Jason Troy Bramlett

The staff of Southern Cremations and Funerals at Holly Hill wish to extend their deepest sympathies to Jason’s family and friends during this time.

What follows is the eulogy I was asked and honored to give at Jason’s memorial service:

I first came to know Jason as a little boy, around age 6 or 7, when he and Chris’s other younger brothers Josh and Jacob would happen to be at their grandmother Barbara’s house in Palmetto on evenings I would call Chris long distance from Alabama. Some nights Josh or Jason would answer the phone and give me a hard time for calling their big brother.

“I don’t think they wanted to let me talk to you,” I’d tell Chris.

“Yeah,” he’d agree. “They want me to go out with So and So—she lives in our neighborhood and has a cool car.”

Eventually, Chris would be swayed by his little brothers and spent a few years dating many other neighborhood girls with, no doubt, vastly cooler cars, but eventually we found our way back to each other. By that time, Jason had turned 18, and had his own girlfriend, a sweetheart named Stacey.

I remember early on in their relationship how excited Jason was to have Chris and me over to meet Stacey and see their first place, a cute little two bedroom on some wooded land in Luthersville. We spent a Saturday there, along with Josh and his girlfriend at the time, and Jason took us for a walk around the property that included an old cemetery site. He was happy and in love. He talked on and on about how great Stacey was—how she took care of him so well.

Anyone that has spent much time with Stacey McCurry Bramlett quickly learns that one of her love languages is acts of service. She pores her entire heart into the people she cares about, and Jason benefited from that more than almost anyone else.

“She can crease my work pants perfectly,” Jason bragged. “And you should see what she does to my t-shirts. They look brand new. Go on, Baby—show ‘em!”

For years I couldn’t hang up a pair of Chris’s uniform pants without wondering if they would measure up to Stacey’s standards. Chris will be the first to tell you that most of the time, they did not. Stacey took care of Jason in the small ways and the big ways, too. She would go on to carry their family with absolute love and devotion.

Those first years of Jason & Stacey’s marriage, especially the year that Abigail was born, and their time in Franklin, North Carolina, were some of the happiest of Jason’s life. And I want to say this to all of you about the people who know us in our youth—those years when we’re 17, 18, 19, and 20—one of the most magical things about those relationships is that we are forever those ages in the minds of people who knew us and cared about us then. After Jason’s passing, I messaged Josh to say that I would always remember Jason at his best—happy and whole, in love with his family, with the promise of their whole long lives stretched out before him.

Jason loved being a dad. His children were the thing he was most proud of. During the last couple of years of his life, he would text me sometimes, often during a hospital stay, late at night when most of the world was asleep, when I imagine his thoughts turned to his family and the regrets he carried. Sometimes, he would ask for help. More often than not, he simply asked for prayers, but he always talked about the kids and how much he missed them. We commiserated on the meanness of teenage daughters. To be fair, he mostly listened to me talk about how mean Danann was. He tried to understand the challenges of teenagers trying to find their way.

Jason showed up for my and Chris’s kids whenever he could—whether it was a church play, a birthday party, or a sports event, our kids have memories of their Uncle Jason and his support. When they were very young and he was in his late teens he was like a giant, gangly kid to them, all arms and legs (and ears, if you let Chris or Josh tell it.) There was a birthday party of Elijah’s one year, his 6th birthday, I believe, that is especially memorable. We had the party at Elijah’s Papa’s house, where county tree crews dumped huge piles of much in a field adjacent to the house. Jason was outside with the boys while Chris and I watched from a table near the kitchen window. Out of nowhere came Jason, peddling like lightning, on a bicycle far too small for him, up the giant mulch piles and airborne into a clear blue January sky. He did it again and again. Launching himself and that bike higher and higher. “He’s gonna kill himself out there,” Chris said. The boys thought it was the coolest thing they’d ever seen.

A couple of years later when Elijah and Christopher were playing their first season of tackle football, Jason and Stacey came to Alabama, and Jason thought it would be a good idea to have Elijah dress in full pads and helmet and form tackle him in the yard. Eight year-old Elijah broke his Uncle Jason’s collarbone. Snapped it in two. Jason laughed and told that story for years. Aside from the Daredevil business, I have to say that whenever we were out as a group, the brothers, and their wives, and kids, I would very often find myself looking up and wondering, “What is Joshua doing?” But I never had to worry too much about Jason.

Jason showed up for Chris, when it mattered most, too. When Chris’s stepfather died in 2015, Jason came to the services. He was quiet and thoughtful as we walked across the parking lot after the funeral, and I was touched by how he’d stayed by Chris’s side throughout the day. Maybe unsure of what to say to comfort his big brother in the way that men can be, but there nonetheless in solidarity. Jason asked me that day, yards away from the final resting place of Tony and Nita Bramlett, what I thought happened when we die. I knew what Chris and Josh had said on the subject over the years, how the question had played on their minds, how their opinions and beliefs had evolved as they’d aged, but Jason and I had never spoken about it.

“I’m not entirely sure,” I told him, honestly. “I believe in Jesus, and I believe in heaven.”

Jason had nodded. He was quiet again for a few steps. “Sometimes, I’m not sure what I believe, but I know I’ll see my parents again one day. I know that.”

I told him I thought it was okay to have doubt—even Jesus doubted on the cross, even if only for a moment, when He wondered if He’d been forsaken.

Jason struggled in his later adulthood with his health and dependencies, and he suffered. “More than any one man should have ever suffered,” as Josh has said. I can’t imagine the heartbreak Josh endured as the closest witness to that suffering the past two years.

“Uncle Josh and Vanessa are taking good care of him, Momma,” Danann told me after last visiting Jason in the hospital, “but Uncle Josh is doing things a brother shouldn’t have to do.” It moved Danann, that testament of love between siblings. She’d also enjoyed watching Jason boss Chris around for a little while during the visit. “He’d look at Dad and say, ‘Chris, get my clothes over there. Now fold ‘em up. Chris, I need a drink. Get me my cup!’ Dad didn’t sit much the whole visit. I think Uncle Jason just wanted to make sure Dad was gonna do whatever he told him to.”

Jason’s cousin Lorenda is the Wright-Bramlett family historian of sorts. Over the past week, she’s posted several pictures of Jason and the family to social media. In most of them Jason is smiling, often alongside a brother or two. There is an especially cute one of Josh, Jason, and Jacob on the beach, where Jason is bent at the waist, hands on his little knees, in order to be nearer to Jacob. They were closer than most, the Bramlett boys, bound to each other by the shared loss of their parents at such young ages, though each would say they didn’t always see eye-to-eye. Josh and Jason, both especially hardheaded, clashed sometimes, but they’d always make up afterward.

“I always had him, and he always had me,” Josh said recently. “He was kind and had a good soul,” his cousin Lorenda said on Facebook last week. “He was loved by all who knew him. We are sad here, but [his parents and brother, and Grandma] are rejoicing in [heaven]. He suffered so much and is no longer in pain.”

I know from our text messages that Jason was remorseful when it came to how the last few years had played out and how they had affected Stacey and the kids, but it was never hard to extend him grace, because in my mind he was and will always be that little voice on the line—gatekeeping access to his big brother—or that spunky young adult, who’d known heartache and hardship, but still believed in the promise of what lay ahead of him, the uncle who never grew too old to play; or the husband and father, who thought his considerate and hardworking wife hung the moon and his blonde haired, sparkly-eyed babies where the greatest gift of his life.

May he rest in peace.

Michelle Smith, 09/16/2024