How does faith survive the brutal heartache of losing a child?
Their lives changed with a knock on the door one night. But even in the depths of grief, Pastor Ross Abraham and his wife Kathy have found a way to spread love and grace.
This is a story about how to be good. Beautifully, crazily good. Beautiful-as-the-sun, crazy-as-the-moon good. I see no halos, witness no wings, and yet I know this much. I am in the company of angels. Beautiful, crazy angels.
Ross Abraham is a Gold Coast pastor. His son, Jaaden, has stacked it on his e-bike at Byron Bay, and now he’s out like a light with a catastrophic brain injury in the Intensive Care Unit at Gold Coast University Hospital. There is weeping and gnashing of teeth. The commencement of a bedside vigil. Four days and nights of hopes and prayers and dreams and songs and epiphanies and confusion and anger and sadness and hopelessness and helplessness and hopefulness and optimism and numbness and dread and the desire in Pastor Ross for a miracle. Come on, son. Pick up your mat and walk.
If love can save a life, the 31-year-old Jaaden, an exuberant and passionate sort of fellow, the beautiful sun and the crazy moon made flesh, will hop out of bed and ask his old man what the fuss has been about. If the burning, blazing love of his father, Pastor Ross, and his mother, the lion-hearted Kathy, and his sister, the tender-hearted Tara, and his already grieving uncle, Rick, and Australia’s world champion boxers Jason and Andrew Moloney, to name a few in the hospital – if the love of all these deeply wounded people, plus the expertise of ICU head Dr Peter Velloza and the kindness in the soul of a social worker named Lauren Thomas can spark a resurrection, Jaaden will be back at Byron in time for lunch.
He dies.
Just two days earlier on April 11, 2024, Jaaden had invited Kathy and Ross to dinner at Byron. “The night we have our last conversation with our son,” Kathy says. “He has a glass of wine in his hand. He’s cooking us dinner. Ross hasn’t been sure about going but Jaaden had this way of owning you. You can’t say no to him. He sends me a text saying, ‘Mum! Let’s do dinner!’ Ross has been working in Brisbane. He won’t want to come home at five then drive to Byron then come home again. I tell Jaaden I’ll ask his Dad. Jaaden is like, ‘No! No! No! You’re coming!’ Ross is so grumpy about it. He’s like, ‘Bloody Jaaden!’ But we go.”
Ross and Kathy live at Reserve Creek, near Murwillumbah in NSW’s Northern Rivers region. A 40-minute drive from Byron. “Jaaden texts me, ‘Can you just pick up these few things on the way?’” Kathy recalls. “Which is hilarious, and so Jaaden. He sends a full grocery list and says, ‘If you get these, I’ll cook dinner, my famous poke bowls, and I’ll get wine. I have a nice wine I want you to try.’ We get there and it’s one of the nicest nights we’ve ever had. We sit down with our glasses and Jaaden says to me, ‘Mum, I’ve come to terms with being a bit crazy.’ He just puts it out there like that. I’m like, ‘Really! A bit crazy? I’ve never noticed!’ Then he leans back and says, ‘But you gotta admit, Mum. I’m a beautiful crazy.’”
A couple of days later, on April 13, Ross goes bike riding with his brother, Rick Abraham, a grieving father. Rick’s 24-year-old son, Will, had died four months earlier in a single-car crash in Brisbane. Rick received the dreaded, post-midnight knock on the door from police then raced to the ICU at Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital, hoping for the best before experiencing the unspeakable worst. “My son dies the following day,” Rick tells me. They had a Catholic service – Will was Catholic – which Ross conducted in Brisbane.
“You cannot get better than Ross,” says Rick, an oncologist. “He’s a passionate guy and a caring guy with incredible energy. He’s a wonderful family man and just a very nice person, a friend to so many people, and he’s enormously respected in his church. He spoke so well at the funeral.” Jaaden didn’t go to his cousin’s funeral. “Jaaden was too traumatised to join us,” Rick explains.
