The inception of the club had seemed revolutionary. The idea of a place for anyone who didn't fit in with society to find a family with open arms. It was something that there was a shortage of when they returned from Vietnam and found that society wasn't welcoming them back with open arms. JT and Gemma were already married at that point and were perfectly poised to be the leaders of a family, with an abundance of love for the men they already knew and room in their hearts for those they hadn't met yet.
JT had been a good man at the beginning, and he was right when he wrote that the club had infected them all with a darkness they didn't understand. Gemma had seen that happening; she was there for damn near all of it, missing only the meetings behind the closed church doors. Even then she only missed the exact word for word conversations. JT wasn't a talker, and as much as he felt everything as his burden to bear, it got too much for him. It was why Gemma knew what was going on with him, with the club, with his brothers. She knew everything until he went to Ireland and then she knew only what Clay knew. It made sense that she'd been replaced with countless Irish girls, JT knew she'd replaced him with Clay. And as it always did, it went to shit.
The exact route to the mess Gemma found herself in started as JT was becoming more introspective, looking inside for answers that he didn't have, whereas before he'd gone to Gemma. She was his Old Lady - what was she there for if not to support him? He'd thought maybe writing it all out would make it make sense. Would point out a moment that sparked the mess that they'd gotten into. He was disappointed to find out that there was no one moment. It was a slow descent into criminality, not just anarchy and rebellion against a society that didn't want them anymore. He couldn't pinpoint the moment where the citizens of Charming had stopped looking at them with disdain as they defiantly rode through the town on their too loud motorcycles in their rebellious leather cuts, and when they instead started looking at them with genuine fear. He'd tried to make the club something he would want to see in society, in the hopes society would look back at them and see that just because they were different, they weren't so bad.
He so desperately wanted for them to be seen as upstanding citizens, who ran a club with a different set of cultural values; straightforwardness, honesty and a democracity. They voted on things, they took the unwanted in and they weren't ashamed of who they were or what they'd done. JT didn't see things moving away from that standpoint, either. When they started it up, they were practically just hippies! It was like they'd started as something different to become what they were now. They were supposed to be outcasts, not outlaws. It wasn't right, but he was too far in to leave. He was the President of the founding charter - there was no easy way out for him. There might have been if he'd been able to stick to their vision for what he wanted but it wasn't just his club. It was Piney's and Clay's and everyone else who'd joined the club and found a family there.
Maybe it was too late to be thinking about what if's and chances that he'd missed because he hadn't even seen them. He couldn't bring himself to regret the choices he'd made but he could regret where they'd brought the club. Regret the life he'd made for his sons and for his wife. He'd always hope that Jax and Tommy didn't follow him into SAMCRO but he thought Jax was already too deep into his hero-worship of the club and its members. It certainly didn't help that half the club already saw Jax sitting at the head of the table in his future. This was exactly what he didn't want - for people to act as sheep and accept what they were told was true just because that's what they were told. It was too late for Jax, and it killed him to think it but he didn't think Tommy would reach the point where it was too late for him. He just kept getting sicker and sicker, and the countless doctors and hospitals and specialists didn't seem to make the slightest difference.
He'd stayed in Ireland too long, finding it too easy to forget about his family, his responsibilities, when he wasn't faced with them every moment of every day. It was shameful and cowardly but JT had seen enough of death in his life. Seeing it in Vietnam was one thing; it was expected, they were fighting a war. Coming home to find that America wasn't how he remembered and hoped it was lead down the path of killing for the club and members being killed for the club. But little Tommy was barely four years old; too innocent to know what the reaper on their cuts meant, and why JT flinched every time someone faced their back to Tommy. It was a reminder, a warning, that death was coming for Tommy, much sooner than it had any right to.
He supposes that's why they chose the reaper. You can't rebel against death - it comes as it will and takes who it wants. There's no rhyme or reason to it. It just is. JT knew that death was coming for him, sooner than any of his brothers thought it was. It would be Gemma's idea when the time came. Her and Clay would plot some accident for him, probably helped by that officer that had been wrapped around her finger since they were kids. Gemma liked the subtle ironies of life, JT knew. He'd almost put money on it being a bike accident. As he sat in a grotty clubhouse in Ireland, he could see in his mind's eye that it would be tragic and that of course, Clay would step up to the gavel, and well if Gemma needed comforting Clay would be there for her. JT saw Gemma clearly for the first time in a while.
She was beautiful, motherly enough that she was able to comfort and empathise with everyone and their problems but still hard and stubborn enough to give someone a slap to the face when she thought they needed it. She was conniving and smart enough to play dumb enough that no one thought anything of telling her everything. She'd be the one setting the board, she'd know all the players and she'd make damn sure she and her boys would come out on top.
Simply put, Gemma was the matriarch. She'd been there for the beginning of the club and would make sure that even after JT she would still be part of it. If she had to dig her claws into Clay, then so be it. She was busy making a world where her sons would be kings and to hell with anyone who got in her way, even her husband.
Her husband, on the other hand, was trying to think his way out of the precarious situation that he'd put himself in. The only solution he could see was to go home, once and for all. He needed to sort out his family and his club. He needed to face what he'd been running from in Ireland under the pretence of ensuring that the new charter so far across the ocean was stable. He needed to face the reaper and all its consequences. First of all, he needed to sort himself out. He couldn't see the use in going home a broken man to live out what was left of his pitifully broken life. JT didn't know what he'd do, or how he'd do it but he'd always been good at plans. He'd work out even if it killed him because if he didn't, it was sure to.