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
[Does anyone know of any child prodigies that are happy well adjusted adults?]
Yes, I personally know four child prodigies and three of them are self reliant, responsible and happy adults. One is not, because he is a drug and alcohol abuser.
"Yes, I personally know four child prodigies and three of them are self reliant, responsible and happy adults. One is not, because he is a drug and alcohol abuser."
Wow, I didn't know child prodigies were so common. How did you come to know four of them?
Sounds like a buddha to me.
Hmmmm....The best I ever did was 145.
I wonder why.......
That's OK. I thought I made a mistake last year, but I was wrong, : )
Rush-The Pass
Proud swagger out of the schoolyard
Waiting for the world’s applause
Rebel without a conscience
Martyr without a cause
Static on your frequency
Electrical storm in your veins
Raging at unreachable glory
Straining at invisible chains
And now you’re trembling on a rocky ledge
Staring down into a heartless sea
Can’t face life on a razor’s edge
Nothing’s what you thought it would be
All of us get lost in the darkness
Dreamers learn to steer by the stars
All of us do time in the gutter
Dreamers turn to look at the cars
Turn around and turn around and turn around
Turn around and walk the razor’s edge
Don’t turn your back
And slam the door on me
It’s not as if this barricade
Blocks the only road
It’s not as if you’re all alone
In wanting to explode
Someone set a bad example
Made surrender seem all right
The act of a noble warrior
Who lost the will to fight
And now you’re trembling on a rocky ledge
Staring down into a heartless sea
Done with life on a razor’s edge
Nothing’s what you thought it would be
No hero in your tragedy
No daring in your escape
No salutes for your surrender
Nothing noble in your fate
Christ, what have you done?
A friend who is a doctor refers to anesthesiologist's as "mercy killers". You get a patient who is on his last leg and you give him a little gas. That's all it takes sometimes to move them over the edge.
There were two in one family that lived close to me when I was in high school and I still keep in touch with the family, one I met in a computer class I took at Fermilab in 1986 and I still know him, and the other one I was in a music group with in the early nineties.
I hope your friend the Doctor is kidding.
I do not know any anesthesiologists that are proponents of, or practitioners of, euthanasia.
Neither do I.
#1. When Jesus died on the cross did he die for all my sins, including the ones I haven't yet committed, or only the sins that I have already committed?
Jesus died to pay the price for all the sins of those who will accept Him. The Bible states that God knows each one of us so intimately from the time He knit you together in your mother's womb until the end of time. Even knowing the depth of our greatest sin, He desires to draw you to Him, lest none should perish.
#2. If I died in the middle of telling a lie, before confessing my sin, would I go to hell?
If you have accepted Jesus as your saviour, He has paid the price of spiritual death/hell for ALL of you sins. No man is capable of living a sin-free life, no matter how "good" they are. This is why Jesus offered himself as the sacrifice. The only unforgivable sin is to reject this offer.
Yes, this means that really, really bad people can go to heaven if they accept the offer just before death. But they will have missed the promise of an abundant life here on earth. The promise begins as soon as one allows Jesus to be the Lord, the ruler of their life.
Once you accept Him, the spirit will guide you to turn away from sin. You will still fail from time to time, but He will never leave you.
Hope this helps answer your questions. Thank you for listening.
Thank you. I totally agree, and believe, in what you say. I was allowing the poster an opportunity to explain why suicide was considered an unforgivable sin.
I believe that all my sins are forgiven because I have asked Jesus to forgive me and be my Lord, as you stated. All my sins were ahead of him when he died, and he forgave all my "future" sins at that time. Thus, I believe that he forgives a Christian when they commit suicide -- not that I believe it is right to commit suicide. I think that most people who commit suicide are not in their right mind -- overcome by something irrational.
Again, thanks for your kind and gentle response.
Ping. Turns out he was homeschooled.
Ping. Turns out he was homeschooled.
Sorry for the false ping.
There sure is a lot of authority being thrown around on this thread with few if any Scripture references.
I thought you might find it interesting.
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