Susan Orfanos flipped through an Eagle Scout scrapbook. Her husband, Marc, looked downward, voice faltering. Together, they told another story about their eldest son, Telemachus.

They smiled one moment, cried the next and swore in rage a beat later. The conversation spun from beard trimmings in the bathroom sink to Tel escaping the Borderline Bar & Grill massacre then returning to help others to the threats that came after Susan made a national plea for gun control.

Sometimes, the cycle repeats itself.

"It's still so surreal," said Marc, assistant track coach at Thousand Oaks High School and a substitute teacher in the Conejo Valley Unified School District. "It's been like nine weeks and it's like no time has passed."

Photo albums marked with post-it notes buried a dining room table. Some of the images will be on display at the wake on Jan. 26, 80 days after Tel and 12 others died in a mass shooting at a Thousand Oaks country bar. Other photos, like the picture of Tel as a baby in a heart-shaped frame, will stay home.

"Some are too hard to share. They're ours," said Susan who works as a project manager for an insurance company. She's 58.

"I feel a lot older now," she said.

The doorbell of their Thousand Oaks home rang. A delivery person dropped off two pizzas, pasta, breadsticks and a salad. All of it comes from neighbors, friends and community members in a torrent of kindness that started with the shooting and means visitors are asked to stay for dinner.

More:Ventura County Sheriff Bill Ayub to focus on healing agency in tragedies' aftermath

"People don't know what to do," said Susan, offering the pained smile that is her default expression, "so they bring us pizzas."

She turned to the book she made after Tel earned the rank of Eagle Scout. She read aloud the essay on life goals he wrote at age 17. She cried.

"I believe my purpose in life is to mean something to someone besides myself," he wrote.

Going back to the gunfire

Tel, 27 and a Navy veteran who worked days at an Infiniti dealership, spent three nights a week as a Borderline security guard. The day after the mid-term election, he came on an off-duty night as he often did to listen to country songs and hang with friends.

Ian David Long, a 28-year-old former Marine from Newbury Park, entered the bar dressed in black, his face covered with a bandana. He opened fire with a .45 caliber Glock handgun modified to allow it to hold more rounds.

Marc and Susan have been told how their son died, how he made it out of the bar and helped at least one person escape. He may also have made it to the attic where people sought shelter. He went back into the gunfire to help others.

He died not only of gunshots but a stab wound in his neck. Susan and Marc were told it's possible he charged Long.

The knowledge doesn't ease their pain. Nothing does.

"We're grateful at what he and some of the others did that night to help others come home... We just wish he had come home," Susan said.

A shot of Irish whiskey

Tel took care of people. He escorted them to their cars at the Borderline. Sometimes, he went 40 miles out of his way to drive them home early in the morning after the bar closed.

Just days after he died, some 25 Borderline regulars showed up at his family's home, gathered in his bedroom for an impromptu vigil. They toasted him with shots of Jameson whiskey in a ritual that will be repeated at the wake.

More:Borderline Bar & Grill shooting victims fund raises more than $2 million

At his day job at an Infiniti dealership, Tel would counsel customers on how to use the many digital gadgets in their new cars, answering texted questions long after the purchase.

He could, and did, talk to anyone, flashing a smile and punctuating a corny joke with a high-pitched guffaw.

Tel wasn't perfect. Money vanished from his wallet almost the moment it made it there. He and his parents argued at times about politics, gun control and the cigarettes he smoked.

"I don't want my son to be an angel," Susan said. "I want him to be here driving me freaking crazy."

'It does not compute'

Telemachus was named for a character in Homer's poem, the Odyssey. His 22-year-old brother, Tymaeus, is a philosophy student and a stabilizing force for his parents. He was named for a dialogue written by Plato though Susan, a "Star Trek" fan, said her first choice was Capt. James Kirk's middle name, Tiberius.

The family moved to Thousand Oaks when Tel was 2 because they thought it was suited to families.

"It's a good place to raise children not a good place to have them die," Susan said.

Susan, Marc and Ty spent a Monday night telling stories about Tel and answering the front door. An event coordinator came to talk about plans for the wake. A friend of Tel's delivered shot glasses bearing his name for the event.

More:Thousand Oaks shooting victim's mother pleads, 'I don't want thoughts. I want gun control'

Susan picked up her iPad to watch the video clip she looks at every day, sometimes more than once. In it, Tel is driving with friends, all of them singing a Backstreet Boys tune that became a ritual for the Borderline group. At the end, he aimed a middle finger at the camera in an unmistakable gesture.

