Nothing can ever properly prepare you for the death of a loved one, but when the passing comes unexpectedly, the news can be even harder to bear. Conservative commentator and author Mary Katharine Ham tragically lost her husband Jake Brewer two years ago this week, after he was struck by a car while participating in a charity bike race in Maryland.
From a political perspective, Brewer, a senior policy adviser in the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the Obama White House, and Ham were an unlikely pair, and yet the two had been married for seven years and were expecting their second child when the deadly accident occurred.
“Simply put, Jake was one of the best,” President Obama said in a statement following his death. “Armed with a brilliant mind, a big heart, and an insatiable desire to give back, Jake devoted his life to empowering people and making government work better for them.”
Ham, meanwhile, posted a photo her and Brewer posing with their elder daughter on Instagram along with a heartfelt message to her beloved husband.
https://www.instagram.com/p/72w1ySiwI3/
The message read:
We lost our Jake yesterday, and I lost part of my heart and the father of my sweet babies. I don’t have to tell most of you how wonderful he was. It was self-evident. His life was his testimony, and it was powerful and tender and fierce, with an ever-present twinkle in the eye. I will miss him forever, even more than I can know right now. No arms can be her father’s, but my daughter is surrounded by her very favorite people and all the hugs she could imagine. This will change us, but with prayer and love and the strength that is their companion, we can hope our heartache is not in vain– that it will change us and the world in beautiful ways, just as he did. If that sounds too optimistic at this time, it’s because it is. But there was no thought too optimistic for Jake, so take it and run with it. I will strive and pray not to feel I was cheated of many years with him, but cherish the gift of the years I had. In a life where nothing is guaranteed, Jake made the absolute, ever-lovin’ most of his time with all of us. This is a family picture we took a couple weeks ago. It was taken because Jake, as always, was ready with a camera and his immense talent. All four members of our little, growing family are in it. I can never be without him because these babies are half him. They are made of some of the strongest, kindest stuff God had to offer this world. Please pray that he can see us and we’ll all make him proud. God, I love him. Psalm 34:18, Philippians 1:3
On Tuesday, Ham acknowledged the two year anniversary of Brewer’s death with a poignant article for the Federalist, in which she candidly shared that, while she is still coming to terms with her husband’s passing, she is finally beginning to understand how to keep his legacy alive.
“When you lose someone, you go through a lot of metaphors. Our vocabulary falters in the face of death,” she began. “Today is the two-year anniversary of the death of my husband, Jake. It took me about a year to come up with something that felt like it made sense of what I was feeling.”
She admitted that the “reasons for Jake’s death” remain “not apparent” to her, but she has come to possess a better way of articulating the impact he had on her life.
I love the idea of the divine spark. It crosses a lot of cultures and religions, the idea that you carry a bit of the Creator inside you, that it animates your life… Jake’s life always brings to mind a spark and then some. Jake’s soul, to me, was a bonfire. He was here and he was in your face and he was warm and bright. He roared with enthusiasm at the beginning, even the hope of something new, sometimes a little too much. His glow was infectious, throwing sparks into the night air, silhouetted against a dark sky before they landed on everyone in his vicinity…
Everyone who’s loved someone knows that light and warmth. Everyone who’s lost someone knows the feeling when it goes dark and cold one day… When that happens at any time, it’s jarring. When it happens without warning, even more…
Life goes on, they say. And even in the immediate aftermath I knew that, just as I knew the rest of my life still existed around me even if I couldn’t take it in. But in that moment, when my perspective changed so completely, I couldn’t see a way forward. The fire is gone, life said. Move forward. It wasn’t that I hadn’t charted a course or found my way, but that I had trouble conceiving that a way forward existed in those first days.
While it has taken and will continue to take time to adjust to her life without Brewer, she relied on her faith, her friends, and her family to get her through the toughest times. She initially feared that time and space would make Jake’s “fire more remote than it used to be,” but she now finds that her memories come and go without warning and serve as a reminder that he is still with her and their precious little girls.
“[S]ometimes to this day, without warning, like a hot ember in my hand, I’ll catch a memory, and it will sear just like that first day,” she wrote. “But then I remember this means he is not so far away, and we’re not so far from him, and it makes me smile. That’s a strange thing about grief: relief from it can sometimes be painful and pain can bring relief.”
“I’m a steward of his spark. Their father passed it onto [our children], and I keep it alive by talking about him and talking to God about him with my kids every day,” she continued. “All of us who knew him and loved him are keepers of this fire. It’s there, and it lives on, and it is something we can breathe life into every day. Again and again.”
Read the full post HERE.