Shortly after the beautiful, crazy dinner with Jaaden, Ross had invited Rick and his wife Carrie to Reserve Creek. On April 13, Ross and Rick went out on that ride. “I’m trying to deal with the loss of my son while looking after cancer patients,” Rick says. “It’s fair to say I’m not doing too well. We ride our gravel bikes around the river trails and we do a lot of talking. It’s tempting in that situation to not talk about the loved one you’ve lost – it’s too painful – but Ross is encouraging me to verbalise it. Sometimes all you have to do is listen, and Ross is very good at that. He’s just trying to help us heal. It’s a nice outing. We have dinner and go to bed – and then Ross and Kathy wake us just after midnight.”
The police have knocked on the front door to inform them of Jaaden’s accident. “You can’t script it,” Rick says. “For two brothers to have this happen to their sons in such a short period of time, four months apart – who’d want to script that? Ross has spent the day supporting a brother whose son has died. Now he’s being told his own son is in a life-and-death situation. It’s just truly awful.”
Ever been in an ICU? If not, half yer’ luck. “You see a family’s absolute grief in an ICU ward,” says Lauren the social worker. “Complete disbelief. That sadness, that shock, it’s never any different. I met the Abrahams in my role of supporting a grieving family. Initially, there’s no specific difference to how they behave. They’re like every other family. They’re losing a loved one. You see a dad grieving, you see a mum grieving, you see a sister grieving. You never assess character in that situation because it’s not their normal state. It’s only later that I’ve come to realise they are the most amazing people I’ve ever met in my life.”
Ross is my favourite sort of pastor. He’s a pastor in jeans and a T-shirt, a people’s pastor, a back-slapping, high-fiving, rough-around-the-edges pastor, holier than nobody. He has a face like a sunrise when he’s happy. That same strong, handsome face crumbles like the Roman Empire when he’s sad. No matter how many times I hug him, I want to hug him once more. This is a wonderful bloke.
He’s told in the ICU that Jaaden’s condition is “unsurvivable”. And yet what is unsurvivable to those who believe? Water becomes wine, lepers are healed, seas are parted, the blind can see. Ross faithfully believes the Lord is in the miracle-making business. (Now’s a good time). He believes the Lord is good – he believes God is love, he believes God makes the impossible possible, he believes God can lift anyone from a coma. Oh ye of little faith! Ask and you shall receive! Ross asks and pleads and begs.
“On day three in the ICU, I weep and weep,” Ross says. “I say to the doctor, ‘What do you need to see from my son?’ He says, ‘Ross, I’m not here to steal your hope. We just need him to move a finger, to open an eye, to show us there’s activity in his brain.’ So for the next two hours I call in people who knew how to worship. People who knew how to pray. We put Jaaden’s boxing gloves on his hands and say ‘Come on, Jadey, it’s time to fight.’ We lay hands on my son and pray and we believe in God for a miracle. The nurse blocks the door so no doctors can come in. She has tears running down her cheeks. We pray and pray and you hope the miracle is going to happen.” Nothing happens. Pain is Ross’s reaction. “A pain like I have never felt before. A pain that will never leave me.”
Kathy can’t recall much from the four days in ICU. “I just feel so completely numb,” she says. “Ross knows every nurse and doctor and their names. I can’t tell you who’s in that room. I walk in and it’s just all about Jaaden. He’s all I see. My son, and we’re losing him. It’s such a traumatic, out-of-this world experience that I have very little memory of it.”
More than 100,000 patients are admitted to ICUs in Australia every year. “You arrive in shock,” Ross says. “Your heart and your brain aren’t aligned. You’re in disarray. I’m taken into the family room for the consult. The doctor can’t look me in the eye so I know he’s going to tell me bad news. That’s when he says, ‘We think your son’s condition is unsurvivable.’ Jaaden still has brain activity at that point, and he’s breathing on his own, but he slips into needing the machines to stay alive and we know that’s the beginning of the end.”
