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Brandt Jean’s Grief is not our Redemption
Brandt Jean is 18, and is a victim of a violent crime. His brother, Botham Jean, was murdered. Their mother, Allison Jean and father, Bertram Jean, are also victims of that same violent crime. And his sister, Allisa Findley. Their family will forever be one person short, because of a murder.
Losing someone you love is hard, grief is painful and takes on every emotional shape you can imagine. The movies and TV often get this wrong; we see pictures of people sobbing uncontrollably, and for people who haven’t experienced that grief, it can look like the only form it comes in, but when you grieve, your emotions can take on so many forms. Because the loss of that person takes away some sense of your equilibrium, of your bearings, in a lot of people. You try to find how to do everything without that person, and the closer you were, the more they meant to you, the worse it can be. That’s grief.
If the person dies at another person’s hands, there’s more layers. If a person kills themself, there’s sometimes anger, a taboo in our culture, at the person who committed suicide, because we get angry when someone hurts someone we love, even if that person is their own…