Brodie and Sean. Courtesy of J. West
“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”
—ROMANS 8:28
On the night of July 14, 2016, in Nice, France, there was one question that Sean Copeland asked over and over again until he took his last breath on this earth: “Is Brodie OK?”
He asked “Is Brodie OK?” as he struggled to overcome his injuries and follow his son’s lifeless body into the hotel. He asked “Is Brodie OK?” as his daughter loaded Sean’s broken frame into a stranger’s car. And he asked “Is Brodie OK?” repeatedly during the doctors’ hour-long attempt to revive him.
Sean asked if Brodie, his eleven-year-old son, was OK until the moment Sean passed away. Right before Sean drew his final breath, he looked up at his daughter, Maegan, and stated with assurance, “Brodie is dead.”
I got chills as Kim shared her husband’s last words with me. Marveling at what she had managed to tell me through her tears, I said, “From all accounts I’ve read, when you die and go to heaven, the first thing you see is your family greeting you.”
“Yes,” she replied, “I think Sean saw Brodie, and Brodie was, like, ‘Daddy, come be with me.’ ” Despite having gone through unspeakable tragedy, Kim felt a peaceful assurance—assurance that her son and husband entered heaven that evening together after an act of evil cost them their earthly lives. “Sean knew he was joining his baby boy in heaven . . . I know that, and I would’ve done the same thing,” Kim said. “I would’ve been, like, ‘OK, I’m going with you.’ ”
The way Sean’s persistent question changed to certainty in an instant was truly inexplicable. Brodie’s body was more than a mile away with his mom, Kim, and his brother, Austin. Sean had no way of knowing Brodie’s status, since Maegan’s phone had died—and yet he did in that final transition from earth to heaven. Sean’s seeing his son matches the myriad near-death experiences described in popular books like Don Piper and Cecil Murphey’s 90 Minutes in Heaven: A True Story of Death and Life and Todd Burpo and Lynn Vincent’s Heaven Is for Real: A Little Boy’s Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back. In these nonfiction accounts, people who briefly died but were revived describe meeting relatives who had passed before them—just as Sean did.
Brodie and Sean. Courtesy of J. West
Sean’s parting words are a spring of hope for Kim, who lost her son and her husband in the span of an hour in Nice, France, during which the world watched and mourned together.
“Mom, I’m scared,” said Brodie Copeland, looking up at his mother with his bright blue eyes and freckle-dusted nose.
“Why are you scared?” Kim asked as she, Brodie, and the three other members of the Copeland family walked out of the Hard Rock Cafe and into a joyful beachside celebration along the spectacular palm-tree-dotted promenade of Nice, France.
“What does ISIS look like?” he inquired back.
“What do you mean? There’s no look.” It was a curious question from a characteristically carefree blond-haired boy—a boy whom they called the “Copeland Crush” because of his athletic prowess on the baseball field.
“There’s a man in there,” Brodie replied, referring to the bathroom of the Hard Rock. “He’s sitting on the floor with a backpack, and he’s digging through all of his stuff. And it made me scared, Mom. I want to know what ISIS looks like.”
When Kim had taken Brodie to the bathroom after dinner, she noticed a security guard positioned just outside of the men’s bathroom. What is going on? she thought at the time. The guard told Brodie it was safe to enter, but as any protective mom would do, Kim looked at her son and said, “Go with me to the women’s restroom.” And just as any strong-willed fifth-grade boy would reply, Brodie said, “No way! I’m not going to the girl’s bathroom!” Kim waited outside as Brodie encountered the man who had prompted his line of questioning.
“ISIS has no look,” Kim repeated to Brodie, who continued to inquire about ISIS as the Copelands prepared for a once-in-a-lifetime French fireworks show. “We’re fine. We are all together,” she gently assured her son.
“Just enjoy it,” Austin and Maegan told their younger brother.
“He was freaked out,” Kim told me. “It was so crazy. He had this intuition, and we were all, like, ‘Brodie, it’s fine.’ ” The picture-perfect Texas family had spent the whole day together on the third stop of what Kim described as their “dream vacation.” Tired of foreign cuisine, Brodie and his dad, Sean, wanted to start the evening with a good old-fashioned hamburger and french fries, which was why they had chosen the Hard Rock Cafe. Brodie had satisfied his craving for American cuisine even earlier than the rest of his family, starting his morning with a warm piece of apple pie. He had quite the healthy, boyish sweet tooth and a dazzling personality to accompany it. Born on April Fools’ Day, Kim soon realized “just how fitting that birthday was for . . . her little bundle of joy.”1
Leaving their safe little slice of Americana that night, the Copelands continued toward the Promenade des Anglais, an eleven-mile sprawling walkway set along the azure blue waters of the Mediterranean Sea. It was one of the last times they would walk together as a family of five. Though night had obscured the beauty of the rocky pebble beach, the festivities—fireworks, music—nevertheless persisted as thirty thousand attendees got ready to commemorate the French national holiday of Bastille Day.
