Coping with the void after rawness of loss
Grief, shock envelop community as 15 of its own lose their lives in bus crash
HUMBOLDT On Monday, things got really empty, really fast.
A few scattered people, one here, another there, walked through Humboldt’s Uniplex, which houses the town’s arena. An explosion of grief, which had filled the place from floor to rafter over the previous three days, had moved elsewhere — not gone, but shifted.
Humboldt Bible Church pastor Sean Brandow was one of those walkers. The night before, he’d given an impassioned, nationally televised address from a stage set up on the ice surface, talking about a crash, 15 lives lost on the Humboldt Broncos’ bus, and God’s place in this tragedy that’s caught the world’s attention. “The contrast from last night, just bursting at the seams, to the rink being empty. Every seat empty. That’s the way this morning has felt,” Brandow said after returning to the church. “It hasn’t felt as busy and as bustling. It’s just felt ... empty.”
Broncos’ head coach Darcy Haugan was a close friend, a sounding board, and a member of Brandow’s congregation. Haugan died Friday. Brandow has been the team’s chaplain for the last seven years, and he came upon the accident Friday night while driving to the game. Thanks to phones and social media, he knew before he got to the site what had just transpired — but there was no preparing for what he saw.
A torn-up bus, widespread debris, dead and injured kids, his close friend in the wreckage.
“I walked up and touched one of the guys, he was getting put on a gurney, and I knew I had to go to the hospital,” Brandow said. “I couldn’t do anything there.
“I had to be there. I wanted to be there. That’s why I’m a chaplain. But is there a chaplain-mode that makes me have some super-powers? No. I was so human that night. I was so raw. It was hard to process a lot of that, but my mandate hadn’t changed. I wanted to care for those young men, to pray for them, and to try to be an encouragement to the families, and help however that looked like.”
Ex-NHL player Sheldon Kennedy also made his way to the rink Monday. He was there by 4:30 a.m., he says, unusual for him: “I was never early at the rink,” he quipped.
Kennedy was on the Swift Current Broncos’ bus that crashed in 1986, killing four players. Head coach Graham James was his longtime molester. Kennedy knows trauma, intimately.
It’s different today, he says. People know that putting on a BandAid, and waving the pain away, doesn’t work. “We definitely didn’t know the impact of PTSD, mental health, the impact of trauma — I can tell you that,” Kennedy said. “Back 32 years ago, we didn’t even talk about this stuff. It was basically ‘pull yourself up by the bootstraps, and let’s get going here.’ We know more today. We know the impact on mental health. We know things are going to be set up.”
Kennedy talked about the tentacles of that trauma, reaching and poking into lives in countless ways.
He visited survivors at Saskatoon’s Royal University Hospital Sunday, and says he saw signs of hope amid shock and grief. But he witnessed something else.
“One of the things we saw at that hospital yesterday was a lot of survivors’ guilt,” Kennedy said. “The survivors’ guilt of ‘my teammate didn’t make it; it should have been me.’ ‘My son or daughter is still here, and I can’t celebrate that, because there’s other parents that have lost theirs.’ And I’m sure the billet families are probably saying the same thing.
“Being able to look at those kids, and say ‘you know what? It’s good to have you here, and it’s important that you’re here ...’”
The Saskatchewan Health Authority’s Dr. Mark Wahba told reporters Monday that 12 people on that bus remain in hospital — four in critical condition, four in serious condition and four in stable condition. “Critical condition means life-threatening injuries,” Wahba said. “Serious condition means significant injuries.”
Schools in Humboldt remained closed Monday, but are expected to open Tuesday.
As grief moves on relentlessly, other matters, suddenly rendered trivial in the magnitude of this disaster, need taking care of. Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League president Bill Chow said the league has received an onslaught of apparel requests from across North America, and they ’re working with suppliers to meet the demand.
And there’s the matter of those two teams left in the SJHL playoffs — the Estevan Bruins and Nipawin Hawks — and what to do with their championship series. To play, or not to play, and the decision has not yet been made.
“That’s one of the big questions everybody ’s been asking, and I understand that. I also understand that we have to figure that out,” Chow told reporters Monday.
He said there will be a conference call with league governors Wednesday at noon Saskatchewan time. They ’ll make a final decision then, and relay it to the public. He was asked for his preference, and elected not to weigh in.
“What I would like to see doesn’t matter, because I have no vote,” he said.
A reporter from Montreal — the media contingent in Humboldt this week is massive and continent-wide — asked Chow to explain the importance of hockey in Saskatchewan. He gave a thoughtful answer:
“The 12 teams we have in Saskatchewan are communityowned,” he said. “They ’re all run by volunteers. There’s nobody getting any money. They’re all volunteer people coming here taking tickets, whatever they can do within the rink to help the team be successful.
“One lady in Humboldt, I was talking to her, she’s a second-generation billet mom. She’s had billets in her house since she was four years old. She’s got children who are probably 16 years old. What it means to people in Saskatchewan is that hockey is bred into you. It’s part of our life. Winters are cold, if you haven’t noticed, and springs are cold, if you haven’t noticed. It’s just the way it is. You go to the rink because it’s part of the community. You go to the rink to meet people, to talk to people, to socialize. That’s what hockey means to Saskatchewan.”
Back at Humboldt Bible Church, Brandow talked about the feedback he’s received since his message on Sunday night.
“I’m going to have to throw my phone away,” he said jokingly. “I’ve got over 3,000 Facebook messages and emails, so and so from Quebec or Montreal and Florida and Denver and France and Germany — ‘hey, I saw the vigil and just thinking of you.’”
Brandow is a member of Hockey Ministries International. Don Liesemer, who founded HMI in 1977 and serves as the group’s president, flew in from Montreal Sunday night to lend support.
“The Lord is really carrying him right now,” Liesemer said of Brandow. “Physically, emotionally, he’s exhausted. The hurt, and the pain .... ”
One of the things Brandow did with the team was to run chapel services. The church would feed the players, he’d speak with them, they’d play fun and silly games.
Brandow and wife Marsha watched some video this weekend. On those videos were those boys, the object of all this sorrow, playing games, laughing out loud, loving their lives.
Watching those images helped him, he said, in some small way. But on Monday, he still felt empty, like an arena in those hours after everybody leaves.
He expects it’s a feeling that’s spread far and wide.
“And I think that emptiness has got to be filled somehow,” he said. “That emptiness is going to be filled by involvement with each other, encouraging each other, being with each other, telling stories and laughing. Those are going to be really good parts to healing, but there’s got to be another part that fills that void, and that’s what I preached on last night. That’s Jesus. We need Jesus here to fill the rest of that void.”
And I think that emptiness has got to be filled somehow ... We need Jesus here to fill the rest of that void.