"It shows how alive he was," said Susan. "I look at that and I wait for him to walk through the door. It does not compute."

Scarred by Vegas

He survived tragedy to walk through the door before. He was listening to country singer Jason Aldean at the Route 91 Harvest festival in Las Vegas on Oct. 1, 2017, when gunman Stephen Paddock killed 58 people before shooting himself.

As the bullets flew, Tel and others helped the wounded escape. According to a November story in The Washington Post, he and another concertgoer crawled between cars looking for people to help.

Tel used his flannel shirt to make a tourniquet for a victim, The Post reported. Shirtless and covered in blood, he helped people survive who may not have and did his best for those he couldn't save,

Afterward, Tel struggled at first. He saw a therapist for post-traumatic stress disorder and told him he was thinking about going back to college. The Borderline became a sanctuary for him and dozens of Vegas survivors. He told friends the words that were posted online after his death.

"We have to live for those that can't," he said.

'They are greedy'

The day after the Borderline shooting, a television crew parked in front of the Orfanos home in Thousand Oaks. Susan went to talk to them. Her voice shaking with rage over her son's death, she unleashed the words that went viral.

"I don't want prayers. I don't want thoughts. I want gun control and I hope to God nobody else sends me any more prayers," she said.

The first sign of backlash was posted within hours. "You take away my gun. Boom. Boom," the message said, according to Susan and Marc.

In December, the family and others were sent letters suggesting the tragedy was a fabrication invented to advance a political agenda. The letter was marked with a hashtag, 1000OaksHoax. Susan and Marc gave it to law enforcement.

"This has happened at other events across the country," said Thousand Oaks Police Chief Tim Hagel. "These type of people believe hellacious ... events such as 911 never happened."

If the threats and accusations were intended to quiet the Orfanoses, they failed.

"I'm glad I said that," Susan said of her no-prayers plea, voice vibrating with anger. "My rage has not abated in any shape or form."

She joined the group, Moms Demand Action For Gun Sense in America. She and Marc support the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, the group formed after then-White House Press Secretary Jim Brady was shot during an assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan in March 1981.

Marc Orfanos flew to Washington D.C. early in January to join other family members of gun violence victims and former Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Giffords on the anniversary of the 2011 mass shooting that killed six people. Giffords was shot in the head but survived.

They gathered to push for more laws regulating guns including House Resoluation 8, a bill from California Congressman Mike Thompson, It requires background checks on all firearm sales.

The Orfanoses are still figuring out where and how to push. But they want stronger laws against the kind of extended magazine that Long used and allows more shots to be fired without reloading. They support laws prohibiting the device called a bump stock, used by Stephen Paddock to enable guns to shoot more continuously.

They want to fight the influence of the National Rifle Association and other gun rights advocates on lawmakers.

"They are greedy," said Susan of the gun lobbyists, her voice rising. "They are making money off the deaths of our children and family members."

They recite numbers, like the 340 mass shootings that happened in the United States last year, according to the Gun Violence Archive. In the 14 days ending with the Borderline tragedy, 35 people died and 58 were wounded in 14 mass shootings.

"Let's have a little rational thought," said Marc. "What we have now is irrational and hundreds of Americans are dying."

Getting Tel home

All three members of the Orfanos family see therapists. They struggle to focus, struggle more to sleep at night. They cry daily, sometimes in bursts that last 30 minutes.

They decided to wait to have a wake until the after the holidays. They thought the delay could ease maybe a fraction of the pain. It hasn't. In a way, the passage of time pushes them further from denial and makes the grief more intense.

"Our goal was to get Tel home," said Susan Orfanos, referring to the cremains in the beautiful wooden box decorated with a heart. It sits on a desk in his room.

The wake happens Jan. 26 at a venue the family asked not to be disclosed. About 1,000 people are expected. Susan, Marc and Ty will each talk. They're not sure what they'll say but they know they won't talk about gun control though the issue has become a constant in their lives.

Talking about it would introduce rage into a day they want to focus on their son's life more than his end.

The thing that gets Susan is her son was still figuring out his path to the future. He no longer has that chance.

"The hardest part for me was the man he was going to become," she said. "... It's gone. That's what I'm most angry about."