Fifteen Years Without Bodee: What Time Has Taught Me About Grief

Fifteen years.

I have said those words to myself over and over, and somehow they still don’t seem possible.

Fifteen years since Bodee died.

Fifteen years since our family learned that there are moments that divide your life into two

distinct parts: before and after.

Before the accident…and after.

Fifteen years is long enough for people to assume that grief must have softened into something

manageable.

And in some ways, it has. For us.

We were “just” close family friends. His mom was one of my closest friends. He was like the little brother my son never had. And my daughter? She was the love of his life for the three years his family had lived in Hudson.

She was the sun around which his world revolved.

But grief doesn’t disappear.

It changes shape. The edges are no longer quite so piercing.

There are days when Bodee’s death feels like something that happened a lifetime ago. And then

there are moments—a Rascal Flatt’s song, a peace sign, a photograph, or someone doing something completely fearless—when fifteen years vanish in an instant.

Suddenly, we are right back there. Missing him.

Wanting one more dare that he would eagerly do just to make his older brother and my son happy.

One more time of making my daughter crack up laughing during a music concert when they were

both supposed to be singing.

One more ordinary day that we didn’t know at the time was extraordinary.

His family, however, never ever stops missing him. There’s a Bodee-sized hole in their hearts and it’s a big one.

Fifteen years later, I have learned some things about grief.

One of which is that we don't honor the people we love only by mourning them.

We honor them by allowing their lives to change ours.

So I try to ask myself:

Am I loving people well?

Am I giving generously?

Am I making life an adventure?

Am I noticing people who need a friend?

Am I making enough time to laugh?

Am I letting fear make decisions that courage should be making?

Am I really living?

Because Bodee did. He only had nine years, but he filled them.

Maybe that's the lesson.

We don't know how much time any of us get.

But we do get to decide what we do with the time we have.

LIVE LIKE BODEE ❤️✌🏻