For the Copelands, the jubilant event was the next stop in their celebration-filled vacation. Austin was turning twenty-two. Kim was turning forty. And a first-ever tour of Europe seemed like the perfect idea. Sean would kick off the trip by completing one of the highest items on his bucket list: running with the bulls in the small, quaint town of Pamplona, Spain. Then it was off to the bustling beaches of Barcelona and the sparkling waters of Nice, nestled in the heart of the French Riviera. “We chose Nice for Bastille Day because we thought it would be a safer place than Paris,” Kim told me. The trip was set to end in Paris, celebrating Kim’s birthday with dinner in the Eiffel Tower. The final stop was one that the family would never make.
When the Copelands reached the rocky shores of the Mediterranean on that warm July evening, they sat atop stones that lined the beach as glistening fireworks shot up before them. Appearing to emerge straight from the ocean floor, pops of color launched from barges, filling the dead of night with shimmering strips of sparkles. But as the thousands of onlookers around Kim reveled at the majestic sight before them, Brodie’s anxious demeanor began to worry her. This was an uncommon disposition for Brodie Copeland, who usually had a smile on his face and whose lively personality never failed to get those around him laughing.2
“I was kind of a nervous wreck during the fireworks show,” Kim remembered. As the Copelands ate dinner on the second floor of the Hard Rock overlooking the promenade that evening, Kim observed armed guards dressed in camouflage with military-style berets. Brandishing machine guns, they walked up and down the street in lockstep, peering from side to side. “It was very intimidating,” she recalled. Something in Kim prompted her to take a picture of the guards on patrol. The photograph shows weapon-clad Frenchmen marching in front of a red and yellow children’s candy stand—the same candy stand where Kim’s life would forever change.
As the Copeland family watched the elaborate fireworks display, Kim wondered, Is something going to happen? When the show ended, Kim’s nerves subsided. OK, we’re good now, she thought, seeing the throngs of revelers as a source of communal comfort.
The Bastille Day festivities were historically tranquil, family friendly, and statistically much safer than the Copeland boys’ earlier feat on vacation: running with the bulls in Pamplona. The running of the bulls takes place during the festival of Sanfermines, commemorating the martyrdom of Pamplona’s patron saint, Saint Fermín. Fences line the ancient cobblestone streets, boards shield windowed storefronts, and spectators hover over the balconies of multicolored buildings in anxious anticipation.3 Kim, Maegan, and Brodie Copeland were among the eager onlookers leaning over a balcony and waiting for Sean and Austin to charge down the street.
At 8:00 a.m., a rocket would be fired, signaling Sean and Austin along with hundreds of others to race toward an arena a half-mile away. A second rocket would sound as a pack of rowdy bulls was unleashed behind them.4 It is not uncommon for the raucous animals to trample runners or even gore them with their horns. Each year, fifty to one hundred runners are injured during the running of the bulls.5 In 2015 an American student was among the injured as cameras captured a vicious bull thrusting its sixteen-inch horns into the young male. The runner was fortunate enough to survive the violent encounter, but fifteen others have not been so lucky.6
Worried about the array of potential dangers—goring, a pileup, trampling—Kim woke up in tears at 2:00 a.m. the night before the run. Feeling apprehensive, she woke her husband and pleaded with him, “Please don’t do this. You’re fifty years old. I’m scared, and I don’t think it’s going to be OK.”
In his compassionate but fearless way, Sean calmed her fears. “It’s fine,” he said, “I’ve got you and three kids to take care of. I’m not going to put myself in harm’s way. Everything will be OK. I’ve lived a full life. I’m not worried about me, but I am worried about Austin.”
The next morning, before the run, Sean pulled his oldest son, Austin, into another room. “I have everything I could want in my life, but my main worry is you. You’re just twenty-two years old. You have your whole life ahead,” Sean said. “If you don’t want to do it, we won’t run. But if we decide to do it, we will do it together.”
“Dad, this is why we came to Europe,” Austin replied. “We have to do it.”
So Sean and Austin together joined the crowd in the narrow streets of Pamplona and ran as a herd of bulls chased behind them. “I will never forget the joy on his face that day,” Austin said at his father and brother’s memorial weeks later.7 Kim, wanting to capture her husband’s giant smile, snapped a photo from the balcony as Sean looked up with his arm around Austin. Both wore the traditional white shirts with red handkerchiefs, the red symbolizing the martyrdom of Saint Fermín. The irony of the image is noteworthy: Sean wearing that red handkerchief honoring a man who gave his life for his faith. Just days later, Sean would sacrifice his own life in heroic fashion. “Our family is so grateful for those photos we took that day,” Austin noted at the memorial service. “Him looking the proudest, happiest version of himself that I’ve ever seen, beaming from ear to ear. My dad gave us so much happiness, but this was his moment.”8
The Copeland boys had made it through the running of the bulls, but the real danger lay ahead. As the fireworks show concluded, the Copelands prepared to head to the promenade, departing from the beach where they had already made so many memories. After arriving in Nice, they rented beach chairs and grew accustomed to the stony French shoreline, so different from the sandy American beaches. The wind whipping along the Mediterranean coast created huge waves, so large that tourists were barred from the water. But Sean and Brodie, with their adventurous and lively spirits, ran right up to the edge to stick their feet in. Father and son sat on the shore, identically postured: legs extended, hands slightly behind them, and feet just barely touching the water. Sean in his white hat, and Brodie in his camouflage Hill Country Reds baseball hat. “They were two peas in a pod,” Kim reminisced. “They did everything together . . . he was that dad that, as soon as he would get home from work, would change clothes and go out and throw the ball with Brodie.”
