Zac Easter went inside his parents' house, past the five mounted deer heads on the living room wall, past the Muhammad Ali poster at the top of the stairs ("Impossible Is Nothing"), and into his room: Green Bay Packers gear, bodybuilding supplements, military books bursting from the shelves, a T-shirt he got from his high school football coach with the words BIG HAMMER.

His laptop was open to a 39-page document titled "Concussions: My Silent Struggle." "MY LAST WISHES," it began. He'd created the document five months ago, and the final revision was made today.

Zac Easter grabbed some ammunition, packed up the .40-caliber pistol he'd given his dad as a Father's Day gift, and drove a few miles down the road to Lake Ahquabi State Park. It was a place where he'd gone swimming throughout his childhood; he and Ali liked to go there and lie on the beach and look at the clouds. "Ahquabi" is from an ancient Algonquian language. It means "resting place."

Around sunset, Zac took a picture of the lake, then he posted a status update on Facebook:

Dear friends and family,If your reading this than God bless the times we've had together. Please forgive me. I'm taking the selfish road out. Only God understands what I've been through. No good times will be forgotten and I will always watch over you. Please if anything remember me by the person I am not by my actions. I will always watch over you! Please, please, don't take the easy way out like me. Fist pumps for Jesus and fist pumps for me. Party on wayne!!;)

Growing up, his nickname was Hoad. On Saturday mornings, the three Easter boys—Myles Jr. was the eldest, then Zac, then Levi—would crowd around the TV to watch Garfield and Friends. Odie was the mutt—impossibly energetic, tongue wagging, ears flopping. Friends with everyone. That was Zac. "Zac never stopped running. Everything he did was at full charge," says his mother, Brenda. Over time the name evolved, the way nicknames do—Odie morphing into Hodie, Hodie shrinking to Hoad.

He was a sweet, curious kid, and seemingly programmed to destroy. He went through four of those unbreakable steel Tonka dump trucks—broke the first three and disassembled the fourth, trying to figure out how it worked. He was 7. One winter, the family couldn't figure out why the lightbulbs on the Christmas tree kept bursting. Faulty wiring? It turned out Zac was taking swings at the bulbs with a baseball bat. As he got older, the blast radius got bigger. He was Tom Sawyer reborn: unleashed, unbound midwestern middle-class American boy. The Easter family's acreage was off a dirt road, surrounded by cornfields, just east of where The Bridges of Madison County was filmed, and Zac and his brothers would go on hikes to the creek, bringing along an artillery of Black Cat fireworks to blow up minnows and bullfrogs. As a teenager he graduated to the family's Honda Recon ATV, his first taste of real adrenaline and real recklessness. He'd fly through the woods, build jumps and hurdle over them. "GODDAMMIT!" his dad, Myles Sr., would yell from the porch as he shot by.

Zac was fearless, certain of his invincibility, confident he could push his limits to the very edge yet always stay in control. He was perfect for the one thing that mattered most in the Easter family: football.

When Myles Easter Sr. talks about his own football career, there's a joyful worship of the sport's violent side: "I just wanted to knock the fuck out of somebody." He was a safety at Drake University, a small school in Des Moines. He and Brenda got together in 1982, soon after his football career ended, and they married two years later, which meant she was now married to football, too. Before Zac was born, Myles took a job as defensive coordinator at Simpson College, a Division III school in Indianola, Iowa, a town of 11,000 known for an annual hot-air-balloon festival. He never made his boys play football—it was more like it was just assumed. "I loved football," he says. "I was getting to the point where I loved it more than the kids did back in high school." Not that the boys didn't love it, too. They'd come to practice every day and hang off to the side with the kickers. On Saturday afternoons in the fall, they'd sneak up to the overhead track at Simpson College's century-old gym and listen to their dad's halftime pep talks.

The Easters were a Minnesota Vikings family, but early on Zac defected and chose the Green Bay Packers. Zac loved Brett Favre—he had the same swagger. Zac's elder brother, Myles Jr., was taller, faster, talented enough to earn a college football scholarship and a spot in his high school's sports hall of fame. Zac was shorter and slower, but he was the toughest son of a bitch on the field. "He was out there to fuck people up," says Myles Jr. "He was there to do some damage." He had a lot to live up to, and he wasn't born with what he needed, so in high school he secretly began taking prohormones, a steroid-like supplement banned in many sports.

