Sandi's Continuing Story

One small decision can become a lifelong memory. I sit down with Sandi Moran Brafford as she returns to the days surrounding the sudden death of her youngest son, Rich, and tells the story with a honesty that’s both tender and blunt. She shares what it felt like to cancel a simple lunch plan because she was new at work, then wake up to a family emergency that would change everything. If you’ve lived through sudden loss, child loss, or complicated bereavement, you’ll recognize the shock, the numbness, and the way time turns surreal.

We also talk about what happens after the phone calls and the gathering at the house when real life still demands you show up. Sandi describes grief at work in vivid, practical terms: crying on the drive in, slipping away to the bathroom, and returning to the schedule because bills don’t pause. Alongside the loss, she was finishing breast cancer radiation, adding physical exhaustion to emotional collapse, and she reflects on how compounded trauma can blur months into a haze.

Marriage and grief come up too. Sandi explains how her husband Jim struggled to talk about Rich, not because he didn’t care, but because his grief lived in quieter places and small acts. That difference could have split them, yet it ultimately pulled them closer, offering a real-life look at how couples navigate different grieving styles.

A turning point arrives with a “cheerbox” from Amanda the Panda, a grief support organization for children and families. That simple daily ritual opens a door to community, volunteering, and meaning-making through helping others carry their stories. 

ATTEND MY SUMMER WORKSHOP ON "SOULFUL LISTENING" THROUGH THE MARKEY CENTER AT SANTA CLARA UNIVERSITY VIA ZOOM.

https://events.scu.edu/markey-center/event/359741-soulful-listening-workshops-on-the-ministry-of

Art:  https://www.etsy.com/shop/vasonaArts?ref=seller-platform-mcnav
and  https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/candee-lucas

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F2SFH4Z6

Music and sound effects today by:   via Pixabay

Transcript

Welcome And Sandi’s Story Returns

Candee 0:36

Welcome to Solace: Soul + Grief. I'm glad you're here. My name is Candee Lucas, and I'm a Jesuit trained spiritual director and chaplain. This week we revisit uh my friend Sandi Moran Brafford and her story of the devastating loss of her youngest son. I want to take this opportunity to thank Sandi for sharing this with so many people. I've gotten a lot of feedback to her story and it resonates with so many. So here's my continuing interview with Sandi Moran Brafford.

The Day Rich Went Missing

Candee 1:26

Why don't you take us back, if you can, to those days when you suffered this loss and take us through it a little bit and just tell us about the experience if you're willing to share it. However, you wanted to talk about it.

Sandi 1:42

Well, I had a pretty bad year. Things, a lot of things had gone on. We both my husband and I had changed jobs. Um, I had just started a new job and was not very good at it. And I was supposed to have lunch with my son Rich, who was 30. And we had made arrangements. He he didn't live at home, so he lived in the town. So we saw each other often, but not every day or every week, even. But I was supposed to have lunch with him. And at work, they asked me to work overtime. Somebody didn't show up or whatever. And so being new and not wanting to um cause any trouble, I said yes. I canceled, canceled my lunch with Rich. And then the next day, he didn't show up for work, and family members started calling each other and said, Have you heard from Rich? Have you seen Rich? Nobody had, and he wasn't answering his phone, but he had left at another time a few weeks before. He had let his phone battery go dead and nobody could find him. So this was like the second time that it happened. So we're like, oh, oh, Rich. He, you know, forgot to charge his phone. Finally, after several hours, my daughter went over to his apartment. It was pouring down rain, I remember. She could see, she could get the door partway open, but I think the chain was on it. She could see that he was inside, he was inside on the floor. She broke the door down, which, and you know, that adrenaline, I guess, and then found that he had died, and he had died during sometime during the night. She then called um a brother-in-law and the police, and you know, everything that people do. And by this time, I was at home with my husband, and we were just thinking, wow, we haven't heard anything. When things like that happen, you have a sixth sense about it, I think, sometimes. And then we were downstairs in our family room, and I heard somebody knocking at our back door, and I went to answer the door, and it was two of my other children. I have five children, and the minute I saw him, I just knew something, you know, something was bad. So you know, they told me he died, and it was just surreal. You're like, you know, he's healthy, he's fine, what, you know. S o that was how that happened, you know, we all found out everybody gathered at the house, and he had lots of friends .