Recalling that windy day in Nice, Kim explained, “Brodie and Sean didn’t like to sit. They couldn’t just sit on the beach and relax.” So after Brodie had a ball get sucked into the waves and after Sean chased down his hat that flew away, recovering it with the aid of a stranger, they rented scooters, something Brodie had been begging to do the entire trip. When the two returned, Kim asked if they had fun. “It was fun,” Brodie replied, “except that Dad is so big that his wouldn’t go very fast, so I had to wait for him.” Kim and I laughed together as she imagined Sean dragging behind as Brodie urged him forward, but she also gently wiped a tear from her face as she shared with me those final memories of her husband and son.
Brodie eventually grew bored of the rocky beach, so with his characteristically inventive nature he came up with “his next big idea,” in Maegan’s words: a beach massage business. Brodie gathered an assortment of perfectly smooth stones that were just right. “This is a good stone,” he would say. Maegan was lying on the beach when Brodie decided to try out his first business pitch. “Let me give you a massage. It’s the special stone premium backrub,” he bragged. “Only after the massage did he mention it was $5 for five minutes,” Meagan laughingly recalled two weeks later.9 “I thought that was too much, but Brodie drove a hard bargain.” When it was time to leave the beach, Brodie quickly informed the family, “We can’t leave yet. Business is booming!”
With a collection of beachside memories forever imprinted in their minds, the Copelands left the beach together one last time on July 14, 2016. The promenade, which had been shut down all day and closed to traffic, was now filled with stages featuring all kinds of music. After listening to some of the bands, the Copelands decided to head back toward the hotel. On the way, Brodie saw a candy stand and gravitated toward it as if it were a magnet. “The line is too long. There will be another one. Let’s get closer to the hotel,” his family told him. But upon spotting a second candy stand along the sidewalk, Brodie made a beeline for it. “It was just a mere seconds later that our lives were changed forever,” Maegan said.10
Brodie picked up a small brown paper bag and gleefully filled it with all different types of candy. Sean, Kim, Austin, and Maegan watched from behind as he made his way around the stand, surrounded by other children. “Turn around for a picture,” Kim said as she snapped a photo, the last picture she would take of her son: Brodie’s left hand clutching the paper bag while his right shoveled into a pile of red and yellow gummy candies, grinning from ear to ear as he prepared his bag of treats.
Brodie continued to pick out his candy until an abrupt word of warning filled the air. “Watch out!” Sean yelled. Kim snapped her head to the right to find a large white semi truck barreling straight for them. “Austin, get Kim and Maegan!” Sean shouted. Jumping into action mode, Austin picked up his sister and grabbed Kim by her arm, thrusting the three of them backward. Meanwhile, Sean ran forward directly into the pathway of the rapidly approaching semi to grab Brodie. But before Sean could return his son to safety, the nineteen-ton refrigerator truck struck them both and dozens of others at a rate of fifty-six miles per hour.
Chaos ensued.
The very last picture taken of Brodie. Courtesy of Kim Copeland
Screaming victims. Spectators briskly fleeing the scene. The zigzagging truck continuing on its murderous path. Almost instantaneously, the terrifying popping of crisscrossing gunfire rang out. Fearing that the shots might be part of a coordinated attack, Kim instructed Austin to get Brodie back to their hotel, which was nearby. Austin ran forward to find his younger brother, whose Hill Country Reds baseball hat was lost in the collision. Scooping Brodie’s body into his arms, Austin darted toward the hotel with Kim following closely behind. Still able to hobble with the assistance of a bystander, Sean and his daughter trailed their family, with Sean asking what would become his persistent question, “Is Brodie OK? How is he? Tell me if Brodie is all right.” Sean collapsed just before the entryway, unable to make it all the way back.
Holding Brodie close to his chest, Austin entered the hotel lobby overlooking the Mediterranean—the Bay of Angels, by no small coincidence—and gently laid his brother on the floor. Kim and Austin hovered around their eleven-year-old loved one in anguish. “I knew that he was gone,” Kim said.11 So, too, were his hopes and dreams. Brodie was going to be a baseball player then a sitcom actor and then president of the United States. His exuberant and lively nature made him perfectly suited for starring in Annie as Daddy Warbucks and in Peter Pan as Michael Darling, the youngest Darling sibling who flies off to the whimsical Neverland, where boys are never forced to grow up. Before Brodie’s grandmother watched him act in his first play, Brodie confidently looked at her and coolly commented, “Grannie Annie, prepare to be impressed.” Though baseball and acting were Brodie’s two passions, he did everything: drums, voice lessons, golf, football. Just weeks earlier, after completing fifth grade, Brodie’s teacher told him, “When you get your Academy Award, I hope you remember me.” That day would never come. Though Kim knew in her heart that Brodie was gone, two strangers rushed over and began performing CPR, desperate to save his life if they possibly could.
