Leveraging Loss So It Becomes a Benefit

Pamela Weiner called to remind us of something we probably wouldn’t have noted. This weekend -- Saturday, to be exact -- is the fourth anniversary of the horrible afternoon when a man drove his car through a Costa Mesa day-care center fence and killed two preschoolers, including her 3 1/2-year-old son, Brandon.

We all understand why people -- especially a parent -- couldn’t forget a day so awful. But why draw attention to it?

It’s simple, Weiner says. She doesn’t want her son to become a tragic footnote lost to history, and she wants to publicize a scholarship fund in his name that will send young children to camp for a week. In both ways, she says, her son’s death won’t be wrapped exclusively in sadness. It’s her way to let a little light in.

“He was an amazing little boy,” she says. “He meant the world to me and he touched a lot of other people’s lives.”

Painful as it is, she forces herself to talk about her son. Yes, it’s easier than it once was, but ...

“Over time, it does help,” says Weiner, 38. “Not so much to get over it, but to deal with things on a daily basis. I have two other children that I have to be strong for. I have to get out of bed, go to work; things have to be done.”

Her husband has shunned publicity, but he’s been supportive of her work, she says. Her 17-year-old son, Justin, also doesn’t like to talk about his brother’s death, but 5 1/2-year-old daughter Shaya tells her parents that she has talks with Brandon. Weiner embraces the “communication” and is comforted that Brandon is “watching out” for his younger sister.

Weiner’s memory of that May day in 1999 is especially vivid, because she was at Southcoast Early Childhood Learning Center when the driver, later convicted of murder, plowed into the yard. She ran to the scene and saw Brandon and 4-year-old Sierra Soto, who also died, pinned under the car. Five other children were injured.

Weiner doesn’t run from the memories -- as if she could.

“It’s not so much that I try to fight it off,” she says. “It happens. Certain things will trigger it. I have the gory scene, literally, of walking out to that playground and seeing what to me was the scene in ‘Terminator,’ the war scene, and it was just kids lying there.”

The camp idea grew from wanting to do something good and to say thank you, in a way, for the outpouring of community support.

Funded privately, the Brandon Cody Weiner Scholarship Fund (https://bcwfund.digitalrice.com) is for youngsters who have lost a relative. The destination is Rawhide Ranch in Bonsall, and the first three will go next month. Weiner picks the children based on letters they write, describing the family member they’ve lost and why they want to go.

Reading those letters sounds like painful duty too.

Weiner concedes the point but says she can handle it.

Saying she can write better than she can talk, Weiner explains her reasons in a poignant letter to Brandon, written for this anniversary weekend:

“I believe this is something that you could be proud to have your name be a part of,” she writes. “It makes me feel good to be able to give back to the children in our community, in your name.”

She tells him other personal, family things and begins by saying: “It is still unbelievable to me that you are not here with us. It’s now been four years and there isn’t a day that you are not in my thoughts and heart.”

In tragedy’s grip, we react in different ways.

Weiner will go to Brandon’s grave today and talk to him again. She’ll feel his presence again and, it seems, will find solace in believing that he’s proud of his mom.

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821, at dana.parsons@latimes.com or at The Times’ Orange County edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626.