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May 09, 2007
Brandon Zimmerman
On Sunday, we lost Brandon Zimmerman. Our hearts are broken and we sit in silence, without words, wondering how and why this happened. There is no explanation for losing our 9 year old Brandon, losing any child so young, so full of life, so full of hope, so full of everything that is good in life. There are no words that make sense and none that offer consolation.
His death crushes all of us and increases our fear – will this happen to another boy? Each sentence starts with ‘if only’ – if only we knew something, if only we did something, if only he was taking something, if only… The anger is palpable and the pain insurmountable.
Our hurt is increased by the fact that we will never really know what happened – was this cardiac? A coronary occlusion? A low grade sepsis? A complication from an untreated pneumonia in a child on steroids with a compromised stress response? What happened? We rerun the events, scrutinizing each last moment to find a clue. In a certain way, we think knowing exactly what happened might make it easier more acceptable? The answer is that knowing would help us to understand and hopefully help others; but for a family facing the loss of their son, he is gone and nothing on earth is going to bring him back.
Loss is a terrible, horrible topic and there not a person on earth that is comfortable talking about it. Losing Brandon, losing our children is a wound so deep and so painful that it will never heal. This wound may well stop hemorrhaging in time, but it will not heal, rather have a transparent covering that all of us who have ever heard the words Duchenne muscular dystrophy will know and understand.
Our hearts go out to Brandon’s family, our prayers to Brandon to help guide and accelerate our path forward.
Posted by ppmd at 11:48 AM | Comments (0)