Kim glanced up from her son and out of the glass entryway. The automatic doors opened and closed, and each time they opened, she caught a glimpse of her husband lying on the ground outside. Kim had met Sean when Austin was just four years old. Fresh out of college, Kim had taken a job as a preschool teacher. “I was on the playground and in walks this handsome single man,” she said. “One day he came to pick Austin up and asked me for a date, and I said no.” But Kim always regretted that, and before the end of the school year she put a note in Austin’s backpack, leaving her phone number and asking for updates on Austin’s soccer game the next year. She hoped Sean would call, and sure enough, he did. On their first date, Kim and Sean spent six hours talking.
“Conversation was so easy with him,” she said. And one of the main things that attracted Kim to Sean was that he was such a good dad, proof of which was right in front of her as she looked out at her husband, battered after throwing himself in front of a truck in an effort to save his son. Kim attempted to walk out the doors to go see Sean, but she physically could not move. Her legs were frozen like cement blocks, preventing her from leaving her son to comfort her husband. It was from that vantage point that Kim viewed her husband of twelve years alive for the last time.
While Kim and Austin tended to Brodie, Maegan went into survival mode, urgently searching for a means of transportation. Since the scene along the promenade was still chaotic, no first responders were allowed to dispatch. Determined to get her dad to the hospital, Maegan screamed and demanded that someone transport her father. Her efforts ultimately proved successful. Maegan found a resident willing to help load Sean into a car and carry him to the hospital.
Meanwhile, after performing CPR on Brodie for a long time, the two strangers looked at Kim and said, “No, he’s gone.” Kim would later find out that Brodie had died immediately upon impact. With no ambulances dispatched, there was nowhere to take Brodie’s broken body. The hotel had no choice but to resort to a closet. As they picked up Brodie’s motionless body, Kim began to vomit. “[It] was the night my world was turned upside down,” Kim said.12
Since the hotel was on lockdown, Kim and Austin were not permitted to return to their rooms. “Austin was beside himself,” Kim remembers. “He had blood all over him.” Austin implored the hotel attendants to let him go change. “I can’t be in these clothes,” he said. They finally consented, taking Austin through a back hallway and up to the room. For almost four hours the hotel barred anyone from entering, leaving, or moving around the building, forcing Kim and Austin to stay downstairs in a private banquet room, just the two of them. The pair frantically tried to call Maegan, but her phone had died. As Kim waited for news of her husband’s whereabouts and status, she dropped to her knees and began pleading with God. “Please don’t take my husband,” she prayed. “I just lost my son. I can’t do this without my husband. Please.”
“I was just on my knees begging,” she told me as she began to choke up, remembering her desperation. And then, after a seemingly endless wait, she got the call.
“How’s he doing?” Kim asked nervously.
“He didn’t make it,” Maegan replied.
Sean had died from internal bleeding because of a tear in his aorta. He died in a tremendous act of heroism. “So Sean lost his life saving his son and saving you guys?” I asked her.
In a low and sad voice, she said yes.
“So he was a hero in every sense of the word,” I said.
“Every sense of it,” she proudly replied.
Because the entire city was shut down, Maegan was stuck at the hospital alone to mourn the death of her father. “I’m getting you back to your family,” a nurse said to her in a resolute voice. The two of them drove back toward the hotel, Maegan staying on the phone with Kim and Austin the whole way. As they drove down the road, two police officers stopped the car and put guns to the heads of Maegan and the nurse. “Oh my gosh, they have a gun to my head. I’ve got to go,” Maegan said before swiftly dropping the phone. Kim and Austin were hysterical at the thought of a third member of the family in danger. Unaware of what was going on, they were relieved when Maegan finally made it back to the hotel safely to rejoin the surviving members of her family.
The Copelands’ dream vacation—the “trip of a lifetime” that Sean had hoped for—had quickly spiraled into a nightmare. The earthly family of three—still an eternal family of five—was left to pick up the broken pieces of their life, nearly six thousand miles away from their Lakeway, Texas, home.
I still remember where I was standing that afternoon, packing for the Republican National Convention in eager anticipation of the four days that lay ahead. Bopping around the house and trying on dresses, I stopped in my tracks when I heard the news. “We are just getting initial word of breaking news coming out of Nice, France . . . dozens of people dead after a truck crashed into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day.”13 Horrifying images soon filled the screen. People running. Flashing police lights. A massive truck with dozens of bullet holes scattered across the front window. My anxious preparation ceased and my excited spirit deflated as I took in the scene. “There are a lot of details we don’t know right now,” the anchor cautioned. “Was this an accident? Was it something more sinister?”14 Something more sinister? Yes. This was certainly another in a long line of terrorist attacks.
The very next day, the French president announced that the horrific attack was indeed an act of terrorism. “France as a whole is under the threat of Islamist terrorism,” he warned.15 Eighty-six people had died and approximately two hundred were injured at that Bastille Day celebration when Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel accelerated a cargo truck in a weaving path, mowing down innocent bystanders over a one-mile stretch.16 The collective heartbreak of our nation for our Western European ally only increased when news emerged that at least two Americans were among the dead.