A loving God thrusts a dagger into the heart of a family as good as this? Ross and Kathy Abraham have spent their lives helping others. Serving the Lord. Here’s what I, also a Christian, can’t help thinking: surely they deserved some divine intervention? So when it didn’t transpire, were they tempted to throw their Bible in the bin? “That’s one thing I haven’t experienced,” Kathy says. “I haven’t gotten angry at God. I haven’t even asked God why. In the ICU it was eventually like, ‘There’s nothing we can do.’ I can’t tell you why I think like that. I can’t answer that question. I guess it’s just not in my DNA to go, ‘How dare you, God?’”
Ross’s crisis was more acute. We’re talking at Elevation Church Gold Coast in Burleigh Heads after he’s delivered a Sunday morning message. How does faith survive such brutal heartache? “I understand the question,” Ross says. “You’re thinking, ‘Doesn’t God owe us one? Haven’t we paid our dues?’ I crashed straight after we lost Jaaden. Not in terms of losing my faith, but I certainly started questioning God’s goodness. I felt like God was standing behind a door that He bolted from the inside. I couldn’t get in there. I wasn’t feeling anything, I wasn’t sensing anything. Kathy becomes the steady one. She’s the inspiration. She starts saying, ‘Come on, we’ve got to get to church.’ Early on, I see grief as an intruder. It’s come to ruin your day, every day. I’ve come to think of grief as love with nowhere to go. I’ve come to understand it’s not your enemy. I’ve come to believe there can be grace in your deepest grief.”
How? In the most heightened moment of his message to a packed church, with people sobbing to my left and right, Ross is booming: “Grace is the ability to put one foot in front of the other. Grace is the ability to get up and go through another day even though your circumstances have not changed. Grace is the ability to live one more day without your loved one. Grace is the ability to keep loving even though love doesn’t seem to be coming back.”
Grace is also the beautiful, crazy ability to sit in your living room with a hole the size of the Australian Outback in your heart while your daughter, Tara, mentions the beautiful, crazy care package you received while you were trapped in ICU limbo. You remember the beautiful, crazy feelings of gratitude and comfort, and you come up with the beautiful, crazy idea to give the same gift to every family in the country who goes through what you’ve just been through. Whether or not a patient dies, ICU is the same. A nightmare. Grace is wiping away your tears as innumerable as the stars in the sky and deciding you need to get care bags to all the families in ICU for all their nights of hopes and prayers and dreams and songs and epiphanies and confusion and anger and sadness and hopelessness and helplessness and hopefulness and optimism and numbness and dread and the desire for any sort of miracle. Grace is the decision by Ross and the Abraham family to start the Beautiful Crazy charity, in Jaaden’s honour, that has gone from raising a few bucks via its website and word-of-mouth, and giving a few care bags to the Gold Coast University Hospital, to supplying these little bundles of goodness and love to eight hospitals in ICUs in Queensland and NSW.
“I see the reaction of distressed families when I give them a care bag,” says Lauren the social worker. “Their gratitude is overwhelming. For the Abrahams to repurpose their pain and do something as positive as this … it makes me so emotional. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in this job.”
Grace is the beautiful, crazy idea of Ross to accept his pain as a permanent part of his life – while figuring he may as well do something purposeful with an emotion so powerful. He may as well help others enduring the same pain. Care bags in ICUs. Have you ever heard of anything so simple and overdue?
“Intensive care is a very unpleasant environment to be in,” Rick says. “So many folks experience it, and what my brother is doing for them is beautiful. I don’t share his faith but I know a good deed when I see one. You’re in ICU and you have a loved one in a life-and-death situation. Inevitably, it seems to be the middle of the night. There’s no warning. You’re never prepared. You just run to your car and go. You basically arrive in your pyjamas and quite often you’re told it’s best not to leave. You have nothing with you and you might be there for days. What Ross is doing is a wonderful act of generosity. ICU care bags – I mean, I sit here and think, how has nobody thought of this before?”
Says Tara: “I’m so proud, watching Mum and Dad. To lose your child, there’s nothing more horrific for a parent. To see the way they’re accepting and leaning into the pain … their greatest strength is their honesty.”
