In the early morning hours of Nov. 11, 2022, Rose Kehoe was awakened by a knock at her door.
A competitive athlete and adjunct professor at American University, Rose had turned in early to get a good night’s sleep before her usual 6 a.m. workout. Her husband, Kris Meade, a labor and employment lawyer, was away on a business trip. Their two older children were living in L.A. and Chicago, and their youngest, Braylon, a senior at Washington-Liberty High School, had gone out to watch football with friends and then to hang out with his girlfriend, Christine.
So Rose was alone in the house when Christine’s father, Greg Wilson, came to the front door after midnight with two police officers to deliver the news. Braylon had been killed in a car crash on his way home.
She called Kris. He was on the next flight back.
Braylon Meade, 17, was a full IB student and athlete at W-L, a redhead known to talk trash on the basketball court. A friend to everyone.
“Kindness was one of his defining qualities,” says Christine Wilson. “He could always put a positive spin on everything. I think his mom really drilled into him that it was important to look at the bright side instead of focusing on the negative.”
And so, in the aftermath of the unthinkable, Rose looked for the positive—finding a glimmer of grace when she delivered her eulogy during Braylon’s memorial service at St. Ann Catholic Church.
“I will forever be indebted to Greg Wilson…who softened the blow of the news that night,” she said. “Greg did not want me to learn from two unknown police officers that Braylon had been taken from us. I’m so glad he came.”
The news of Braylon’s death devastated the community. Two days after the accident, hundreds attended a vigil at W-L, expressing grief, anger and disbelief that someone so young and promising could be gone in an instant. Friends, coaches and school staff gave tearful tributes. Neighbors rushed to offer support.
“People have been generous with their time, and they’ve been respectful,” Kris says. “We’d have folks who would show up and spend five minutes here and others who’d spend an afternoon. It’s so hard to know how to mourn with somebody. You never really know how to deal with anything.”
“Being around people who knew Braylon, who share in the experience of grief and loss, helps me keep his memory alive.”
When W-L’s varsity basketball season began two weeks later, Kris and Rose kept going to games. The team invited them to join the introductory handshake line at every home game (and some away games), observing a 22-second moment of silence before the tip-off. Braylon’s jersey number was 22.
On Dec. 22, 2022, what would have been his 18th birthday, his parents invited a group of his friends for a backyard cookout in the pouring rain.
“Being around people who knew Braylon, who share in the experience of grief and loss, helps me keep his memory alive,” Rose says.
Grief is not linear. There were bad days.
“For the first several months, we were dealing with the legal part of this,” Kris says. “That was hard. We had tremendous support from the detective and a lot of other folks who were involved in the investigation, but it was good to get that over with.”
The other driver in the crash, also 17, had been driving 94 miles per hour on Old Dominion Drive, seconds before his car collided with Braylon’s. He was charged with DUI and ultimately sentenced to one year in a detention facility.
Outraged by the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s handling of the case, Rose shared her family’s story publicly and unflinchingly in an opposing candidate’s political campaign. She sent formal letters to elected and non-elected officials asking them to withdraw their support for the incumbent.
Moments that should have been joyous became gut-wrenching. In the weeks before his death, Braylon had submitted seven college applications. He would receive several letters of acceptance posthumously, including one from his first-choice school, the University of Michigan. His older siblings, Bryan and Kerry, are also Michigan alumni, as are both of his parents.
“The day we got the [acceptance] letter from Michigan was really hard. We framed it and put it in his room.”
“The day we got the letter from Michigan was really hard,” Kris says. “We framed it and put it in his room. None of this will ever go away, but there are moments like that…” he pauses. “That was a big one.”
Going forward, the family tradition of going to Ann Arbor for football games will be difficult. “Braylon would have been there,” he says, “so it’s going to be tough to stare at that student section.”
Some families cope with loss behind closed doors. Rose and Kris chose to shoulder theirs frequently out in the open. As the months passed, rather than avoid situations where Braylon should have been, they embraced them—and were embraced in return.
They were in the bleachers for as many W-L basketball games as their schedules would allow. In the spring, they attended pre-prom gatherings and graduation parties for Braylon’s peers.
In June, during the graduation ceremony for W-L’s Class of 2023, they accepted Braylon’s IB diploma and fist-bumped the friends and classmates who paraded past their box seat at DAR Constitution Hall in D.C.
Privately, the couple check in with each other frequently, giving voice to whatever emotions they are feeling in the moment. Saying goodbye to Braylon’s friends as they headed off to college this fall was bittersweet.
“It’s a very strong feeling,” Rose admits. “But at least we can say it out loud, and even just stating those feelings out loud has helped us process our grief. We don’t feel negative—we just feel like he should be here. We can acknowledge it and move on.”
Discovering the places where pain hides has been a process.
“This year was also the 10th anniversary of the death of my brother,” Kris shares. “He died in a body-surfing accident on vacation with his family in the Outer Banks. I’ve reflected a ton on that, but I didn’t like to talk about it.”
He opened up when their older son asked him to. “Bryan said, ‘You know, Dad, we’ve never really talked about you and your brother. Dealing with this from a brother standpoint would be good to talk about.’ ”
The conversations made Kris realize that verbalizing his thoughts could be healing. “If you’re open and let people in,” he says, “you’ll learn so much more about that person and about yourself.”
Rose, who meets with a grief counselor on occasion, is mindful that others hurt, too.
