Most favorite, shared memories are about family and one of my favorites includes Brad and Jen. Patti and I didn’t buy our first home until later in life. (I was 48). We celebrated a lot of very special times with family wherever we lived, but none was as sweet and worth waiting for more than when, shortly after buying our Sonoma home, Brad and Jen asked if they could be married in our garden.
Like most fixer-uppers, this house needed a lot of work, something no Bradley (Conners) ever shied away from. Everyone pitched in and help paint the entire house! We planted the garden, built an arbor, purchased two Iceberg roses, rented a dance floor and the rest turned into one of those memories that only brings sighs of love and tears when looking at old photos. My favorite picture of my mother was taken that day.
Each year in Sonoma, when doing our annual 2 day rose pruning getting ready for spring, instead of carpet pruning the iceberg roses on our arbor, I would spend upwards of 4 hours trimming and pruning each and every stem of those now 10 ft. roses, remembering that day, chuckling each and every time when I remembered Brads dad going head over heels on the dance floor. Laughs and tears that are only, always better when they are about family.
To know Brad was to celebrate memories even as they happened because he was that special of a guy. I know that even today, he would find a way to share a sideways comment to take the edge off and for that my tears are bittersweet. I hope that Sheron, Jen, Ben & Emily, Jamie, Christen & Declan can find solace in knowing that those are the moments and memories that will endure whenever they think of Brad.