Almost everyone has seen that memorable black-and-white image of father and son standing on a baseball mound that was broadcast across national news. Brodie is looking up admiringly into his father’s eyes, glove in hand. His father is gazing down proudly at his son as their shadows cast across the mound. And then came one of those final pictures of Brodie Copeland, taken just two days before the attack: Brodie, halfway in a breaking wave on the shoreline of the Mediterranean, smiling with that tiny gap in between his two front teeth. He was the picture of innocence, extinguished by evil—an evil that he intuitively felt was on the horizon that evening when he encountered a man hurriedly digging through a backpack in the Hard Rock Cafe bathroom. According to Reuters, Mohamed’s brother claims that his murderous sibling sent a picture of himself laughing while standing among a crowd at the promenade just hours before the attack.17 Whether the man Brodie encountered was Mohamed or one of his several accomplices, we may never know.
One of Brodie’s last pictures. Courtesy of Kim Copeland
As details of the attack emerged, French authorities forced Kim, Austin, and Maegan to remain in Nice for several days. Sean’s brothers flew to France to support the family through those first days of loss. An ambulance moved Brodie’s body to join his father’s at the hospital, which had become a makeshift morgue. In between interviews with the police, mouth swabbing to confirm identities, and mounds of paperwork, the three Copelands clung tightly to one another. “They gave us two suites,” Kim recalled. “But the three of us stayed in one bed—like, all together for days—and didn’t move. We didn’t leave each other’s sides.” They held on to one another and faced the unimaginable. “We were all on our phones the whole time . . . We read all of the comments, and the outpouring of support, and prayers,” Kim said.
Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, their Texas community held the Copeland family in their hearts. Hill Country Baseball, a second family to the Copelands, met at Mount Bonnell to embrace one another and remember Brodie and Sean.18 Throngs of mourners packed into Lake Hills Church for a candlelight vigil. A mother sat with her arm tightly wrapped around her little girl. “Join me as we bow our heads,” the preacher told his congregation. Another mom lightly rubbed her son’s back, proudly displaying the number 8, Brodie’s baseball number. Speaking to God, the preacher prayed, “Bring peace to the Copeland family. Give us your amazing grace to forgive that man that took Sean and Brodie.”
“That’s really what got me through those first days,” Kim said. “Just knowing that the world has me.” The world truly did have Kim. Memorials were arranged all along the Nice promenade where the attack occurred. Just in front of a picture of Sean and Brodie on the mound, an American flag stood tall. A Sharpie and a pile of smooth stones from Nice’s beach—the same type Brodie had used for his massage business—lay adjacent to a bed of flowers. All sorts of messages of love and support quickly filled the stones. “Business is booming,” wrote Maegan on one—those funny words Brodie had uttered just days before. “Psalm 23” was written on another: “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.” They were the same words spoken by President George W. Bush to a broken nation the night of the September 11, 2001, attacks.
After remaining in Nice for more than a week, authorities finally cleared the Copeland family to return to America. Just before heading home, authorities told Kim that Sean’s and Brodie’s bodies would not be ready for two more days. “We’re not leaving without them,” they all agreed. “We came as a family of five. We are leaving as a family of five.” Unwilling to leave their two loved ones behind, the family stayed until they could leave as one on a connecting flight to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.
Together as one family unit, Kim, Austin, and Maegan flew to Paris on the same flight as Brodie and Sean, their two bodies stored below. Everywhere the Copelands went, FBI escorts accompanied them, taking them through back hallways and putting them on flights before the other passengers. During a one-night layover, Kim grew worried that the bodies of her son and husband might be left behind. The pilot learned of her fears and came over to the family. “I heard you’re nervous,” he said. “I’m going down below in the plane and will personally lay my eyes on the caskets and let you know.” He returned to assure Kim that her entire family was on board. “You’re good. I’ve got you,” the kind man told her. Kim and her family finally made it to Dover Air Force Base, the same base where so many American families have gone to meet their fallen loved ones who perished in battle while making the ultimate sacrifice for our freedoms. Back in the States, the FBI conducted autopsies and interviews before permitting the Copelands to make their final journey home to Texas.
When Kim, Austin, and Maegan arrived back in Lakeway, the whole town was decorated in red and black. Red and black ribbons were affixed to street signs, trees, and lampposts. Red and black banners and posters. The same red and black of Brodie’s Hill Country Reds baseball team. Although there were visible signs of collective support everywhere, it could not change the hardest part: the house. “This house that we built together—that we wanted to live in forever—is empty,” Kim said.19
Beyond dealing with a silent home, once filled with life, Kim had to plan a funeral. She searched for her husband’s burial instructions, “something I never thought I would be doing at the age of forty,” she said. But in the place of instructions for interment, Kim found something much different: words that would carry her through the rest of her life. “Please do not be too sad with my passing,” Sean wrote. “I have had a great life and the best kids ever. Enjoy the rest of your lives and live life to the fullest. Live happy. Live fun. Live strong. I will see you in heaven.”
Sean’s instructions—“Live happy. Live fun. Live strong”—and Kim’s faith in Jesus Christ have carried her through the inconceivable. They got her through the Celebration of Life memorial service, the funeral, and the many difficult days to follow: her fortieth birthday, when she was supposed to be dining in the Eiffel Tower but instead was left to collect her family’s remains; Sean’s birthday, when she drank a Dr Pepper and a Crown and Seven for him; the first day of school, when she couldn’t bear to see that bus pull up without Brodie on it; and the hardest day of all, what would have been Brodie’s twelfth birthday.
