Imagining Jamie at 30 by Elene Bratton

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My life is that of a double task~ living my daily life while always wishing Jamie was in it, not the spirit of the innocent boy but all the iterations over the past 24 years, and who that would have made him today at 30-year-old Jamie. At 30 years old, I could imagine you all grown up. Your hair is short. You still have the same smile and the beautiful hug, but you’re a family man now. You have two kids, a wife, a dog. You run a corporation or a business? You finished college. You got your MBA. You are making a lot of money. I can imagine you a surfer, all you do is surf, smoke pot, hang out with chicks and dudes but don’t ever want to get married or have kids, just love the easy life of a beach bum. I can imagine you, Jamie, being a very devout Buddhist living in a monastery, practicing, being in the present moment and stopping every 15 minutes when the bell rings. You are so centered, and say that Buddha teaches best about always being in the present moment and loving everybody. You live simply and try to make a very light footprint on the earth. I imagine you, Jamie, living in my basement, unable to work, because of some mental health or physical health problem that you developed in your early teens that you have not been able to overcome. You try to keep up your spirit, but you get down a lot. You play a lot of video games have a full world inside the internet. All these versions of you in some multiverse can be true. But in my universe, you left your body at five years and 11 months, even though today is your birthday anniversary, I didn’t get to see years six through 30 of you in your body no matter how much time passed. That still hurts. That still feels like I was cheated and that you were cheated and that we were cheated, and that the universe is not fair. I know it was a car crash, maybe preventable, but certainly not on purpose. I know that none of these scenarios are in this universe where I have to live. I know that in this version of life your body left 24 years and one month ago and I know that through Jamie’s Joy, I have been able to celebrate who you were and who you are now and share your spirit with the world- the spirit of love, joy, peace and connection live on in Jamie’s Joy, live on in the sunflower and the butterflies seen and dimes found. It lives on through your book, a street named Jamie’s Way, it lives on through the events, it lives on and on. It lives on through all those that come in contact with you through an activity or the website or a picture that they have on their mantle. For them it is a beautiful tribute, they sense your spirit and you live on. But what doesn’t live on is you being alive as a living being here in my life, and all that would bring with it. No matter what circumstance, what universe might have shown up, I would have wanted to live that time with you. And while I know it was an accidental car crash that took you away from me, the only way that I can stay close to you now is by crying and writing and honoring and remembering my beautiful boy that I had for ONLY five years and 11 months, which was not and will never be long enough. AND I would have still wanted those Five years and eleven months, even if I knew it means pain for the rest of my days, which has now been twenty four years and one month. I miss you son, I wanna “jale tu palo.” Te amount para siempre. I love you and I miss you everyday Jamie, and I will always love you and miss you until we meet again~ Mama

©Elene Bratton, 2026

Lavender Wreath

Today marks twenty-three years since Jamie’s last day on earth. I woke up early this morning, as I do. Bleary-eyed, I read a couple of sweet messages from dear friends, delivered while I had slept. I have written something most years (all years?) on this anniversary of the worst day of my life. Today, though, I wasn’t certain I would write. I wasn’t sure I needed to. Or if I really had anything to say. 

That changed the moment I got into my work truck and both saw and smelled a small wreath of lavender someone had left on the rearview mirror. 

A few days after Jamie died, Danielle, his sister, requested a viewing. I had a visceral, negative reaction to this idea. I had always found the notion of viewings unsettling and awkward. After sitting with it for a couple of days, I decided that if it was important to Danielle, I would let go of my own discomfort. It would just be attended by a small group of family and friends.

The day we went to the mortuary, we were led into the room where Jamie’s body was laying. The woman who showed us in gently warned us that we should be careful with the right side of his face. I was shaking, filled with anxiety. As I saw Jamie, an indescribable heap of feelings came over me— just overwhelming. A combination of grief, horror, love, gratitude, anxiety, presence, aloneness, togetherness, and things I don’t even know how to put into words. We gathered around him, talking to him, loving him, gently touching him. One of us put a couple of drops of lavender oil on his forehead. I will never forget the scent. It was a mixture of lavender and death. To this day, it is hard for me to smell lavender without at least a touch of the death part wafting in.

