Shelli Brockman
It’s Never Too Late for Grief and Happiness to Coexist
There are certain questions most people are lucky enough to find easy to answer. Where are you from? What kind of work do you do? How many children do you have? For Shelli Brockman, the answers to those first two – she is from Denver and spent most of her career in real estate – are simple enough. The third, however, is much more complicated. The answer is three. Shelli has three sons, but none of them are living. How that came to be is a story of depression, medical malpractice, and nearly unbearable tragedy.
Depression first came into Shelli’s life, unbidden and unwelcome as ever, around the age of twelve, when she began to feel a crippling anxiety around her performance in school. She pushed through it, struggling academically and socially, always feeling on the periphery among her classmates. Ativan took the edge off but left her feeling depleted, and it was a relief when she graduated and moved on to her first job, working as a “Girl Friday” for a local developer, a role that suited her talents well and one in which she began to thrive.
Not long after, she met a young man who swept her off her feet. He was 6ft tall and handsome in his cowboy boots and moustache. He stood by Shelli while her father fell ill with lymphoma, and when it came time to sit shiva after her father’s passing, their engagement was the “something good that comes with something bad” the rabbi promised. They got married, and after four years of trying, Shelli finally conceived their first child.
The baby, a healthy boy they named Devin, did not have the arrival into the world Shelli had imagined. Following an emergency c-section, she found herself paralyzed with fear, certain she wouldn’t be up to the challenges of motherhood. After months of suffering, she was diagnosed with postpartum depression and, with the help of medication and a sitter and a return to work, she got better. She soon had a second son, Court, and a few years later a third, Tyler. Tyler was still in his infancy when Shelli found a lump on her breast and knew right away
that she was in trouble. She had a lumpectomy to remove the cancer, began radiation, and was carrying on raising her three boys and studying for her real estate licence when she got another massive, entirely unexpected blow. The picture perfect marriage she thought she had turned out to be a mirage; her husband was in love with someone else, he told her, and he wanted a divorce.
Over the next decade, Shelli survived a relapse of her breast cancer (happily, she has since been in remission for over 30 years), built a fulfilling career in new construction real estate, and found a way to co-parent her three boys with her ex-husband. But as her two older boys grew, Shelli’s concerns for their mental health grew as well. As each of the boys entered their teen years, depression held them more tightly in its grip. Then, on the brink of graduation,
Devin was in an accident that crushed his leg. The accident left him with chronic pain and a prescription for pain meds that quickly spiraled out of control.
Devin’s drug use was fed by a “pain specialist” doctor, a pill-pushing quack who would later flee the country to avoid prosecution. Devin and his younger brother Court, who had returned from college after only a few months, crushed under the weight of his depression, had unfettered access to a dangerous mix of oxytocin and antidepressants. On April 26, 2003, Court died of an accidental overdose. Less than a year later, on February 8, 2004, Devin suffered the same cruel fate.
Shelli and her new husband hired a medical malpractice lawyer to bring the doctor who had prescribed the drugs that killed her sons to justice. It was a gruelling fight, one that took an immense toll both physically and emotionally. They settled out of court, using the settlement money to set Tyler up with a house, while Shelli teamed up with a local activist to write legislation to prevent unethical, unsafe medical practitioners from being able to renew their licenses. With that muted sense of accomplishment and the anticipation of becoming a first time
grandparent – Tyler’s fiance had just announced her pregnancy – Shelli was actually allowing herself to breathe a little when tragedy struck yet again. Tyler, goofing off on his new motorcycle after a few drinks, crashed into a parked car. He did not survive.
Today, when people ask Shelli about her children, she tells them she is the mother of three boys, none of them living. But thanks to the bond she and Tyler’s fiance built, even in his absence, Shelli is also a grandmother to not one but three wonderful children. Those loving relationships have brought light into the darkness and have, along with the support of her husband and close friends and a new doctor who helped her find the right mix of supportive
medications, allowed Shelli to go on.
After all she has been through, Shelli has had to reset her expectations. “I will always just be okay,” she says. “I’ll never be good. I just do.” Admitting that, giving herself permission to just be ok, offers her some relief, as does reaching out to offer support to others whose struggles she knows all too well. On the best days, she can even make room for a glimmer of something more.
It is never too late for grief and happiness to coexist.