It worked. "Zac was a thumper," his father says, standing in the family kitchen. "Of all the boys, he was the one who wouldn't show pain, who'd be fearless.… He'd throw his head into anything. He was the kind of guy I like on defense."

Myles Sr. pauses, takes a heavy breath, and shrugs. On the mantel behind him is a picture of Zac sitting in the back of a pickup, cradling the ten-point buck. When he speaks again, his voice is a stew of pride and guilt: "He was my type of guy."

Zac, No. 44, playing in a high school football game.

Zac's football career ended in October of his senior year. The team at Indianola High School was a perfect fit for Zac: They were always smaller, always scrappier, and always played like the chips were stacked against them. Indianola had the lowest enrollment in a conference filled with schools from Des Moines's suburbs, but they took pride in not playing like it. When their head coach, Eric Kluver, had arrived years before, he quickly realized there was a gem in his own backyard: Myles Easter Sr., a veteran college coach who had three sons coming up in the Indianola youth football system and was eager to help. Myles was tough. So were his players. Kluver hired him.

At first Kluver tried to innovate with a speedy spread offense, but he quickly realized that wouldn't fly here; he simply couldn't get the type of athletes to make it work. So instead he went old-school: a smashmouth I-formation offense. Pound the ball and wear out bigger, faster, stronger—but softer—teams. It was catnip to Iowa country boys like Myles Easter Sr. Soon, things began to change for Indianola. Local fans would come to games just to watch the special teams tee off on opponents during kick returns. Kluver handed out a big hammer T-shirt for the most crushing hit in that week's game; Zac earned one his junior year and another his senior year. The Easter Mentality had become the Indianola football mentality.

By his senior year, Zac had become an anchor of the team's defense. On this chilly Friday night, the seventh game of the 2009 season, Zac was taking the field for the first time in a month. A concussion had knocked him out in the season's fourth game, but Zac was determined to be back for the game against league rival Ankeny High School. Ankeny was much bigger than Zac's school, one of the largest in the state, more affluent, and most obnoxiously, they were good. "We just thought they were kind of rich pricks," says Nick Haworth, Zac's best friend since preschool and an offensive lineman on the team.

Zac was fired up. Indianola's athletic trainer, Sue Wilson, was not. She'd been hired in 2005, and her focus was concussions; this was the same year that Bennet Omalu, a neuropathologist in Pittsburgh who studied the brain of deceased Pittsburgh Steelers star Mike Webster, had published his groundbreaking paper "Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy in a National Football League Player." Even now, in 2009, she was a mostly unwelcome presence on the sidelines. Parents yelled at her when she took away their sons' helmets in the middle of a game; they wanted them to play. So did the coaches.

One psychologist even told Zac that he would—not could, would—end up penniless, homeless, and in a mental institution.

On this Friday night, Wilson was already focused on Zac. He'd always played through pain. He'd already suffered two concussions in as many months: one in August, before games started, during a tackling drill at a full-contact football camp, and then another during a game in early September—the one that sidelined him for a month. By now, Myles Sr. had grown concerned enough about the repeated head injuries that he'd ordered a special Xenith helmet. The helmet was supposed to reduce the risk of concussion, but it kept falling off Zac's head during games. He was also wearing a cowboy collar to protect his neck. He was armored up, like a soldier heading into battle.

Prior to the game, Zac had passed Wilson's concussion protocol, but if she'd known what was really going on inside his brain, there's no way she would have let him near the field. After the concussion during the game in September, a teammate told Zac that he was looking at him cross-eyed. Later that night, he would write in his journal, "I saw a doctor and lied about all my concussion symptoms."

Of course he lied. It was his senior year. He wanted to play.

It happened away from the ball, so the collision that ended Zac Easter's football career can't be seen on the game tape. But on a third-quarter drive, you can tell that No. 44 is suddenly missing from Indianola's defense. And later in the game, at the bottom of the screen, Zac can be seen on the sidelines, arguing heatedly with someone: Wilson, the trainer. She is clutching his helmet. He wants to go back in. No way, she says.