I don’t enjoy the notion of “closure”, and that is not what the viewing provided. For me, the most poignant thing that happened was seeing Jamie for the last time appearing close to what he looked like before the accident, which was in stark opposition to what I had seen in those last devastating moments at Children’s Hospital. 

As I write this, I imagine if I were the one who had put that lavender wreath in the truck, and were reading this now, I would be feeling really concerned that I had inadvertently touched a raw nerve. However, that is not what happened for me. It was a beautiful, synchronous thing for me to experience. I was very grateful for that lavender wreath. 

Later this morning, I mentioned the lavender wreath to a dear work friend and, without telling the story, mentioned that there was this serendipitous aspect to it appearing there. My friend asked, cautiously, if it may have had anything to do with Jamie. She had no way of knowing, and at least consciously did not know the significance of today’s date. I said it did, and then she told me that Jamie had been in her dream last night! She had been unsure of whether to mention it, but I am glad she did!

Throughout the day, there were other Jamie connections and signs. I’ll keep some of them between me and Jamie, but they kind of kept coming.

I miss him. I love him forever. I’m grateful for the time we shared — and for the quiet, subtle ways he still touches my life.

Mychael
Jamie’s Dad

Anny by Elene Bratton

 Anny, I went to your funeral today. A funeral of a person I don’t even know. A 28-year-old passed away just a few days before she would be 29. My son would have been 28 this year, but he passed away a month before sixth birthday. You guys might have known each other had he been allowed to grow up. If you had known each other, would he have influenced you not to have died a few days before your 29th birthday? Sounds like you had a beautiful life. And a lot of great influences. I know your dad and your grandma on your dad’s side. But I knew very few people at your service. I didn’t want to hear that God had plans for you, and this is all as it was supposed to be. Nobody’s supposed to die a few days before their 29th birthday, no one’s supposed to die with a 9-year-old who’s counting on them. No one’s supposed to die from fentanyl overdose or a car crash or childhood disease.

No one’s supposed to sit in a funeral for their baby girl.

It’s just not right. Nothing will ever make it right.

 A son growing up without his mother. My dad growing up growing old without his daughter and uncle’s cousins, friends. Left to find and carry on your legacy. All of us left with huge holes in our hearts. That can ever be filled. It’s like trying to fill the Grand Canyon with an eye dropper.  

But and still the only way to honor you is to carry on, maybe in that carrying on we’ll find solace, we’ll find ❤️ We’ll find reason to carry on.

© Elene Bratton 2024

Jamie’s Joy: Healing Grief, Creating Legacy, Celebrating Life now available!

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Jamie’s Joy: Honoring Grief, Creating Legacy, Celebrating Life offers a raw, honest, and heartfelt account of the most agonizing, painful, and life-altering loss—that of a child. Ms. Bratton shares the intimate details of her process upon losing her precious son, Jamie. She shows us how our “grief illiterate” society makes an anguished experience even more painful through its lack of support for the bereaved and, perhaps worse, by making the bereavement process seem shameful and unhealthy. According to the author, the common belief that we need to “move on with our lives” and leave our lost loves in the past does not work. Ms. Bratton learned to rethink most of her past beliefs about God, people, and the nature of life to survive and heal with faith.

Jamie’s Joy offers candid ways the bereaved can shift their thoughts to adapt to the new reality of such a loss and eventually regain belief in the goodness of life. The mission of this book is to offer you Ms. Bratton’s stark and intriguing insights—not as a direction, but as something to consider if you are on your path of loss or have ever needed to help someone else who is. This book was created to provide you with resources and supportive guides to use, as needed.

