Michael Brown’s family reflects on loss, grief and Ferguson 10 years later

It’s been a decade since Michael Brown’s death.

After a white officer shot and killed the 18-year-old, people in and around Ferguson, Missouri, were thrust into the spotlight. With protests came a rallying cry for change after decades of systemic racism in law enforcement and the criminal justice system.

For Brown’s father, the grief of losing a son is a “life sentence.” Some days are more difficult than others. In those moments, his father and stepmother have sought to turn their pain into purpose. Long after the lawsuits, federal investigations, and tireless questions over police accountability, the pair have turned to supporting families who have also lost loved ones.

For the 10th anniversary of his death, PBS News spoke with Michael Brown’s family about who he was, how he’s remembered and his legacy.

What Michael Brown’s family remembers about their son

Michael Brown Sr. wants the world to know that his son was loving and loved.

The elder Brown remembers playful water fights in the house and the way his son would jump in the pool.

He loved making his siblings laugh. He was the kind of person who could light up a room.

For Cal Brown, Michael’s stepmother, it’s his laugh that comes to mind. She said it reminded her of Count Dracula, the purple Muppet fond of numbers on “Sesame Street.”

“I’m not sure where he got that laugh from,” she recalled.

On grief

Watch the clip in the player above.

In the initial aftermath of Michael’s killing, the same narrative — an 18-year-old, unarmed Black man who just graduated from high school — was repeated again and again for months, Cal said.

She watched as her husband stayed “pretty much in a tunnel.” Michael Sr., a man of few words, was told that “nobody wanted to see an angry Black father, that they wanted to see the tears of a grieving mother.”

“To mute me was kind of easy,” Michael Sr. said.

But that would not last long. Cal told her husband that he needed to say something.

“They think your boy didn’t have a father, and they’re creating all these different narratives,” she recalled telling Michael Sr. “They’re dehumanizing him. They’re dehumanizing his parents, his family.”

“At the time, I didn’t even know the words to give him, but I knew that he was going to have to speak up,” she said.

Today, Micahel Brown Sr. says he handles grief by helping the community. Weeks after Michael’s death in 2014, his father and stepmother launched Chosen for Change, an organization that provides support and resources to grieving families who are “processing the unthinkable.”

“I put a lot of my work into the foundation so I can, I guess, kind of like run from it,” Michael Brown Sr. said. “I do it through the work, it’s still there… it gets hard, you know, that trauma, that’s a different type of beast.”

“That’s what we get our justice from, helping other families,” he added.

Watching her husband through the years, Cal said “every day is different.”

“He’s gotten a lot better with being able to control his emotions when it comes to it. But a lot of times he wakes up with it on his face and you don’t really want to say, ‘How are you doing?’ Because how is he really doing? He lost his son. So you’re just trying to figure out ways to pull him out of a deep hole and have him focus on more positive things,” she said.

On advice for other parents grieving the loss of a child

One bit of advice the couple shared was that the experience of grief is not linear — it’s a “life sentence.” Some days may be more difficult than others. It’s in those moments, they said, that having a village really counts.

“Get some help. Create a support system of people who are going to try to, at least, understand, because people who don’t understand what it is that you go through, say some of the meanest things. Work on your relationship with God, and take some time for yourself,” Cal said. “Deal with your grief one day at a time. Don’t really have a lot of expectations because you could be 100 days in and feel like you’ve made it somewhere and end up back in a moment.”

As Brown Sr. remembered traveling all over the country in those early days, he said it’s that time alone that is key.

“There’s no booklet on it — grief. It’s hard sometimes,” he said. “I guess I could say it has gotten better, but mentally it hasn’t and I push myself to do things, to stay active, to come to a place of silence and lay back and chill again… It’s definitely a life sentence.”

On how the world should remember Michael

Watch the clip in the player above.

“We want the world to know that he was loved. His family loved him. He was a human. He was dehumanized. He was a human, he wasn’t a robot. You know this is real life with us. He loved his siblings. He loved his grandma. He loved a lot of things. He loved women. You know, girls. He was a young man.People seem to forget … he was someone’s child. He had a bright future.”

Just days before his death, Cal said she remembers Michael telling them what he believed his legacy would be.

“After he graduated from high school, he said the world will know my name. I’m going to shake the world. I have to go away for a while, but I’m gonna come back and heal my city. That is what he said in a Chinese restaurant in Ferguson and said to us and his siblings,” she recalled.

Michael’s legacy, in his father’s mind, “It ain’t over, it’s just the beginning.”