What happened in the moments just after Zac's final play remains burned into Wilson's memory: Two teammates pulled a player off the ground and dragged him toward her. She couldn't tell who it was until she saw the jersey number, 44, and her heart dropped into her stomach. Zac's feet were barely under him.

"Sue, he's not right," one teammate told her.

"I looked at him, and he looked at me, and he just didn't say a word," Wilson says now. "I took his helmet. And he just put his head down. He started crying on the bench. I walked away to give him his space. I came back and asked him if there's anything I could do. He just said, ‘No. I just don't feel good.’ I said, ‘Are you going to get sick?’ He said, ‘I don't know.’ "

She kept an eye on him the rest of the game. He could still speak. He could still stick his tongue out. He wasn't vomiting. His head was pounding, but he didn't seem to be in need of urgent medical attention. In the locker room after the game, Haworth says, Zac's blue eyes had drifted into a haze—"a thousand-yard stare."

Wilson ordered Zac to rest for the next week. No football, no exercise, nothing. But Zac ignored her. By this point, he'd figured out that exercise was the only way to ease the pounding in his brain, so he'd run on a treadmill—sometimes an hour, sometimes two. He knew his football career was over. No one had told him yet, but he knew it. Still, he needed to stay in shape for wrestling season.

About a month later, though, he was still exhibiting symptoms. When he saw Wilson to get cleared for wrestling, she wouldn't sign off.

"I'll never forget the look in Zac's eyes when I told him he wasn't going to wrestle his senior year," she says now. "I think his exact words were ‘Fuck you.’ "

Zac inherited from his father a willingness to play through pain.

On the night of his 24th birthday, Zac Easter and his cousin met at the Sports Page Grill in Indianola, ordered Coors Lights, and waited for Zac's parents to arrive. Zac was nervous. His cousin could hear it in his voice. By this point, June 2015, not quite six years since his final football game, he'd become convinced that his five diagnosed concussions (plus countless more that weren't) across a decade of using his head as a weapon had triggered his downward spiral.

"I've noticed I'm relying on drugs to try and be who I want to be," he wrote in his journal around this time. "I need to stop, but at the same time I'm like Fuck it. I won't lie, I feel kind of scared and depressed bout my future. I found some info online about CTE and got scared. I'm not looking at that stuff again."

Meanwhile, Zac's parents believed their son was on top of the world. He'd just graduated from college with honors. He was a star in the Iowa National Guard—he won a Soldier of the Year award for his unit and was short-listed for Army Ranger school. He turned it down because the war in Afghanistan had become so dangerous. Inspired by The Wolf of Wall Street, he'd made a get-rich-soon pact with his elder brother, Myles Jr. They'd pound their fists on their chests, like Matthew McConaughey in the film. He'd grown closer with Ali, their on-again-off-again relationship inching toward something real and special. A full life awaited him.

But what his parents saw—the degree, the girlfriend, the job, the stability—was a mirage. Yes, he had just graduated from college, but he'd also just told his first employer, an annuity-and-insurance marketing company, that he needed time away from work. When he was making sales calls, he would forget what he was talking about mid-sentence. It got so bad that he even wrote himself a two-page script to get through a call.

They knew some things were off. Sometimes on the phone it sounded like Zac was talking with marbles in his mouth. And they'd noticed that his bank account was suddenly hemorrhaging money.

When his parents arrived for his birthday dinner, Zac took an anxious swig from his Coors Light, gathered himself, then told them he needed to talk. "Something's been going on with my head," he began.

From there, he laid it all out: He was quitting his job because he needed to focus on his health. He was often tired and dizzy and nauseated. During college he used to set his alarm for 3:30 A.M. to work out and run for hours; now he would go for a jog, feel sick, and only make it 1.4 miles in 20 minutes. He got headaches all the time. Sometimes while driving, he'd go into these trances; he'd snap out of it when he drove his car into a curb. Panic attacks came without warning. He had started writing down a long list of questions for his doctor; one of them was "Do you think I'm showing signs of CTE or dementia?"

