Former BYU football star Curtis Brown and his wife, Kim, are opening up about the heartbreaking loss of their 2-year-old son, Haze, weeks after the toddler drowned in the family’s swimming pool.
In an emotional Instagram post, Kim described the painful absence of the youngest of the couple’s five children, saying she misses him so much that it “physically hurts.”
“Our bright light and source of pure joy is gone,” she wrote alongside a photo of Haze at the beach. “I am writing this from the floor of his room, surrounded by his things. Looking at all the little pieces of him that are still everywhere.”
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Haze drowned at the family’s home in Clovis, California, on July 26. A family member found him unresponsive in the pool, and emergency crews attempted CPR before he was rushed to a nearby hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Police said there were no suspicious circumstances surrounding his death.
Kim wrote that reminders of Haze remain throughout their home — his clothes, basketball hoop and blanket — making it difficult to accept that he is gone.
“I keep expecting to hear him. To see those soft curls bouncing as he runs,” she wrote. “To hear his little laugh. To squeeze him tight. To kiss his cheeks. To tell him I love him. And then I remember.”
Haze was known within the family as their “miracle baby.” Kim’s cousin, Chandler Pearson, said the toddler came after “much prayer and fasting” and medical intervention as Curtis and Kim faced fertility struggles.
Now, Kim says she is struggling to understand how to move forward without him.
“I don’t know how you survive this,” she wrote. “I don’t know how I am supposed to wake up every morning and live my worst nightmare. I don’t know how a heart is supposed to hold this much pain.”
Curtis also spoke publicly about his son’s death during an Aug. 7 visit to a BYU football practice in Provo, Utah. Addressing the players, the former running back reflected on the support his family has received from teammates and coaches he had not spoken with in years.
“Family is all you got, and this includes [your teammates and coaches],” Brown said. “I can’t tell you how many guys that I haven’t talked to since I graduated who have reached out since my son passed.”
Brown, who played at BYU from 2002 to 2006 and became the school’s all-time leading rusher at the time, told the players the relationships they were building could last long after their football careers ended.
“I know Haze is smiling down on us right now,” he said. “The love you guys have and have built for each other, it will never go away.”
Curtis and Kim are also parents to Trey and triplets Cruze, Kash and Julie. A GoFundMe established to help the family with funeral and other expenses has raised more than $100,000.
Kim said Haze should be spending these days welcoming his siblings home from school, cheering at their sporting events, shooting baskets and “making our life better and brighter simply by being him.”
“People say they wish they could have one more day with the person they lost. But I don’t want one more day,” she wrote. “I want forever. … I want all the days back. I want my baby back. I would give anything in this world for the life we were supposed to have.”
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