" Brian was the child of two US military members who conceived him while married to separate spouses. His bio mom put him up for adoption after giving birth to him in January, 1980.

Brian's mom, Sue, was working for Craven County, North Carolina social services at the time, and newly married to his dad, Ron, who was serving in the Marines at Cherry Point. Sue fell for Brian out of all the little ones she watched in the orphanage. Sue and Ron brought him home at three months old. When I asked B years later if his mom had been unable to have children, he said "I don't know, I never asked her." When I asked why he wasn't curious, he said "It was none of my business and it isn't right to ask a lady about that stuff." That was B for you. Chivalry was not dead while he walked this earth.

When B was about three, the family relocated to Sue's inherited property in Hartwood, in Stafford County Virginia. There, Ron worked as an MP at Naval Air Station Dahlgren, and his mom ran a gift shop in Fauquier county. As little Brian grew, it was clear he was very extroverted and quite clever. Stories abounded about how he'd scare his mom and aunts by running off in stores and talking to strangers. This tracks with the man he became, who was not afraid of any single thing.

Brian's intelligence tests in school indicated a very high IQ and exceptional cognitive processing, but also what later became known as ADHD. That caused problems in school; he was both bored and unable to sit still.
Then one day when he was ten years old, his dad gave him a ride to his buddy's house to play video games. After dropping B off, Ron went home, walked into the house, had a massive heart attack, and died on the living room floor. Sue found him after returning from lunch with her sisters, and sent her brother in law to pick Brian up. Ron was 40 years old.

If you could imagine the heartbreak a ten year old boy might feel when his dad, who was both his hero and his protector, dies, then I am sure you'd understand the anger that boy might feel. The anger, and the pain. It changed B forever. Things got harder after that. I am going to write a book about it, I've decided, because what happened to my B was indicative of a larger, systemic and institutionalized failure to recognize at-risk children and young adults in the United States and help them before lasting damage is done. B was an amazing and extremely brave man. He deserves his story told, and as his wife and closest friend, I feel I must do it.

It will suffice to say here that he graduated high school on time, despite many challenges. B had some very good reasons to escape Stafford at that point, so in true mythic fashion, he took a job with a tent rental company. I say "mythic" because B was a character like no other. And when I say "tent rental," I mean he ran off and joined the rodeo. He spent the next few years riding horses, shootin' gophers, putting up huge big-top tents, and traveling the West.

He came back at age 21 and started dating his high school sweetheart. She got pregnant, and B proposed. She lost the baby at six months and promptly left B for a guy she'd previously dated. They were married 9 months. During those months, I met Brian for the first time through a mutual friend. I thought he was so handsome and funny, but I was dating some other guy and he was married, so it was an "oh well" sort of thought. Couldn't stop thinking about that beautiful black hair and his sparkling eyes, though.

Stafford County and Fredericksburg Virginia are small towns, though. Especially if you are in a certain subculture, which we both were, so we ran into one another a lot. About five years after we first met in 2001, and after B spent a year living in the Netherlands with a friend, we finally were both single so we dated off and on for a few years. He was 25 and I was 29.

We had called it quits around 2008, as I was living an hour away and he was wrapped up in more drama that has no place here in this story. I tried dating other people but I'd find myself thinking "You are no Brian Hutchinson." Then my mom had a heart attack, and B found out through a friend. He called me, out of the blue, to see if I was okay. I was at work. I still remember saying "Where have you BEEN?!?" on the phone. Two weeks later, he moved in with me. We understood one another's pain, but more than that, he loved me because I never judged him for anything, and thought he was so smart and handsome. And I loved him because he actually listened to me, liked me for who I was, told me I was beautiful, and meant it. We made each other laugh every day, too, which I will forever miss.

So we lived together for a few years. He was there for me when my mom died in 2010, and when I graduated college in 2015. And then we realized that we wanted not only to stay together, but to have a child and make a family. We both wanted to be married to do that, so in the spring of 2015, we had an utterly beautiful wedding, and seven months later we conceived our son, Forrest, who was born in August of 2016.