In fact, he already knew the answer to that one. He had just visited a doctor who specialized in concussions and who told him that, yes, he very well might have CTE. He had started seeing a speech pathologist to help him manage his cognitive struggles and improve his memory, attention span, language-processing abilities, and problem-solving skills.

His parents were stunned. They knew some things were off. Sometimes on the phone it sounded like Zac was talking with marbles in his mouth. And they'd noticed that his bank account was suddenly hemorrhaging money. But mostly they just assumed their son was a young man grappling with adulthood and independence.

But now he was telling them that he might have a mysterious brain disease that afflicted NFL players, haunting them for decades after their careers had ended. One psychologist even told Zac that he would—not could, would—end up penniless, homeless, and in a mental institution. Zac had walked out of that guy's office terrified.

Myles Easter Sr. had seen the news reports of ex-NFL stars whose lives unraveled post-retirement and ended in suicide. Mike Webster, Andre Waters, Dave Duerson, Junior Seau—the Sunday gladiators who once were the apotheosis of all that he worshipped about the game of football. But Myles never really believed the disease existed. To be honest, even the mention of it kind of disgusted him. CTE was an excuse, he had always thought: a bunch of millionaire athletes who had it made, blew through all their money, fell out of the limelight, got depressed, then killed themselves. But now, hearing his own son—still just a kid, no jaded pro, someone who had never played a day of football above the high school level—say that he might have CTE?

"It just caught me so off guard," Myles Sr. says. "I was honestly dumbfounded."

The dinner table went quiet. Then Brenda, Zac's mom, broke the silence.

"Well," she said, "let's fix it."

Text exchange between Zac and Ali.

Zac Easter stood on the dock leading out onto Lake Ahquabi, pistol in hand, ignoring the calls that had started pouring into his cell phone a few minutes after his Facebook post. Instead, he opened Snapchat and posted a photo of the lake: "God bless America," he typed.

The third time Ali called, he picked up. She heard terror in his voice. "I can't do this," he told her. "It's never going to get better."

A friend recognized the lake from the Snapchat photo. Deputies from the county sheriff's department rushed to the state park while Ali tried to keep Zac on the phone. "Listen to the sound of my voice," she told him.

"I'm losing my mind," he replied. "This is it for me."

Then a pause, a shift in tone: "Ali, did you send these cops here?"

His phone died. Ali sent him a frantic text at 6:12 P.M.: Baby its my Winslow jist talk to me. I need to know you're okay.

Out on the dock, Zac pointed the gun at the sky and fired: a warning shot to tell the police to keep away.

Zac's girlfriend, Ali, was the only person he trusted with the truth of his struggles.

Zac's father, alerted by friends, sped his pickup truck into the park, down the hill toward the lake. The first sheriff's deputy he saw recognized him. More squad cars raced into the parking lot. Another deputy—a former all-conference linebacker for Easter Sr. a few years back—pointed an assault rifle at his son. Lasers from police rifles danced on Zac's body. It was past dark and getting cold. Myles Sr. peered inside Zac's car. He saw an empty six-pack of Coors Light, an empty bottle of Captain Morgan, and a pill bottle.

Floodlights illuminated Zac. The sun had set on the far side of the lake, dropping a black curtain on the water behind him. He stood up from a picnic table and walked wordlessly down the pier toward a wooden fishing hut at its edge. A few more steps and he'd be inside, alone on the water, out of sight.

"Put your gun down!" the deputies shouted.

"Nope!" Zac yelled with an anguished laugh. "Not gonna do that!"

His father realized with a flash: Zac wants the police to shoot him. I can't let this happen. He sprinted down the wooden pier. "Zac!" he shouted.

If he shoots me, he thought, he shoots me.

"Dad, stop!"

"Nope, I'm coming. Put your gun down."

Zac laid the gun down, then disappeared inside the hut.

Seconds later his father reached the door. Inside, he saw a sad, sick look on his son's face. His vibrant boy was gone. Zac looked worn-out. Beaten.

"Dad, I'm in trouble," Zac said quietly.

