There are no words to express the grief our Penn State community feels with the family of Chris and Elizabeth Brady, and their daughter, Izzy, at the sudden death of their son and brother, Mack.
Yet words we must find … and pictures to remember … and action to memorialize.
For words, we might listen to Emerson, who himself lost his son too soon:
Excerpted from Threnody:
The south-wind brings
Life, sunshine, and desire,
And on every mount and meadow
Breathes aromatic fire,
But over the dead he has no power,
The lost, the lost he cannot restore,
And, looking over the hills, I mourn
The darling who shall not return.
I see my empty house,
I see my trees repair their boughs,
And he, –the wondrous child,
Whose silver warble wild
Outvalued every pulsing sound
Within the air’s cerulean round,
The hyacinthine boy, for whom
Morn well might break, and April bloom,
The gracious boy, who did adorn
The world whereinto he was born,
And by his countenance repay
The favor of the loving Day,
Has disappeared from the Day’s eye;
Far and wide she cannot find him,
My hopes pursue, they cannot bind him.
For pictures, we might look to his father’s Flickr page, where we find these of “The gracious boy, who did adorn/The world whereinto he was born”:
For action to memorialize, we might contribute to a soccer scholarship created in his name and honor.
Mack loved soccer and his dream was to play keeper on the US National Soccer team. The Brady family asks that gifts in honor of Mack’s memory be made to a soccer scholarship in Mack’s honor so that, as his father said, Mack “will, in some sense, ‘be on the field’ that he hoped to play on some day.”
Memorial gifts may be made online at http://givenow.psu.edu or by sending a check, payable to Penn State with “In memory of Mack Brady” in the memo line, to: Penn State University, One Old Main, University Park, PA 16802.
Perhaps these words, images and actions will allow us to lean together into the grief that is the loss of that “wondrous child.”
What a beautiful post in memory of this child!