A different kind of week

This is always a strange week, at least for the Hendricks family. My youngest son Will and his wife Erica celebrated their ninth wedding anniversary on March 13, which is also the birthday of my oldest son Brandon, who died in San Diego while serving in the Navy eighteen years ago. Will decided to get married on Brandon’s birthday as an honor and remembrance of him but it also brings back those tragic memories to everyone in the family.

Brandon had long wanted to be a Navy Seal and after he signed the papers to join the Navy he began a demanding workout program to make sure that when he got the chance, he wouldn’t fail because of his own shortcomings. Unfortunately, the promises the naval recruiter made to him about having the opportunity to try out for that unique branch didn’t happen. In spite of his disappointment, Brandon graduated at the top of his class during boot camp at the Great Lakes Training Academy in Chicago, Illinois and gave the annual commencement speech to his graduating class along with their parents and friends.

After graduation, he was assigned to be a corpsman and was stationed in the Philippine Islands for a year before returning to the states. He found out during his tour of duty there that some Navy recruiters will tell a potential signee anything they want to hear just to get their name on the dotted line and that’s evidently the kind of recruiter Brandon had to deal with. This soured him on the whole process and his love for Navy life waned after that because he didn’t get the assignment he had been promised. He was only a month away from fulfilling his signing obligation and leaving the navy when he died one night at home while he and another corpsman were watching movies.

His cause of death was listed as undetermined which prompted me to contact our Senator, Ben Nelson, to see if he could help me in any way. Senator Nelson came through like he always did for me and the citizens of southwest Nebraska and had the full autopsy report sent to me by the Navy. In it, it was reported that Brandon’s official cause of death was declared mixed drug toxicity which amounted to his taking of prescription pills prescribed by naval doctors and drinking a tall boy beer on top of them. That’s when I also discovered that parents can’t sue the Armed Forces for deaths occurring to their children during military service, even though we believed the doctors were clearly at fault for not warning Brandon of the potential deadly consequences of drinking alcohol with his prescription meds.

Michael and Will, Brandon’s brothers, looked up to him as a big brother with more admiration than I’ve seen in most brothers and took his death hard. This caused Will to want to be married on Brandon’s birthday which he did without either my or his mother’s objections because we knew how much it meant to him.

Very few lives go without hardships attached to them and our son’s death was certainly our hardship, as those of you who have lost children know full well. Children are supposed to bury their parents, not the other way around and that’s something that no parent ever gets over. I had good friends in McCook who tried their best to fill the void in my life by providing whatever they could along with the Navy Gold Star program which was there for us the day after Brandon’s death and has been resolute in their support ever since.

But, in the end, whether it’s our own or it happens to a loved one, we all face death alone.