Kimberly Brown, the wife of BYU football great Curtis Brown, marked a somber anniversary after the drowning death of the couple’s 2-year-old son, Haze.
“70 days. 😭10 weeks. The longer we go without him — the harder it all seems,” Brown shared via Instagram on Sunday, October 4. “I’m just exhausted. I’ve never spent so many hours in bed and still felt so depleted.”
She continued, “I wake up every morning already exhausted from a day that hasn’t even started yet. Missing someone this much takes everything out of you before you even step foot out of bed. Your mind keeps searching for someone who is no longer there.”
Haze died on July 26, after being found unresponsive in the family’s pool at their home in Clovis, California.
Kimberley and Curtis, 42 — who played running back at BYU from 2002 to 2006 and finished as the leading rusher in school history — also share 13-year-old triplets Julie, Cruze and Kash and son Trey, 12.
While navigating her son’s death, Kimberly explained she’s been dealing with “grief exhaustion.”
“It’s a kind of tired I’ve never known before,” she wrote. “A profound deep exhaustion that sleep doesn’t seem to touch. Pretending to be okay all day while your chest is caving in is so draining. Trying to have a conversation with someone while your mind is somewhere else completely — thinking about my boy — thinking about how badly I want him back — wishing with everything in me that this could somehow be reversed.”
Kimberly continued, “Sometimes I’m talking to someone and I realize I haven’t heard a word they are saying. Because I’m just thinking about Haze. His face. His laugh. His curls. His smile. How he should be right next to me. You have to detach from reality for a while just to function. Because if I actually let myself feel the full weight of what happened — I don’t know how you go on.”
The mother of five said she’s “carrying a loss so heavy it feels like my ribs are breaking.”
“There isn’t a word big enough for this,” Kimberly’s post continued. “No word for losing your child one day — and then waking up the next morning knowing you have to live the rest of your life without him. No word for missing someone so deeply that even breathing can feel like work.”
She concluded, “There’s just this unbearable weight. And somehow I’m supposed to keep carrying it.”
A GoFundMe arranged to support the Brown family has raised over $100,000.