Buy Book on Amazon

20 Years

Over the past 20 years
I’ve been blue
Drank a lot of beers
Shed a bucket of tears
Spent many days
Missing you.

Over the past 20 years
I’ve written 1200 poems
spent most of my time
Alone
Went through
Thought no
Threw away
800 poems
Spent time thinking
Things through
Thought about courage
And missed you.

Over the past 20 years
I got on a plane twice
to go across the U.S.
then back again
And that was way back when
That was 20 years ago.

Over the past 20 years
I’ve owned 7 different cars
All one at a time
Had lots of days to opine
7,305 of them
Stretched over time
All those days and days
A long foggy haze.

Over the past 20 years
2 decades
I’ve had 8 separate residences
The Padres have played
3,137 regular season games
The weather has gone hot to cold
The waves build then dip
the clouds float and whip
Mountains look lazily on
I stand in the rain
& nothing has been the same.

by Jamie’s Uncle April 24, 2022

© David McNeeley,2022

twenty years

pictures fade
memories blur
time pulses forward.

grief moves 
and changes
rises and falls.
love endures.

your presence 
weaves itself 
throughout this
long and fleeting life.

© Mychael McNeeley April 24, 2022
for Jamie Morgan (May 24, 1996- April 24, 2002)

Autumn’s Change~ a poem by Shari Maclean-Merten

The trees,
once dressed in
silky green,
change for
the cold.

Now donning
crispy auburn,
rust, crimson,
and gold.

Some have
shed all colors
standing naked
and bare.

Others still
hang on
needing more time
to prepare.

Caterpillars hibernate
some even
cocoon,
readying for the
winter months
approaching soon.

And all the while
in this
deep autumnal grief,
there’s profound beauty
in this
seasonal release.

With forest’s breath
shallow and slow,
life seems to
wilt away.

Take comfort
in this ebb and flow,
for nothing
stays the same.

As seasons pass,
all once-dying things
find new life in spring,
when all of life
emerges new
with buds and sprouts and wings.

Transformation masked as death
it’s really life anew.
Even for our
loved ones
the laws of physics hold true.

Memories of you,
once painful
and thorny to share,
now bring comfort
as I see you, feel you
everywhere.

Like you,
the leaves
and caterpillars,
certainly aren’t
gone.

They
like you,
have merely transformed
but, still,
they live on.


©2021 Shari McLean-Merten
shared with permission for
~Bill McLean (10/22/1941-11/16/2018)
~Julie McLean Schroeder (11/13/1963-7/6/2020)


A New Connection: Selah Carefarm, Sedona, Arizona

I recently watched the series “The Me You Can’t See.” It is a wonderful documentary exploring mental illness and healing from the perspectives of people from various backgrounds and places around the world.

I was happy to learn, through the series, about a place just outside Sedona Arizona, Selah Carefarm, where grieving parents can go to, among other things, spend time with rescued animals. The benefit is for both the humans and the non-humans, as many of the other animals there also have been in traumatic situations prior to arriving at Selah.

After completing the documentary, I reached out to the director and founder, Joanne Cacciatore, who appeared in the series. I really didn’t even know whether I would hear back from her, but was pleasantly surprised when she wrote right back. As it turns out, we have quite a bit in common. Like me, Joanne lost her child, Cheyenne, suddenly and at a very young age, and has also developed a deeper connection with other animals from within a place of grief. I was reminded of an interview I did, “I Don’t Eat My Friends” with Vegan Danielle, which relates to my own connections with other animals born from grief and love and my relationship with Jamie.

I hope to visit Selah in the future. It seems like a magical and healing place. I will also be adding a link in our Grief Support section. Thank you to Joanne and all the staff at Selah Carefarm for your tremendous support and compassion for all animals, human and other, for your expansive circle of care, for seeing a need and for filling that need. I am inspired and touched by what you do.

© 2021 Mychael McNeeley