I asked Kim if she was ever angry with God. “Oh, yeah,” she said. In addition to losing her son and husband, Kim’s mom died of melanoma when Kim was just nine years old. Since Kim’s dad was a football coach who worked long hours, the family moved in with her grandmother, Maw-Maw. Later in life Maw-Maw was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. The disease ravaged her, leaving her unable to attend Kim’s wedding. “Maw-Maw quickly became a shell of the strong woman we once knew,” Kim said. “She kept hanging on longer than any doctor could even imagine, even though we were praying for the Lord to take her home.”20
“This is the hand I was dealt,” Kim told me. She has experienced more loss than most do in a lifetime: a son, a husband, and a mother who perished all too soon and a grandmother devastated by an awful disease. Kim had reason to be angry, and in the aftermath of Nice she was. “What did I do, God?” she would ask. “What did I do to deserve this?” When Kim met her pastor to plan Sean and Brodie’s funeral, he provided words of wisdom. “You’re going to hear some crazy stuff, Kim. People are going to tell you this was God’s plan. This was not God’s plan. He did not plan this to happen. He allowed it, but he did not plan for your life to be this way.”
Kim had a realization. God did not plan for evil to extinguish innocence on that day in Nice or for cancer and Alzheimer’s to steal the lives of her mom and Maw-Maw. Evil and subsequent hurt are a result of human sin, not part of God’s outline for Kim’s life. “You have to figure out what you’re going to do on this side of it,” Kim’s pastor advised. After hearing those words, Kim had a choice: to let the anger consume her or fall into the arms of her loving heavenly father. She chose the latter.
Kim’s strength is embedded in the loving assurances God gives her daily and in the knowledge that she will be reunited with her family in their heavenly home. In August of 2005, when Kim became pregnant with Brodie and she saw that positive test result, she excitedly shared the news with her dad over the phone. Her excitement turned to sadness when in that very same phone call he informed her that Maw-Maw had finally passed. But there was a certain beauty in that bittersweet exchange of news. “On the same day that I found out I was pregnant,” Kim recalled, “I was able to tell my dad that he was going to be a grandpa for the very first time . . . I truly believed Maw-Maw and Brodie crossed paths that day.”21
Maw-Maw, Kim’s mom, Brodie, and Sean are all together again, awaiting Kim’s company. In the meantime Kim starts every morning with quiet time, immersed in her Bible. Sitting at her kitchen table, where a big vase of Mediterranean stones from Sean and Brodie’s memorial reside, she talks to God and her deceased husband and son. She gets little signs in return, namely through dragonflies and coins. On the day of the funeral, as the pastor gave the graveside speech, fifty dragonflies circled above their heads. And when her sister got in a bad car crash, when she was crying and scared, two dragonflies flew through the pouring rain, bringing her peace.
Ever since Kim returned from Nice, she’s been finding coins in the strangest of places. When she got home, she went in the laundry room and for some reason there were coins scattered everywhere. That’s weird, she thought as she picked them up to prepare for visitors. When she left the room, she looked around and there was nothing there—no coins, all clean. But when she came back a little later, there were coins sprinkled everywhere! She now collects these coins in a jar; they are pennies from heaven.
Kim told me that she had another coin encounter the day before we met as she prepared to view Sean and Brodie’s headstones for the first time. She leaned over to show me the picture: black headstones, lily-white flowers, and the perfectly suited engraved words on each. “Live happy. Live fun. Live strong,” read Sean’s, with Brodie lying in eternal peace right beside him. “I can fly. I can fly. I can fly,” read Brodie’s—the words he so passionately and effectively delivered when he played Michael Darling in Peter Pan. Just before Kim left to view the memorials, a dime flew out of her purse, seemingly from nowhere. Another coin from heaven.
While Kim’s ultimate hope is in God, she still looks to her earthly leaders for commonsense change. In the aftermath of the Bastille Day attack, Kim received a call from President Barack Obama. The leader of the free world was on the other end of the phone—an unimaginable interaction just a few days earlier. In a brief discussion, the commander-in-chief said he was sorry for her loss. Kim hung up the phone a bit disappointed. “It was as if the phone call was a duty for him, not an empathetic outreach,” she remembers. “He was just going through the motions.”
By contrast, when Kim returned to Texas, she randomly received a phone call from President George W. Bush’s representative. “The former president would like to meet you,” the woman said. Kim, Austin, and Maegan traveled to an event in Dallas where President Bush was speaking. Whisked away into a back room, just she and her two kids met one-on-one with the former president. He wrapped up Kim in a warm hug, leaving his arm around her the entire time they spoke. President Bush asked the Copeland family all about Sean and Brodie. He really wanted to know who they were as people. With his arm still around Kim, she nervously tried to scoot away. “Get back over here!” he said with that slight Texas twang and infectious smile. He kept his arm there the whole time. “He was amazing,” Kim said.
I asked Kim which candidate, Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, had the better answer to terrorism in the 2016 election. “Trump had the answer,” she said without hesitation. She explained that terrorism is one of those things you take for granted. OK, terrorism is happening, you think, but then Nice made everyone realize it could happen to anybody. “Here we are. Here’s a father and a son in Nice, France, the South of France, where the rich and famous go to vacation,” she said. “[We’re] on a dream vacation . . . [I]t can happen to anyone, anywhere.”