Myles Easter Sr. spoke gently to his son. "I don't know what's going on, but we'll get this figured out. But we gotta get through this part right now. We're in deep shit. We can't make it any worse."

Back on land, the deputies surrounded Zac and eased his wrists into handcuffs. They put him in the back of an ambulance, drove him to Des Moines, and checked him into Iowa Lutheran Hospital.

Seven hundred miles away in Cleveland, Ali was still in limbo, panicked, convinced Zac had hurt himself. Before he hung up the phone, his voice had gone flat. For 62 minutes, she had no idea if he was dead or alive.

Finally, a text popped up on her phone. Zac's elder brother: "They got him."

They took all the guns out of the house. They took all the alcohol out of the house. They were constantly on edge. Myles Sr. and Brenda encouraged Zac to go to his therapy appointments, and he would—but then he'd sit in the parking lot and have a panic attack and never leave his car. He went to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, but then he'd wake up in the middle of the night after a bad dream and start drinking from a whiskey bottle he'd hidden in his room.

Something had shifted inside of him. No longer did he worry that he might be going crazy; now he was certain of it. Fatalism swept over him. He told his mother he'd made a bucket list: Things to Do Before CTE Takes Away My Mind. Travel overseas. Camp in the timber in winter. Hike across the country, or at least through Colorado. Go rattlesnake hunting on the family's land.

On the sixth anniversary of the day Zac bagged his ten-point buck, Myles Sr. decided to take his son hunting. Perhaps they could recapture some of the tranquillity of those days. They got up before sunrise, ate bacon and eggs, and got in the truck.

It's a 40-minute drive from their house to the family's timber, a good time to talk. They sipped coffee. Myles told his son that he was proud of him, that Zac was smart and talented and successful. He said they would fight through this as a family. "I'm sorry about the concussions from football," he told his son. "I didn't understand it earlier." Zac didn't want his dad feeling guilty. He told him that he loved football. He told him he even missed football.

They got out of the truck. Zac watched his dad pull the shotguns out from behind the seat, where he'd stashed them away. Myles Jr. met them and they hiked into the woods. From the tree stand Myles Sr. was heartened by the sight of his boys together, walking down the hill, laughing. Today, at least, Zac seemed like his old self. "I thought maybe we were getting better," Myles Sr. says.

They hunted till after sunset. On the ride back home, Myles Sr. picked up a six-pack of Coors Light tallboys for them to split. Zac's mom wouldn't have liked this—alcohol, she knew, only made his problems worse—but hell, Myles just wanted things to go back to the way they used to be with his son. As they rumbled home on the gravel country roads, Zac turned to his father. "This was one of the best days I've had," he said.

They fell asleep next to each other in the living room, watching Iowa play Michigan State in the Big Ten championship game. It was a tough, ugly defensive battle, the exact kind of football game they loved.

Zac's ten-point buck.

Brenda Easter came home to find Zac's car gone from the driveway. She called Ali, catching her in the middle of an exam, and Ali texted Zac.

He told her he'd been feeling cooped up at his parents' house, thinking about losing his mind, and he needed to get away. So a few hours earlier he'd gotten in the car and just started driving. He was headed for Oklahoma, then turned around and started making his way back; after a wrong turn he wound up in Kansas City and got a hotel room for the night. He joked to Ali that he was going to hit a strip club, but all he did was sit in his hotel room and order pizza. The next morning, he made the three-hour drive back home.

Myles Sr. was in the upstairs bathroom, covered in blood. He'd taken their two dogs hunting in the woods behind the house, and Tito, the fat white rat terrier, had killed a possum. Tito was squirming in the tub when Zac walked in. He'd just gotten a haircut for family pictures the next day.

"Boy, you sure look good," his dad said, grinning.

"You're in deep shit if Mom sees that," Zac said, looking at the blood-soaked dog. Myles asked him for a hand, so Zac held the dog in place while he finished washing off the blood. Then Zac disappeared into his bedroom. Ali was home for winter break and she'd invited him out with friends that night, but Zac declined. He was feeling down and didn't want to be around people. Myles turned the dog loose, then went downstairs and fell asleep on the couch.