Says Dr Velloza: “ICU is a terribly difficult place to be [for patients]. You’re in a desperate situation. There’s no limit to this; I can see a time when every ICU in Australia has care bags for those in need. Who’s in need? Everyone.” From Jason Moloney, who’d trained Jaaden at his Tweed Heads gym: “He was a ripper, mate. Always had a smile. I loved him from the first second I met him. You know these people who are just full of energy and life and you love being around? That was Jaaden. For his family to be doing this just shows what truly wonderful people they are.”
There’s adult care bags and kids’ care bags. When the first batch of kids’ bags are delivered to Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital, an ICU social worker has burst into tears. A young mother of four doesn’t have long to live; the first four care bags go to her kids.
For all the beautiful craziness of Jaaden, I suspect Ross is the most beautiful and crazy of the lot. He talks about post-traumatic growth and finding treasures in darkness. It costs $60 to fill a care bag with goodies for the grieving and to raise funds, on April 20 he’ll embark on a beautiful, crazy and borderline impossible mission of riding his bike from Perth to Byron Bay. Exclusively on dirt roads. His brutal solo assignment of 4,300km across Australia’s most remote and rugged terrain is called The Longest Ride. He hopes and prays to raise enough money for 4,300 new care bags. One for every kilometre. “I’m terrified,” he says of his month-long trek, which will swing past the simple cross next to the road where Jaaden stacked his e-bike. Joining Ross for the final stages, out near Narrabri, will be Dr Velloza … and Rick.
Two brothers. Two stints in ICU. Two lost sons. Rick is closing his oncology practice and retiring. He’ll ride with Ross into Byron Bay for a well-earned cold one and then Rick will honour Will by roaming south Queensland. His plan? Armed with huge vintage cameras, he’ll shoot black-and-white photographs of decommissioned timber churches. “It’s a metaphor for things we’ve lost,” Rick says. “We’re brothers who have spent the entirety of our lives helping others, now united by unfathomable grief and the ICU experience, and we’re approaching it in completely different ways.”
Really, Ross’s longest ride began in the early hours of April 14, 2024, after that dreaded knock on the door. His longest ride has already been a rollercoaster of prayers and hopes and songs and belief in a miracle for Jaaden that never came. His longest ride has already delivered enough tears to flood the deserts he’s about to cross on his bike. And yet the human heart keeps beating even when it’s torn into a million pieces.
It’s likely that all of us will spend a day or two in an ICU ward at some stage. “It’s the most vulnerable moment of your life,” Tara says. “You’re so emotionally wobbly. You’re so exhausted. Families are going through horrific shock and trauma. To receive a gift from another family that has been through the same thing – hopefully every bag to them says, We see you. We are here for you. I see emails come through from people who are now on the same grief journey, saying thank you for these bags, and I just cry and cry, because you understand them. We’ve been there. It’s a horrible, horrible time. There’s the practical side of the contents of the bag but I hope the real heart message is that every grieving person feels seen and loved.”
The adult care bags have wipes, a thick luxury blanket (because let’s be honest, hospital blankets are the worst), water, chips, tissues (so many tissues), a note from the Abrahams, chewing gum, lip balm, Panadol, a toothbrush, toothpaste, mouthwash, floss, chocolate, sweets, a protein bar, kindness, goodness, halos, angel wings, the sun and the moon. Ross blinks away another round of tears between his bursts of hearty, uplifting, contagious, beautiful-as-the-sun, crazy-as-the-moon laughter. Fair dinkum, the big lug could cry for Australia.
“There was a time when I didn’t know if I would ever laugh again,” he says. “Hopefully, as time goes on, you start laughing more than crying. Kathy is the real hero, my hero; the strength my wife has shown has been nothing short of inspirational. Her love for people, her love of God – you lose your son and you think, ‘What are we going to do?’ We could honour one another and honour Jaaden by trying to handle it in a healthy way, or we could hit the bottle and get angry. My biggest fear now is going back to who I was. I don’t want to lose the deeper level of empathy I’ve discovered. I’m in pain and I always will be, but the game-changer has been accepting I’m basically going to feel this way forever. So, let’s build a life around that. Grief never leaves and so let’s work with it. Let’s at least try to do something good.”
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