Words from a son gone too soon
By Nancy Bork
February 11 marked 30 years since our son, Brandon, died. It sounds like forever and yet sometimes still feels so fresh. If you know, you know. I’ve told our story many times, not that the details change, but new people have come into our lives and it’s such a big part of who I am that I eventually share it.
I think most are okay with me sharing, if only to breathe a little sigh and be grateful it’s not their story … but then, sometimes it is.
After coming back from a U of I basketball game in Champaign and finding out that Brandon, our 17-year-old junior in high school son, had died in a car crash hours earlier, our lives became something unrecognizable. It’s a bit of a blur but somehow painfully clear.
After arriving at the hospital and being told the devastating details, we began the process of finding our way through the fog of reality. A few hours after getting to the hospital and doing the things we had to do, we headed home, literally a five minute drive.
Friends didn’t leave our sides as we faced walking into our house knowing Brandon was gone … it was too much to really absorb or understand. I walked in through our garage and headed straight into his lower level bedroom, almost like I might still find him there.
I grabbed his pillow and hugged it, hoping to capture his essence. The tears came but not sobbing. It’s just too much to believe because this doesn’t happen to us. Not my son! Not Brandon!
As I sat on his bed and looked around, I noticed a piece of paper on his desk with the words “Don’t Worry” written out in fancy letters with shadows and an artistic flair. Brandon was a “doodler” and several of his school notebooks had lots of little artistic renderings when he probably should have been paying better attention in class. That makes me smile now.
I gently picked up that piece of paper knowing he had held the pencil that scribbled those words. I wondered when and why he had written it. It was finals time at school and maybe he was worried about them. Did he and his girlfriend have a fight? Was he worried about upcoming college choices? Was it a message to himself?
No matter what, at that moment in time, they were his words from his heart straight to mine. Coincidence? Probably, but no less meaningful.
How do we keep going when your heart is broken? What answers will make a difference? Where do we go to find a sliver of peace?
It’s 30 years later and the answers are still difficult to find because they have changed over time. Brandon will forever be that 17-year-old in my mind’s eye.
The heartbreak is softer as the memories become more poignant. His life was too short but his meaning isn’t measured in years. I see life through different eyes, especially after his brother, Corry, joined Brandon too soon.
“Don’t Worry” has given me time to think about what that really meant. And 30 years later, it’s the gift of my son’s moment of clarity that he unknowingly gave to us through two words … to live with a peace that allows absence and longing right beside the memories that make me smile. But, yes, I still worry!