Five weeks had passed since Zac's suicide attempt. Next week—the day after Christmas—Zac was heading to California for a facility that treated both alcohol addiction and mental illness. But Zac wasn't sure he wanted to go. He didn't see the point.

Ali was still out with her friends at a bar in downtown Des Moines when a text arrived from Zac.

"Thank you for everything," he wrote. "You've helped me through so much and never ever blame yourself for anything. I love you and will always be over your shoulder looking after you no matter what. Always keep having fun. Always remember me. Always keep striving for greatness or shall I say first female president. Never quit fighting for what you believe for ;) I love you Winslow"

Ali wrote back immediately: "I love you, too babe but that sounds so past tense and is making me worried. I don't want you to talk that way.… Are you okay. Please be honest. I can call you"

No reply. She called him, but he didn't answer. Called again. No answer.

"Seriously zac," she texted. "I'm worried now. I know you're having an off day but it will be okay—I know you have the fight in you, Please talk to me"

No reply.

"Zac. Please talk to me"

Back at the house, Myles Sr.'s ringing phone woke him up. It was his eldest son, asking if Zac was upstairs. Myles Sr. went up to Zac's room, but it was empty. He noticed a frayed piece of notebook paper on Zac's bed and went back downstairs to get his glasses.

Ali texted Zac again: "Baby. It's winslow. Please think of me please talk to me. I believe in you. I know you're upset but please talk to me"

No reply.

"I need you to text me back"

Myles Easter put on his glasses and read what his son had scrawled on the sheet of paper.

"Please!" it began. "Look on my computer and print off my story and last wishes to everyone. PLEASE FULLFILL MY last wishes! My comp pass zacman (all lowercase)"

The 20-gauge shotgun that Myles had given Zac for his 12th birthday was missing from the backseat of his truck. One hollow-point 20-gauge Winchester slug was missing from Myles's ammunition cache in the basement. Brenda's keys weren't in the kitchen, and her car wasn't in the driveway.

By the time Myles got to Lake Ahquabi, a patrol car was already there. "I'm sorry," the deputy told him. His son's body was in the parking lot, the 20-gauge slug torn through his chest.

Football was—and still is, even now—a cornerstone of the Easters' family identity.

Eric Kluver stood over his former player's casket at the cavernous Catholic church in Indianola. Kluver loved all his players, but this wasn't just one of his players. This was Zac Easter. His top assistant's son. Every summer, Kluver picks hardworking students in need of extra cash to help him with his landscaping business. Two summers in a row, Kluver picked Zac. It wasn't even that long ago. Now Zac was in a casket.

Is this my fault? Kluver kept wondering. He and his staff had always taught Zac proper tackling technique, of course…but they never discouraged his aggression. If anything, they'd encouraged it. Zac was the *model—*the type of hard-nosed player every football coach dreams of. And yet Kluver knew that football had played a role in Zac's destruction. Football, and football culture.

When Kluver played high school football, one of his best friends suffered a brain injury after a big hit. He wound up in a wheelchair and later died. During a practice in 2008, when Kluver was already well into his career at Indianola, a sophomore linebacker named Joey Goodale absorbed what seemed like a normal hit on a kick return and smacked the back of his head on the turf. A few minutes later, he collapsed. He was unconscious, his body rigid. Zac Easter was there on the field that day, watching his childhood pal get loaded into an ambulance. Goodale was in a coma for three weeks. He spent months in a rehab facility. He never really recovered. He's 23 now, lives with his parents, works at UPS and unloads trucks at a local grocery store, and has struggled with addiction.

Kluver could always set those two memories aside and keep going. Those were accidents. But with Zac, this was no accident. This was football. "To see him lying in that casket," he says now, "you would think that would be enough to make you say that enough is enough."

And yet. Months later, Kluver would lead his team onto the field for their first game of the 2016 season. After the game, he would retreat to his windowless office in the bowels of Indianola High School, the redbrick walls covered with posters of all the teams he's coached, the three Easter boys and their father pictured in nearly all of them. In the hallways of the school, he'll still see an occasional big hammer T-shirt. He stopped giving them out a few years ago, when it started to feel wrong.