The very month that Sean and Brodie lost their lives in Nice, IntelCenter released a study, confirmed by CNN, revealing that “there has been a significant attack directed or inspired by ISIS every 84 hours since June 8 in cities outside the war zones . . .”22 It is a study I would constantly reference throughout the 2016 election in support of Trump’s practical tactics to fighting terrorism. That summer the terror attacks seemed to be endless. Forty-nine dead at the Pulse nightclub. Twenty-three killed in a Bangladesh bakery, many of them butchered to death, including three beautiful young American students.23 An eighty-four-year-old French priest heinously forced to his knees on the altar of his church in northern France and his throat cut during Mass as “Allahu Akbar” rang out.24 These are just a few of the attacks motivated by radical Islam.
In many cases, the attacker was known to authorities. Adel Kermiche, the nineteen-year-old radicalized man who, with another attacker, killed the French priest, sat in jail just four months earlier.25 Kermiche had attempted to travel to Syria two times, making it all the way to Turkey in the second attempt before being sent back to France. After Kermiche spent less than a year in a French jail, authorities released the man known to be friends with a terrorist featured in an ISIS beheading video. House arrest and the electronic monitor he wore failed to stop him from wreaking deadly havoc that day, four months after being released from jail.
Being known to authorities appears to be a trend among ISIS terrorists. A neighbor claims to have reported the June 2017 London Bridge attackers after they tried to radicalize her children.26 One of the terrorists even appeared in a documentary called Jihadis Next Door, in which he can be seen arguing furiously with police over an “ISIS-looking flag” that he had displayed in a park.27 The London Bridge attack killed eight innocents. Even Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, the Nice attacker, while not known to the intelligence community, was known to local authorities for his slew of criminal convictions for theft, violence, and drug use.28
Even though President Trump’s strict approach to terrorism was demonized, twisted, and taken out of context by the mainstream media, Americans saw through the misrepresentation and recognized common sense. In an August 2016 terrorism speech, then-candidate Trump highlighted the warning signs missed in our own country: the Orlando shooter, who allegedly celebrated in a classroom on 9/11; the Fort Hood terrorist, who proclaimed “We love death more than you love life!” to a roomful of mental health experts; and the suspicious signs at the home of the San Bernardino shooters that a neighbor noticed but failed to report.29 “These warning signs were ignored because political correctness has replaced common sense in our society,” Trump concluded before offering to create a commission dedicated to identifying these indications of possible violence.30
Trump also acknowledged the connection between some immigration and terrorism. Though most immigrants come hoping to make valuable contributions to our country, a small group seeks to use our immigration process and cause destruction, as Obama’s own intelligence chiefs warned.31 Trump ordered a temporary freeze on immigration from terror hotbed countries, not in an effort to target a religion, but in response to congressional data revealing that 65 percent of individuals convicted of terrorism in the U.S. are foreign born.32 This pause in immigration from countries where significant terror organizations are known to operate—not a permanent ban, as the media suggested—also came on the heels of a foreign-born woman entering the U.S. on a K-1 fiancée visa and joining her husband in killing fourteen innocent Americans in San Bernardino, California.33
Trump also proposed limiting the number of incoming refugees, not because of a lack of empathy for refugees, but as a solution to warnings by Obama’s CIA director and director of national intelligence about ISIS’s attempt to infiltrate our refugee population and the former NATO commander’s acknowledgment that 1,500 ISIS fighters had already entered Europe.34 Meanwhile, Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton, proposed to increase Syrian refugee numbers by more than 500 percent despite the FBI director’s warning of the difficulty in vetting this group of immigrants.35
Voters recognized that, while catching every red flag is impossible, we must be vigilant and bold in reporting abnormal behavior because of the danger in failing to heed warning signs. Americans understood that, while most immigrants are good, hardworking people, it’s inexcusable when a twenty-nine-year-old Pakistani woman comes to the U.S. on a fiancée visa and assists in killing fourteen people at a San Bernardino Christmas party. Ultimately, Americans agreed that more can be done to prevent radical Islamic terrorism from striking their loved ones, and they sent an unmistakable message on November 8, 2016, in the election of Donald Trump.
On July 14, 2016, Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel set out with the goal to destroy—to diminish faith, to decimate family, to eclipse good with evil. He failed. Kim’s faith is stronger than ever and her family is closer because of the tragedy. Kim told her pastor that “an act that was intended to tear us apart has brought us together closer than we ever have been before.”
After Kim and I first sat down at McArthur’s for lunch, a vibrant local sports pub in the heart of Texas, our conversation almost instantly turned to Romans 8:28. It was the second time I had heard that verse in the span of a week. Just a few days earlier, I had encountered Romans 8:28 five states over in the tiny little town of McBee, South Carolina, where “8:28” has served as a lifelong source of strength for a mother and wife whom you will meet later. I noticed Kim’s Facebook likewise referenced Romans 8:28: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” Kim has seen this manifested in her own life as God has turned evil to good.
