Posted on 03/19/2005 8:30:22 PM PST by My Favorite Headache
Mom Tries to Rationalize Prodigy's Death
By SHARON COHEN He started reading as a toddler, played piano at age 3 and delivered a high school commencement speech in cap and gown when he was just 10 - his eyes barely visible over the podium.
Brandenn Bremmer was a child prodigy: He composed and recorded music, won piano competitions, breezed through college courses with an off-the-charts IQ and mastered everything from archery to photography, hurtling through life precociously. Then, last Tuesday, Brandenn was found dead in his Nebraska home from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to his head.
He was just 14. He left no note.
``Sometimes we wonder if maybe the physical, earthly world didn't offer him enough challenges and he felt it was time to move on and do something great,'' his mother, Patricia, said from the family home in Venango, Neb., a few miles from the Colorado border.
Brandenn showed no signs of depression, she said. He had just shown his family the art for the cover of his new CD that was about to be released.
He was, according to his family and teachers, an extraordinary blend of fun-loving child and serious adult. He loved Harry Potter and Mozart. He watched cartoons and enjoyed video games but gave classical piano concerts for hundreds of people - without a hint of stage fright.
``He wasn't just talented, he was just a really nice young man,'' said David Wohl, an assistant professor at Colorado State University, where Brandenn studied music after high school. ``He had an easy smile. He really was unpretentious.''
Patricia Bremmer - who writes mysteries and has long raised dogs with her husband, Martin - said they both knew their son was special from the moment he was born. The brown-haired, blue-eyed boy was reading when he was 18 months old and entering classical piano competitions by age 4.
``He was born an adult,'' his mother said. ``We just watched his body grow bigger.''
He scored 178 on one IQ test - a test his mother said he was too bored to finish.
Brandenn was home schooled. By age 6, when many little boys are learning to read, he was ready to tackle high school. He enrolled in the Independent Study High School in Lincoln through the University of Nebraska, taking most of his courses by mail.
``He was such a breath of fresh air,'' recalls Lisa Bourlier, associate principal at the school. ``It's unusual to find a student 6 years old willing to shake hands with adults and say, 'Hi, my name is Brandenn, this is what I want to do.'''
In a college preparatory program, Brandenn took his classes in clusters - all science at one time, all social studies at another - and ``zipped through,'' said Bourlier.
His mother said his mind was so facile that if a topic interested him, he could complete a semester's work in 10 days. She sometimes worried she couldn't keep pace with her son's intellect, and the family hired tutors.
``He set the pace,'' she said. ``We only did what he wanted. (We might say) 'Instead of taking three classes, why don't you take one?' We let him make his own choices from the time he was an infant. ... He always made good choices.''
For his senior class photo, Brandenn temporarily darkened his hair, wore a red cape and round wire-rimmed glasses and posed with a suspended broom - the spitting image of Harry Potter.
At age 10, he became the youngest graduate of his high school and he delivered a commencement speech, saying he was so unusual he practically ``qualified for the endangered species list.''
``He carried himself very well,'' recalled Bourlier. ``He did just a very nice job for being 10. During the ceremony, he gave this excellent little speech. He was just so composed. ... Then afterward, he was running around with his nieces and nephews just a few years younger than him.''
Brandenn was taking biology at Mid-Plains Community College in North Platte, Neb., and had recently decided he wanted to become an anesthesiologist. He also studied for years at Colorado State, polishing piano skills that had won him state competitions and a table-full of trophies.
Brandenn turned away from his classical roots and started writing his own spiritual, New Age-style music, passing on a demo of one piano piece to the musician Yanni at a Nebraska concert. He released a CD called ``Elements'' and gave concerts in Colorado and Nebraska. He was booked for a concert in Kansas next year.
His music will live on - the Bremmers plan to release his second CD for fans who range from nuns to cancer patients to the owners of a New York restaurant where diners can listen to the soothing melodies of Brandenn Bremmer.
His family, meanwhile, wonders why he is gone.
``We're trying to rationalize now,'' his mother said. ``He had this excessive need to help people and teach people. ... He was so connected with the spiritual world. We felt he could hear people's needs and desires and their cries. We just felt like something touched him that day and he knew he had to leave'' to save others.
And so, she said, Brandenn's kidneys were donated to two people, his liver went to a 22-month-old and his heart to an 11-year-old boy.
Patricia Bremmer said in the days since her son's death, she and others have felt his presence. Her husband, she said, was comforted to find a message under his computer mouse pad their son had written six years ago: ``I love you dad. No matter what happens, I'll always love you.''
She wished that she, too, could have that sort of solace. She started rummaging through drawers to stay busy and came across five handmade cards from Brandenn with the same loving message.
Finding them, she said, ``just made it so much easier.''
03/19/05 13:45
-``He set the pace,'' she said. ``We only did what he wanted.-
Problem is, they didn't know what he really wanted.
This had something to do with the suicide.
Self-murder pretty much denies Christ, lock stock and barrel. Also, to late to ask for forgiveness when you're dead and that's what's at the end of that road.
Very true. In today's PC touchy feely world we'd like to believe that a lot of God's rules don't apply, especially those hard and mean ones, you know, like suicide. With so many suicides we'd like to believe that it'll be a ok on the other side. You want to cut down suicides? Tell the truth of their costs.
Yeah, the truth sucks, but it doesn't make it any less real. Maybe if instead of this huggy feely crap, the real truth of suicide and damnation was taught, there might be less suicide...geah, go figure.
God is all forgiving, as long as you come to Him for forgiveness. Self-murder precludes that. Fact in point.
ping
The notes he left were a clear indication that this was thought about for a long time.
If you accept the teachings of Christ and the Ecumenical Councils, then no, it's a hard fact. Only in the watered down branches of Christianity has self-murder been excused.
Does anyone know of any child prodigies that are happy well adjusted adults?
I would like to see some studies related to child prodigies. We don't know if they are much more inclined to self destructive behavior than the average kid. My brother was a child prodigy, and all his life(now aged 53), he has been the most level headed ,well adjusted person I have ever met.
"A lot of brilliant people live miserable lives "
No offense, but where is the empirical evidence for this?
Holy Mary...mother of God! For once, I'm speechless!
"Nope. Condi Rice, who was also along the way a championship ice skater and concert pianist."
Can you find a more well adjusted, productive person than her?
Yep.
Sounds like he never had time to be a kid.
Wonder how much pressure he felt to be unusual.
I considered that a distinct possibility but was too lazy to go back and see who posted the article. :-)
Sorry for misinterpreting your motive... I notice that you didn't obnoxiously write "Already Posted Here". LOL
You DARE question my absolute authority on this matter and then expect me to not be offended?!
Actually, I'm relying on mere anectdotal evidence like most FReepers do when making blanket statements.
"You DARE question my absolute authority on this matter and then expect me to not be offended?!"
Oh not ME, worshipful master....: ) Actually, My brother, and two of my HS friends were prodigies, and all were normal as all getout. I think we hear too much about the few who get in trouble, like this poor kid. You know the media " If it bleeds, it leads"
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