StoryCorps: Remembering the loss of a husband and father

Dealing with death on a daily basis can be draining, but when the death affects your own family, well, that’s a different story altogether. Jillian Gustafson sat down with her mother Judy Brady in the StoryCorps booth at the Contemporary Jewish Museum of San Francisco to talk about the day they got devastating news.

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JILLIAN GUSTAFSON: Dad died when I was 16 years old. And um … that was a really tough time. It was hard on our family.

JUDY BRADY: It was very hard. Steve was an incredible husband and father. And when he was killed, it was very traumatic because you were finishing your junior year in high school…

GUSTAFSON: Right. I remember that it seemed unbelievable to me, the fact that we got that phone call that evening, because I had just spoken with him. I think when he was leaving the airport, he called me because I had a math final the next day and he was wishing me good luck on the math final. It just seemed so unbelievable that I could be talking to him 10 minutes before and then we get this awful news.

BRADY: Yeah, I had spoken with him just before he spoke with you too. I think he called me on my phone and then called you, so he was just getting ready to get in his rental car when he called me and said he was going to go to a hotel room and that you’d talk the next day. And then when I flew to Denver that night after the accident, um, he died when I was en route. It was a really tough time. And you were off to Chile as an exchange student about two weeks later. And I can’t believe you were so strong, you decided to go.

GUSTAFSON: I think I was in shock to some extent. And honestly, I think that what it did for me at that time was it put me in a different environment that I actually didn’t have to think about … it seemed like it was a bad dream. I don’t think I really grieved in any way until I got home, and then … and I know you had a horrible summer that summer.

BRADY: Steve and I had been married almost 25 years! And so it was just, I mean we were best friends and lovers and we had an incredibly great marriage, so it was a really tough situation for me.

GUSTAFSON: Yeah. And it’s interesting to see you cry now because it’s been so many years, but I know that it doesn’t … that loss never leaves you. It’s … it’s huge.

BRADY: We lost a great man, husband, and father.

Jillian Gustafson and her mother Judy Brady spoke in the StoryCorps booth at the Contemporary Jewish Museum of San Francisco. Their story was produced by Kyle Tabuena-Frolli. Click here to learn how to record your own StoryCorps.