With Kim at McArthur’s in Lakeway, Texas. Courtesy of author’s collection
Although the one-year anniversary of Sean and Brodie’s death has not even passed at the time I write these words, Kim has already used her loss to bless others. Sean’s bucket list hangs on Kim’s refrigerator as she tries to complete items on his behalf. “In the typical Sean Copeland fashion, this bucket list [is] an Excel spreadsheet that was highlighted, prioritized, crossed out, you name it,” Austin described at the memorial service.36 Kim was able to cross out running with the bulls in Pamplona, one of the top items on the list, and has since crossed out several others. There are some that she cannot complete but there are many she can. One of Sean’s dreams was to throw out the first pitch at a baseball game. Austin did it for him. In memory of his father and brother, Austin threw out the first pitch at the minor-league Round Rock Express team’s opening day as Kim and Maegan looked on in support. Kim also presented an award to a Texas Rangers player in July of 2017 for “Hometown Heroes Day” just days before Sean and Brodie’s first anniversary in heaven.
Brodie and Sean. Courtesy of Kim Copeland
While some of Sean’s bucket list items are thrilling and action-filled, most are selfless and other-oriented, like leaving a $100 tip on a $20 bill, an item that Kim has already fulfilled. Or putting a smile on a kid’s face, something Sean himself completed when he dressed up like a teddy bear and went to a children’s hospital. Kim is already hard at work on one of the big ones: starting a charity.
About a year and a half before the Nice attack, Sean wrote to the Texas Baseball coaching staff about his son, describing him as “full of personality . . . [and] tremendous energy.”37 He wrote, “He plays football like his older brother, but Brodie loves baseball. He thinks he will win the Golden Spikes and Heisman in college before starting his career as an actor in a sitcom.” Sure of his son’s talent, Sean emphatically continued, “Knowing him, he may very well do it.” So moved by the letter, the Longhorns director of baseball operations organized a practice visit for Brodie. In came eleven-year-old Brodie like a full-grown, college-age baseball recruit, touring the weight room and meeting the players. “He had those big eyes,” his mom remembered.38 Brodie never got to hit his first home run—although he came very close—but Kim said, “He got to experience all of that. Now I look back, and I thank God for that. He got a ‘recruiting’ trip.”39
That Texas Longhorns recruiting trip came full circle when Kim partnered with the team to create the Sean & Brodie Copeland Memorial Endowment Fund, a project to help players in memory of Brodie. One player each year who embodies the spirit of Sean and Brodie Copeland will receive an annual scholarship, with one condition: they wear the number 8, Brodie’s number, on the back of their jersey. “I want it to be someone who has to work hard for what they’ve accomplished in life. Someone who will appreciate the story and honor that . . .” Kim said.40
She found that person in the first recipient of the scholarship, Andrés Sosa, who had ironically already switched to number 8 during his junior year in high school after wearing the number 21 his whole life. “I changed my number not knowing the reason why,” Andrés told CBS Austin.41 “Now I know . . . A lot of people call it a coincidence, but I saw it was God.”42 Andrés came to the United States from Mexico. He didn’t know any English and yet worked his way through school and into college baseball. He has become an accomplished young man and person of faith. “I recently went to my first retreat, and it was meant to be,” he said.43 “I didn’t want to go. But I experienced something amazing—my first encounter with my Lord and Savior—and it truly changed my life forever.”44
As Kim gives back through her pain, she has found that she is blessed in return. When she came back to visit the UT baseball team, who remembered her and Brodie from the recruiting visit, all the players came to her with tears in their eyes to offer their support. While Kim maintains her Hill Country Baseball family, she has gained a new one in Texas Longhorns Baseball. On Mother’s Day, Andrés called her and left a message. “I’m thinking about you today,” Kim remembers him saying. “I love you, and you gained a son in me and I gained a mom in you. I will be in your life forever.” Through Andrés, Kim has continued to get those little signs that God is watching down on her. When Andrés got his first hit as a college baseball player, it was brought to his attention that it was March 8, after his eighth at bat, while wearing the number 8. “Sean and Brodie are looking after me,” Andrés marveled.45
At that colorful candy stand tucked away in the inviting promenade of Nice France, the Copeland family—five bright lights in this world—came face-to-face with darkness. It was a darkness Brodie felt and recognized in the lead-up to the attack, and one that Kim feared as she watched the fireworks along the beach that night. But the beauty of light is that, if shined brightly enough, it will inevitably pierce through the darkness.
The lives and legacy of Brodie and Sean Copeland shine like a bright light through Kim, Austin, and Maegan. Kim’s goal in this life is to live a good life, carry on in their memory, and make them proud. She will aim to make others smile, just as her son and husband did. “It’s who they were. Two peas in a pod who loved to make others smile,” Kim said. As for a lifetime without her husband and son, she and the kids always say that this life is like one little drop of water in an entire ocean.
“Did I ever expect to have lost my mother, husband, and son all before the age of forty? No,” she told me. “But it’s the hand I was dealt, and I can let it destroy me or make me stronger, and I choose stronger.” Kim chooses stronger, but she realizes what enables her to make that decision. As she told her pastor while planning to lay her son and husband to eternal rest, “It’s God who’s giving me strength, because I could never do this on my own.”
