February Series - 8 Things I Love About BJ, Blog 4: His Charisma

8 Things I Love About BJ: His Charisma

If you were lucky enough to know BJ, you knew he had charisma! He had charm, personality, appeal, and attractiveness…the very definition of charisma. He didn’t “put on the charm”; he just had it. He was personable and loved people. Everyone seemed to be his friend and I think that is because of his personality. He didn’t have to try at liking people, he just liked them or he didn’t…but mostly he did. Sometimes “liking” someone takes work and I learned a while back you can either accept someone as they are or not; maybe your personalities just don’t mesh and that’s ok. You’re not going to be “friends” with everyone that comes into your life.

In the days directly after his passing, I remember being awestruck by all the people. All the people that reached out to me; all the people I didn’t even know about; all of his people. As a mom there is no better blessing than in that moment learning just how many lives your child has touched.

Now, if you weren’t lucky enough to know my BJ you really missed out. If you are following my blog, I will bet you are getting to know him as much as you are walking my journey of grief with me. Nothing I can write can give insight into his persona as much as the pictures of him I share. As the saying goes…A picture is worth a thousand words.

As I continue to write my blog and travel my journey, I am also in a better place today than I was yesterday,  yesterday I was in a better place than last week and last week a better place than last month. I didn’t want to take this journey, but once you are on it you can either make the best of it or not. My “best of it” is to write about my son, share my love and memories of him, and process the loss one day at a time.

There are some people that are just people magnets and BJ was one of them. If he was at a party, he usually was the party. If he was out muddin’, he was one with the mud. It’s not that he demanded the attention, he just got the attention. It was his personality; people were just drawn to his happy-go-lucky nature and his “the more, the merrier” attitude.  His charisma; his charm and his personality…those are what was appealing about him and that is what made him attractive.