“Grief can be selfish,” she says. “Sometimes, when you’re focused on your own self-care, you’re not focused on others. It helps to acknowledge that other people are going through stuff, too. On the outside, someone may look very strong, but you have no idea what they’re going through. Other people miss Braylon, too, and you have to make room for that.”
“It helps to acknowledge that other people are going through stuff, too. Other people miss Braylon, too, and you have to make room for that.”
Among the more uplifting developments of the past year are the scholarship funds that have been created in Braylon’s memory.
One of them, the Braylon Meade Memorial Scholarship, was established through the Arlington Community Foundation (ACF). Seeded with more than $350,000 in donations from some 525 individuals and organizations, the fund provides three $2,500 academic- and need-based renewable scholarships to Arlington students—including one designated to be awarded to a member of W-L’s varsity basketball team.
“ACF held a big ceremony where they awarded all the scholarships,” Kris says. “Rose and I gave a little talk, and the recipients sat at our table.”
Once the fund hits $600,000, it will become self-sustaining. The next fundraiser is a basketball tournament, the Braylon Meade Basketball Classic, set to take place on Dec. 16, 2023 at W-L.
In July, a swim-a-thon event organized by the Donaldson Run Recreational Association, where Braylon and his siblings swam as kids, raised $20,000 for the fund.
“Braylon was driven by the example his older brother and sister set for him and by watching his parents’ hard work,” says Luke Galdiz, who first met Braylon in elementary school when they swam together at Donaldson Run. “In middle school, when we were paired up to mentor younger kids who were new to swimming, [he] would write notes to give to parents and offer to teach independent lessons. He always went above and beyond.”
The Meade-Kehoe family also established a scholarship in Braylon’s name at the University of Michigan. Designated for a Michigan-bound student from one of Arlington’s public high schools, that fund has so far received more than $200,000 in donations.
“We got to meet the young woman who received the Michigan scholarship this year,” Kris says. “She was in one of Braylon’s classes.”
A memorial golf tournament founded by lifelong friends Charlie Taylor and Jack Tsuchitani—affectionately named the “Ginger Cup” in reference to Braylon’s strawberry-blond hair—raised $15,000 for the Michigan fund. Plans are already in the works for the second annual golf tournament, to be held in June at Westfields Golf Course in Clifton.
In April, a group of Braylon’s friends dedicated a bench in his memory at Fort C.F. Smith Park near the family’s home in Woodmont. Rose and Kris hosted a farewell barbecue for his friends and their families before they left for college.
Braylon was a force of nature from the time he was small. “In the early years, he was a wild child,” Rose says, remembering the time her toddler son used two forks to pry the keys off her laptop while she was on the phone. After placing them back, she realized the letter M was missing.
“I’m sure he ate that one,” she says. “He wasn’t necessarily naughty—more a victim of his own curiosity.”
Though he never lost his sense of humor (his peers still laugh, recalling the nonsense language Braylon invented in high school), he did become more disciplined.
“He changed how I viewed basketball and life in general,” says his best friend and teammate, James McIntyre. “You have to work hard to be good at something. You can’t just go through the motions.”
“He kept a list of goals,” says another friend, Jack Rosenthal, whether the action item was fitting in a workout, studying for the SAT, making the varsity team or getting into his first-choice college. “He was a really motivated person. He had his priorities straight.”
Friend and teammate Collin Lu shares that sentiment: “His work ethic was contagious. He had a huge impact. He would go out of his way to include others—he was very unselfish.”
“His work ethic was contagious. He had a huge impact. He would go out of his way to include others—he was very unselfish.”
On the anniversary of their son’s death, Rose and Kris plan to carry forth that spirit of generosity. Together, with several friends and colleagues, they’ll spend a day collecting and distributing groceries to schools on behalf of the local nonprofit Food for Neighbors.
Before they left for college, several of Braylon’s friends texted Kris. They wanted him to know they intended to “treat the new people they met the way Braylon would have treated people,” he says. “Seeing how the kids have worked their way through this has certainly lifted us up in a huge way.”
In the fall of 2022, as Braylon’s 18th birthday neared, Rose wondered whether she’d done a sufficient job getting her son ready for the next stage of his life. “This whole time, I thought we were preparing him for college, but in actuality, I was getting him ready for heaven,” she said at his funeral.
“I was so focused on whether he would eat right when he was away—all these minor things that, in the end, don’t really matter,” she says. “He just skipped over everything. He skipped going to college, he skipped getting married, he skipped all those stages. But he’s still very present in our lives. He’s here, guiding us, making sure we don’t get sad.”
Sometimes the number 22 pops up out of the blue. When Kris had to travel to Chicago for work this fall, the idea of boarding a plane brought back pangs of worry—until he felt Braylon’s presence like a knowing wink: “My flight was out of gate B22 at O’Hare,” he says. “I was seated in 22A. There are just constant reminders. We see them everywhere.”
Sometimes the number 22 pops up out of the blue. “My flight was out of gate B22 at O’Hare. I was seated in 22A. There are just constant reminders. We see them everywhere.”
The path to healing is filled with complex emotions. Joy is one of them. “We spend a fair bit of time talking about Braylon and remembering all the funny stuff he put out there,” Kris says. “The thing that tugs at you…is that he had so many more years to go—so much more to get done. He won’t let you go there, though. He does not want you to dwell on it. Be in this life now. Keep living.”
What comes next?
“Once we get through the first year,” Rose and Kris agree, “we’ll begin to think about that.”
Adrienne Wichard-Edds is a writer and college essay coach in Arlington. As a fellow basketball parent, she often sat with Rose and Kris in the stands during games.