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
IQ is not the same as wisdom.
Are they SURE it was suicide?
so sad
"Are they SURE it was suicide?"
Exactly my thought. Without a note, and with everyone saying that he seemed reasonably happy and well adjusted, what leads them to the conclusion that he took his own life?
Hardly. He was a victim of doting parent syndrome. I feel so bad that we lost this child. He could have been an Einstein had his parents been parents and allowed the child the only thing he never had...a childhood.
Einstein said "Imagination is More Important Than Knowledge". It sounds like they pushed this kid to do things as fast as he could in his formal schooling and he pushed himself too. People here can ponder what he did to himself but in the end it appears he died by his own hand. A stupid waste of life.
Matthew 16:26 For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?
He was 14. Are you God?
I agree. Let's not start that. I grew up with four sisters and I'm pretty sure the contest would not be fair. Don't get me wrong, females are wonderful. But considering the plumbing differences such a contest just isn't fair.
Thank you. I wonder if the poor kid was rebuffed by his first love.
Amen
Poor kid. I remember once hearing that we are only capable of using a small portion of our brain. And if we could use all of it we would go crazy.
Wow.
I remember reading the same thing -- except it said that if we could use all of our brain, we'd go crazy, but all of our VCR clocks would tell the correct time.
His I.Q. was high. His E.Q. was low.
We're all little gods, apart from a true, living faith in Jesus Christ. Not to pick on anyone here. In his case, the temptation for pride would be extremely strong. He is to be pitied, above all.
The trouble is that we all see him through our own eyes and experience. The very gifted often are overwhelmed by the stuff/conflicts we screen out. Their minds go "beserker" trying to make sense out of what we ignore.
It does no good to blame parents, for they also are doing the best they can in a morass of "values".
All we can do is pray that His will be done, and that we learn from the lessons put before us.
How juvenile do you want to be?
In a forum where folks tend to wax esoteric and poetic I thought it was salty. Screen name only made it sweeter.
beautiful :)
I was just thinking the same thing. :(
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