While I was pregnant, Brian was diagnosed with liver disease, which was scary but we were told there was a good chance he could reverse it. He followed doctor's orders and did what he was supposed to do. Then our son was born and we entered into that sort of blissfully happy new-baby microcosm of love and joy that only those of us who have had that experience can truly understand. I remember writing him a card for some special occasion when our son was a few months old, and I said "I loved you before, but I never knew how much I could love you until we became parents." Brian adored our baby boy, from the moment he cut the cord to the day he died. Brian had a hard life, and being given up for adoption left a little hole in his heart that always wanted to be filled by true, real, blood family, even though he was lucky to have loving adoptive parents. Forrest was his family, and while Forrest inherited his mama's looks, he has his dada's mind, his extroversion, and very likely his temperament, which I will cherish in memory of his father.

B's mother died when Forrest was about 8 months old, and another blow was dealt to my poor husband's heart. His extended family, who would become our neighbors after we moved back to the family property, disowned him. He was persona-non-grata to them, as the troubled teen-come-adult that was never a "real" member of the family. This nearly broke my sweet, strong husband. He was heartbroken in the worst way - how could they not only deny him, but his son? Who his mother had loved? I was angry for him, but we'd already begun building a house on the property we inherited and there was no moving away. So B spent his last four years living in close proximity to people who had no love for him, which I will always regret.

Over those years, his health deteriorated. Medications can stave off liver failure for years, and they did, but it became clear that the healing the doctors hoped would take place was not happening, and instead, B's liver was getting worse. What's more, he said he didn't want the transplant that might have saved his life. I argued and cried and gave ultimatums and fought to try to make him understand that leaving us, leaving me and Forrest, would break our hearts. But B believed that if it was his time to die, it was not for him to change that. And I came to understand that it was not my job to "fix" him, but to accompany him on his journey, and show him the love I'd promised to until his last day on this earth.

That's what I did. I'm so grateful for the lesson, because I needed to learn that more than most people. And I'm terribly sorry that while so many families in our country and across the world are mourning just as I am, I have to say that if it weren't for the pandemic that began in 2020, my little family would never have gotten to spend the last 18 months of B's life together in our home, watching Forrest grow.

B was in and out of the hospital quite a bit in the last couple of years, for a host of symptoms related to his deteriorating health. I knew the end was near, but knowing and experiencing are two different things. Knowing that he's out of pain and suffering, and that Forrest and I are as well, is a good thing. Experiencing the loss - no B on the other end of the couch to talk to while I watch TV, no more family snuggle-naps in the king-sized bed, no more Friday movie-and-popcorn nights in the den, no more hugs and kisses, no more listening to him snore at night, no more spontaneous bunches of flowers he bought me "just because," no more family of three - THAT is a hard, hard thing to swallow.

And I don't want to. B was incredible. He was a hockey star, he sold time shares, he was a line cook, he was an undead haunted walking tour guide. He was a father and a son and a husband. He was funny and angry and smart as a whip. He could make anybody laugh. He could sell a cape to Superman. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of The Simpsons, the Marvel Universe, and all things Star Wars. He loved survivalist stuff - he had a go-bag with him at all times, and never went anywhere without a knife. He would have died to protect me or Forrest. Sometimes I thought he was waiting for the chance to prove that.

I want to close by telling a story. On the day Brian passed away, I was sitting in my kitchen, looking up the crematory info online, because we'd said goodbye to his comatose body the day before at the hospital and they'd told me it would be in a matter of hours. I was crying a bit, while my sister played with my son a few feet away. I wiped my nose with my hand, and it came away covered in blood. Lots and lots of blood. I was truly alarmed - I hadn't had a nosebleed in 30 years or more. I shouted and my sister came with a paper towel to help and then my phone rang.

I answered it, and was told that Brian had left this earth two minutes before. Right when my nose started bleeding. You might think that's a strange way to say goodbye, but I'll tell you why I knew it was him, without question: B's favorite color was red. He embraced darkness, felt rage and anger had kept him alive when he would otherwise have succumbed, and violence was always brewing under his skin. He'd never have laid a hand on me in life, but we did have a little family phrase we used when we wanted to say "Why are you cranky for no apparent reason?" That phrase was "Do you need a punch in the snoot?"

He left me with a punch in the snoot. I knew it was him. He came right home and told me he was there, the moment he left his body. So I will never doubt for a second he is there protecting us, loving us, and watching over us forever. Because we are family. Always. Death can't change that. "