Shock Regret And The Funeral Days

Sandi 4:40

I just remember over the next few days, lots and lots of people. I never worked overtime again at that job. Any anytime I was at, and or anything, if I'm asked to do something and I already have plans, I do not break the plan. And that was just, you know, I thought I missed out on my last time of seeing him, which, you know, you always have some regrets that, oh, I should have done this, I should have done that. But it was very hard. It was very, very hard for everybody, and we were all so shocked, and we were like my friend that said, --Well, this doesn't happen to us, this happens to other families--. And, you know, the first time like that, you are. But it was, you know, lots of people got me through it, but it was just a time of terrible shock. And uh it was seeing all of his friends really helped, I think, even more than seeing my friends, you know.

Grief At Work While Functioning

Sandi 5:47

But it was it was a very hard thing, and I had I had to go back to work. I worked full-time in a doctor's office at the time in in uh scheduling and registration. And so for months, you know, I was just a wreck. I would go to work, cry on the way to work. At lunch, I would go cry, come home, cry. Schedule. Yeah, yes. Yeah, it had to be because I couldn't, you know, I had to, you know, people and a lot of people will say to you, Oh, you're so strong, or you're so brave, or you're so you don't have a choice. I mean, I couldn't say, I'm sorry, I'm I can't come to work ever again. So , you know, and I don't know how my work friends, you know, I didn't know them very well. I'd only worked there a few months. I think they they all tried to help me. They were they were good, but they would know. Sometimes I would just disappear into the bathroom and I'd be in there sitting on the floor just crying my eyes out. And it was you just kept going. And it was, you know, it was a terrible time. And I

Cancer Treatment During Early Grief

Sandi 7:04

And I had, you know, I said it had been a bad year right before the week I began working at the doctor's office. I also started radiation because I had just had a lumpectomy for breast cancer right after I got the job. So I was going through that and I was still, in fact, I had my last day, my clear of radiation, the day that I was supposed to have lunch with Rich, and then he died that next day. So I had all of that going on, and I came home from work, I went to bed. You know, I was still exhausted. My husband, he didn't like to talk about it. But, you know, I said about how he was how he ironed all of Rich's shirts, and you know, he he didn't like to talk about it much, but it affected him very deeply, and it was , you know, you just went day to day.

Marriage And Different Grieving Styles

Candee 8:03

Did you find it hard that Jim didn't want to talk about it? I mean, do you think if you'd been able to share it differently, maybe?

Sandi 8:13

Yeah, that might have been easier, I think. But he was, I mean, I knew he was he wasn't ignoring it. He just didn't like long conversations and men are doing do it that way. Yeah. So, but it was, I mean, we just we just held on to each other because you know, they say a lot of times something like this, especially the death of a child, is either gonna pull you together or it's gonna tear you apart. And it did pull us together. You know, I just sometimes I think I don't know how it would have been if he'd gone first, because I did have him , you know, but everything is, you know, a lot of it is a blur. I was somebody who, let's see, Rich died in the end of September.

The Cheerbox That Opened A Door

Sandi 9:02 Candee 9:07

Was he your youngest?

Sandi 9:09

He was my, yeah, he was my baby.

Candee 9:11

He was your baby.

Sandi 9:13

In December, I um one day went to the door and I got a package delivered, and it was called a cheerbox. This was the first I'd ever heard of these, but there was a group in Iowa called Amanda the Panda that worked with grief, especially children, but families. And as part of their program, every year they they put together boxes for people, um, like advent boxes for people who had lost somebody during that year. And there were like 24 little gifts in the box, and they had some religious connotations, some just silly things like a pair of socks or a candle or whatever. And the point was that you opened one one present, one little gift today. They were all wrapped and in this big box. And so I learned about Amanda the Panda and investigated them and found out they did programs, um, grief programs, a series of, I think six weeks or ten weeks, I can't remember, but families went to them or people from the families. They divided up into age groups, so from small children, preschool age children, up to adults. And they just had a program once a week and dinner. Anyway, I got very interested in this and decided I wanted to do something with this. So for over the next few years, I um uh volunteered with Amanda the Panda, and which I think it's I don't know if it's dissolved now or if it's a different program. It's changed from when I was in it. I know that, but they still do. Grief, they don't have professional counselors, I don't think. A lot of people do have some, and you take a training and things, but I worked with them, and that helped me to get into that and to talk to other people about their stories. And I worked with different from the third graders to the high schoolers to the adults. Um, they had a weekend camp every year. I went to the camp and just did that for for a while. In fact, I went when I was going to my first, I'd set up to go to my first training meeting with them, and my husband died.

Speaker 1 10:43 Speaker 1 10:43 Candee 11:48

That concludes another episode. A new one drops every Friday morning. You can reach us through the email in the show notes. You can find us on Spotify, Amazon Music, and Apple Podcasts. Remember, be gentle to yourself and others this week. Travel with God always at your side vaya con dios.

Candee 11:49