Bradley James

My nephew passed away on Friday due to complications from a heart transplant he received the previous Wednesday. Tomorrow is his funeral and I have the impossible task of offering comfort to his mother.

BJ was 28 years old.

How do you tell a mother that there is any justification in losing her son at that age, at any age?

BJ had heart problems from the time he was a baby. His doctors kept telling, first his mother and then him, "Don't do this because you could die" and "Don't do that because you could die". When BJ got older, he told his mother that he would be happy to die a young man who had done the things he wanted to do and who had experienced life rather than die an old man who had spent his life sitting in a chair by a window.

I know that's the right attitude and I know I should be happy that he had some time to experience life and that he lived (and died) the way he wanted.

I know I should be happy. But I'm a mother too and I know Sonia is wishing for the man sitting in the chair right now.

BJ, you were loved and you will be missed!