Losing Noah — A Forgotten Helmet Leads to a Tragic Death

Noah wearing a blue tinsel crown after a birthday party

This is the story of Elizabeth, as told by Irena. Our “Opening Our Hearts” stories are based on people’s real-life experiences. By sharing these experiences publicly, we hope to help our readers feel less alone in their grief and, ultimately, to aid them in their healing process. In this post, Elizabeth tells the story of her brother’s sudden accidental death, and the ways in which that loss still reverberates through her life.

I loved my brother. It’s never easy to process the loss of someone who died long before their time. He was 15 when he died, and that just seems like such an unjust age to die. He was incredibly sensitive and caring. He was our missing piece, and he’s gone missing again. My parents fostered him when he was 9 weeks old, and adopted him by the time he turned 5. I was 12 years older than him, but we always got along. I loved having a little brother.

It’s funny; even though we were so far apart in age we were very much like your typical brother and sister pair.

Noah had such an active personality. He had a brown belt in martial arts, I forget exactly the name of the specific one he used to practice. He also loved fishing. But he hated having to touch the worm when he had to bait the hooks. This was usually not a problem because he usually went fishing with my dad, and my dad always did that for him. But every once in a while, he’d go with my mom and me. This one time, he, my mom and I were fishing at our normal spot, which is in Thompson, Connecticut, and he was insisting that one of us bait his hooks. He just kept pushing and pushing until I think I must’ve relented. He kept saying he didn’t like how “slimy” the worms were. It’s funny; even though we were so far apart in age, we were very much like your typical brother and sister pair. Every once in a while though, I’d step up and be more like a caretaker to him.

Noah receiving his brown belt certificate in martial arts

My brother loved to go four wheeling. We grew up in Thompson, Connecticut right on the border of Massachusetts and Connecticut. This meant that I spent a lot of time in Massachusetts; I even went to high school in Worcester. But my home life was in rural Connecticut. My parents actually still live in our hometown where four wheeling is a really popular pastime.

I had seen my mother the afternoon Noah died. My husband and I had gone shopping and to lunch with her, and as soon as I got home, my dad called. He sounded serious and asked if we knew where my mother was and if we’d heard from my brother. I told him she was on her way home, and I hadn’t heard from my brother. But I knew something was wrong. He continued and said that when he got home one of his neighbors had come knocking and telling him that someone had been pounding on his door and windows for a good while and then left. I thought that sounded odd but tried not get too worried. After he hung up with me, state police called him and told him he and my mom needed to go down to UMASS right away because my brother had been in an accident.

We were all hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst.

My mom and dad called me while they were on their way, and my husband and I drove as fast as we could to the hospital. My parents had gotten there first. We were all hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst. It’s funny how you sometimes just get like a sense for these things. I kept ignoring and pushing aside this ugly uncomfortable feeling; I didn’t want to face it, even though something in my lizard brain was telling me things did not look good.

While there, I learned that Noah had gone four wheeling with his best friend. They were in high school together, Noah’s first year of high school, and they loved to go four wheeling. He had lost control of the four-wheeler and hit a tree head on, and he hadn’t been wearing a helmet, which was super weird because my brother always wore a helmet. It’s hard, having these questions just floating around in my head that I just can’t ask anymore. I wanted to ask him why he hadn’t been wearing his helmet. But what good would that have done? I just kept sitting there praying, and trying to stay positive.

Noah at school

Noah was in the pediatric ICU, and the doctors kept throwing around all this medical jargon that I couldn’t understand. But my mother is a nurse, and I could tell from her reaction to what they were saying that things looked grim. He had suffered a really devastating injury. In fact he was in a coma, and they wanted to do an MRI to get a sense for the extent of the damage. But he wasn’t stable enough. It took 11 days in the ICU before they decided to do the MRI. My brother wasn’t stabilizing, but I guess they decided that it was worth the risk. Then when they finally did the MRI they found out that he had been brain dead all along. It’s not a moment that I like to revisit. It is indescribable — that moment I realized that there was nothing that we could’ve done all along. Our Noah had been dead for days and we had just been praying and hoping for nothing. It was crushing.

He was supposed to be going through high school, graduating and going to college and suddenly that was all just gone.

We made the only choice we could make at that point and took him off life support. He was declared dead within a few hours. Everything after that is kind of a blur. I know that my husband and I were tasked with going to the funeral home to make the arrangements, but I couldn’t really tell you the details of it. I knew that my parents were devastated; I was devastated. He was supposed to be going through high school, graduating and going to college and suddenly that was all just gone. It’s so much loss all that once, all those moments that we had lived out with him preemptively were now just gone, were never going to happen. I think it helped me to have been out of the house by the time we lost Noah, but I can’t imagine how it was for my parents.

Noah and Elizabeth

Life now is divided into before and after Noah died. It’s like a family trait even with my daughter who was born after Noah died, she’ll ask me when I tell stories about my life if the story took place before or after uncle Noah died. I see her in her own way trying to make a connection with her uncle even though she never met him.

Four weeks after Noah’s funeral I found out I was pregnant with my daughter, and I know it’s a cliché but it was such a godsend to have something else to look at or think about. It wasn’t like the pain was gone, or I didn’t think about Noah everyday. But there was also this other thing, this tiny speck of light that kept me out of that deep darkness of grief that was always looming.

I had already decided as soon as I found out that I was pregnant that I was going to name my child after my brother somehow, and because she was a girl, we gave her the middle name ‘Noelle’ to honor Noah.

And then my daughter was born two days before what would’ve been my brother’s 16^th birthday. I take such comfort in that. I had already decided as soon as I found out that I was pregnant that I was going to name my child after my brother somehow, and because she was a girl, we gave her the middle name ‘Noelle’ to honor Noah. The fact that their birthdays are so close together feels like a good sign, like Noah is nearby watching, contributing.

My parents and I grieve in our own ways. I know that they did some group and individual counseling at first. That beginning to learning to live with loss is hard. On birthdays and anniversaries we call each other and cry sometimes. The whole stretch between October 17^th and October 28^th is still hard for me personally. My dad still likes to go fishing in the spot where he and my brother used to go. I think it makes him feel like there’s still a kind of connection between him and Noah as long as he keeps going back there. Also, people always thought Noah and my dad looked so much alike even though that was biologically impossible. He always got such a kick out of that.

One of my favorite snapshots of Noah, looking like the adult he was about to become

I think of him a lot. He was my little brother. I wanted him to be an uncle to my kids. I wanted him to grow up with me, to become an adult alongside me. I get angry when I think of things like that, I feel robbed. But sometimes as a mom, I think about all the times that people thought I was Noah’s mom; I remember the first night I sent my parents home and stayed there myself because I wanted to give them some relief. The night nurse came up and asked me if I was Noah’s mom, and I said ‘no I’m his sister’ but it made me kind of happy because this is the kind of thing that he and I would’ve laughed at together. We were siblings in the most classic sense. We loved picking on each other, but would fight like hell if anyone else tried to pick on the other. I couldn’t protect him from that accident, but I can still feel him watching and protecting me through Noelle.