A family devastated.

A father who lost his "shining star."

A close-knit school and soccer community that lost a star athlete and friend.

A large, longtime Santa Fe family that everyone seems to know.



In the days since a heartbreaking accident spirited away the spirited 16-year-old Jensen Merritt Brown, the tragedy has been a poignant topic of conversation everywhere I go. At my parents' kitchen table, the grocery store and the gym, out with girlfriends, at home around my own kitchen table, where a small circle of artists talk late into the night. The story of the split-second ending of a life with such promise, of the boy whose kindness, creativity, and laughter struck everyone he met, has gripped many Santa Feans at their core. Like me, many with whom I've spoken never knew Jensen, and yet, we haven't been able to get him out of our minds.

The talk has focused less on details of the accident than on its jolting impact on the psyche of a community grappling with the incomprehensible loss of a vibrant young life. Questions of why a teen who embodied such love and joy would meet such an untimely end are mixed with recognition that he lived each day to the fullest, something for which we should all strive. Discussion of how, in this celebrity-driven era of shallow ideals, a boy so young developed such depth turns to acknowledgment of the grounded family environment in which Jensen clearly was raised.

Conversations echo with sadness and sympathy for the unfathomable pain of the Brown and Bodelson families, deeply-rooted residents whom anyone living in Santa Fe for any length of time is likely to know. Like others, my connection to their grief is by extension: I graduated Santa Fe High School with Jensen's aunt, Cathy; my husband and brother graduated St. Mike's with his uncle, Dan. And while I have met his parents briefly among mutual friends, I have never known them well. Still, no matter what the connection, through Jensen, we have all been linked, related in our love for our own families and our understanding of how easily this tragedy could be our own.

The week has also seen the community come together in extraordinary ways. Jensen's teenaged friends organized a candlelight vigil within hours of his death, followed a few days later by a memorial at his high-school gym. Respects were paid by all who loved and mourned him; according to one reporter, insiders, outsiders, athletes, and geeks, even his sixth-grade teacher. For those who wished to pay respects at Jensen's funeral Mass, the owner of a local valet service offered free shuttle rides.

The day was dreary and rainy when Jensen Merritt Brown was finally laid to rest, prompting his father, Merritt, to comment to the hundreds in attendance, "He wanted the only light to shine from inside these walls." I would add that an equally dazzling light — Jensen's light — has shone throughout our city this week, illuminating our deepest sorrows and our brightest hopes. Everyone I talk to is holding tightly to its glow.

And so I write this for Jensen, who in life and death, reminded us to cling to all we hold dear. I write this out of respect for Jensen's family, to tell them how deeply he touched even those he never knew. I write this, too, for Santa Fe, a city that, even as it grows, remains ever so small, a place where the darkest days can be broken by the light of a boy's sunny heart.

Santa Fean Carmella Padilla is a well-known writer who has authored several books about the culture and history of New Mexico.