Kluver still believes in football. He believes there is more good that comes from the sport than bad. He believes life is full of risks, and that we should not pad our children with bubble wrap. But his faith is rattled. When he hears of what Zac wrote in his journal—that he wished he'd never played football—Kluver squeezes his eyes shut and puts a hand to his forehead.

"I've seen both ends of the spectrum," he says. "All the great times and the big wins, but I've also been attending funerals. There's definitely been times where I've said, ‘Is this worth it?’"

In the kitchen, Brenda Easter's aunts sit at the table writing thank-you letters to people who attended Zac's funeral. In the living room, under Zac's mounted ten-point buck, his father, his mother, his elder brother, and Ali sit in a semicircle. There aren't many tears now; they are trying to move from mourning into doing something. Start a foundation in his honor, speak to football players about the risk of concussions, push the NFL to take the risks more seriously.

But in the living room, the television is on mute, tuned to Vikings-Packers. January football. Huge game. Hated rivals, the NFC North title on the line. The men in the house, including this reporter, peek at their phones checking fantasy-football scores.

Brenda and Myles Sr. and Myles Jr. are talking about how Zac's suicide must not be in vain, about how they must use his name to push for awareness and research into concussions and CTE. They plan to send Zac's brain tissue to Omalu, the pioneering neurologist and inspiration for the Will Smith movie Concussion (which itself was based on an article in GQ). They've found the diaries, and they've read as much as they could bear. They're going to do what Zac asked. He left instructions.

"Here's what I do, and this is terrible," Myles Easter Sr. says, standing in his kitchen, his voice low so his wife in the next room can't hear. "I'll drink like 18 beers maybe on a Tuesday night. I make sure I don't drive. I'll drink a fifth of vodka or something."

It's a breezy spring afternoon. Myles is wearing a chain around his neck with a metal pendant—a reproduction of Zac's thumbprint. Zac's ashes are in an urn on the mantel. In a few weeks, the Easters will get the medical report back from Omalu's lab, confirming what Zac already knew: CTE. The official diagnosis brings with it a peculiar kind of relief.

But now what?

Zac left instructions: Print his story off his laptop, post it to Facebook, use the pain of his life and too-early death to warn the world about CTE. Get people like us—football fans, football players, football lifers—to face the truth about people like him.

And now we have. Those were his instructions, so that's what his family did. So now what?

We could ban football. (But we love football.) We could allow people to play football only once they turn 18, which is what Omalu has proposed. (And what happens when 18-year-old athletic phenoms—freight trains who have never learned to tackle properly—are suddenly turned loose on one another? Is that better?) We could take away tackling. (Sorry, no one's watching the National Flag Football League.) We could build a safer helmet. (Which will only encourage players to use their heads as weapons.) We could have a consistent concussion protocol through all levels of football. (We already do in the NFL. Ask Cam Newton how well it's working.)

Every solution ends up not solving enough of the problem.

And for most of us, this is perfectly okay. The paradox of CTE's discovery is that it's given most of us a sneaky ethical out, hasn't it? No professional football player can claim now to be unaware of the risks. It's a free country. We're all adults here.

Unless we're not adults. Unless we're kids, like Zac was. Can we really let kids keep doing this? If so, how? Now what?

After Zac's suicide, Brenda wanted the entire family to get counseling, but Myles Sr. declined. "Fuck, I don't need no counseling," he said. He doesn't cry for his son. He wants to do something for his son, so he can be able to say, "Zac died for this." But in the meantime, he drinks a few beers. He takes the dogs on walks. And then after his wife goes to sleep, he stands alone in the kitchen, and he drinks some more.

"That's how I deal with it."

In the aftermath of Zac's death, the Easter family launched a non-profit called CTE Hope with the goal of spreading education and awareness about head injuries, as well as to support research around concussion prevention and treatment of head trauma. To learn more or donate, visit www.cte-hope.org.

Reid Forgrave is a writer in Minneapolis. This is his first article for GQ.

This story originally appeared in the January 2017 issue with the title "The CTE Diaries."