Honoring a Life Gone Too Soon

Attachments

Brandon and Tripp.

The obituaries we all read in this paper, and the local funerals we attend, are, more often than not, a true “celebration” of a long life well-lived, full of accomplishments and milestones and lists of kids, grandkids and great-grandkids moving on with their lives.

My wife, adult son and I attended a funeral in Georgia late last month that wasn’t quite like that, but was a moving celebration nonetheless.

My wife’s cousin’s 41-year-old son Brandon Talbird of Monroe, Georgia had died after a long battle with cancer, leaving behind his wife Alicia and five-year-old son Tripp. We attended Alicia and Brandon’s wedding in 2016, and he attended my mother-in-law’s funeral in the summer of 2020, so we knew him and always loved and appreciated his family.

It was really hard for a lot of reasons: seeing a young and promising life cut so short; watching the unique and terrible grief of parents outliving their child; a wife too young to be a widow; seeing a young boy in his mother’s lap trying to absorb and understand it all.

We asked my wife’s cousin Mike, Tripp’s grandfather, how Tripp was doing. “He knows his dad is dead,” he said. “But we don’t think he really knows it’s forever.”

Brandon was a firefighter, a lieutenant for Walton County Fire and Rescue. When we arrived at the service, we had to wait on the blocked road leading to it as a parade of fire trucks and police vehicles escorted his family and remains to the church.

As members of the family, the three of us joined the rest of his family as we were led past a phalanx of what seemed like hundreds of firefighters and police officers lining the entrance to the church, where we took our reserved seats in the front three rows.

There was a small display on the stage with mementos of Brandon’s life: a Yeti tumbler with his fraternity letters stamped on it; the championship belt he won in a hot dog eating contest; his fireman’s helmet; the triangle-folded American flag. On the stage in a display case were his fireman’s jacket and boots.

An honor guard brought in Brandon’s cremated remains in a small wooden box, laid it on the pedestal with his life mementos, and took turns standing guard during the hour-long service.

This is where the celebration came in. One after another, Brandon’s fire department chaplain, department chief, fellow firefighters, fraternity brothers, and lifelong friends wove a beautiful story of Brandon’s life, well-lived indeed. Brandon meant so much to every one of these men, his “brothers,” as they all called themselves.

We heard of his love of UGA football; his able mentorship of younger colleagues; his bravery in service and passion for his community; his peacemaking skills in the midst of conflict; his love of family and fishing with Tripp; his sense of humor; his two victories in hot dog eating contests; late nights drinking bourbon and Cokes on porches with friends, swapping stories and jokes and listening to music; his emotional and physical strength, presence and humor until the very end; how much they all truly loved him and will miss him dearly.

At the very end of the service, the honor guard solemnly carried the American flag, his department flag, and his fireman’s helmet to his family. Kneeling, the officers gave the American flag to Alicia, the department flag to his mother Leta, and the fireman’s helmet to his son Tripp, each whispering condolences. Taps was played, and we were escorted out with the rest of the family behind a gentleman playing bagpipes.

It's hard to attend a funeral of someone who’s died so young and with so much promise in their future. As I said, we knew Brandon, but in the kind of way that extended family knows each other through various life events. A kind of surface knowing.

The guys who took the stage that day truly knew Brandon and did an amazing job making the rest of us feel like we did, too, on their level. To a person, their remarks were genuine and heartfelt, loving, funny, and even a little silly at times, which seemed like an accurate and perfect reflection of Brandon’s life. 

When my wife and I were at the Atlanta airport later that afternoon, waiting for our flight back to RSW, Brandon’s dad Mike, my wife’s cousin, called to thank us for coming, tell us how much it meant to him and his family, how much he and Leta love our family, and that we all need to stay in touch. After we hung up, I said to my wife, “With everything else going on in Mike’s life on this day, it’s amazing that he picked up the phone to thank us.”

Or, put another way, exactly the kind of thing Brandon would have done.