This week will be five years since Bridgit Bagley of Winslow lost her son in a vehicle collision. Army Staff Sergeant Preston Hancock was driving back to base one night when a driver crossed the median into his side of traffic, causing a head-on collision that took his life. He was 28.
People grieve in all sorts of ways: the usual ways with ceremonies and shelves dedicated to their loved one’s lives, lined with their belongings and memories. Of course, Bagley did this too. However, she always felt there was an expectation to move on after a certain point. Unfortunately, this was not the first close family member Bagley had to mourn. Her little brother died in a house fire in the ‘80s when she was in high school. She felt her family never properly mourned and rarely spoke about his death. She didn’t want that to be the case for her son’s death.
She started making charms for Preston, laminated cards with his name and face attached to beads and a key ring, that she handed to close friends and family members to keep Preston in their minds. She never knew it would lead her to where they are five years later.
She started making more and more charms for people to leave places now with an email, bjbagley2013@outlook.com so that people can share about how they found the charm and they are encouraged to leave it somewhere else to help spread the word.
Bridgit’s husband, Bill Bagley and a few of his friends drove to the famous Sturgis motorcycle rally in South Dakota and along the way they left a couple of these charms. One of the places they left a charm was the Veterans of Foreign Wars facility in Deadwood, South Dakota where it was found by Tammy and JR Adams who took the charm and drove it to an Elks lodge in Key West, Florida.
It was at the lodge that the charm was given to Hogan Hilling, an author of more than a dozen books who had sold his house amid rising prices and traded it in for an RV to travel around America. Not too long after that Hillings own son, who had medical complications his whole life and lives in a full-time care facility, passed away and that charm showed Hilling that it was okay to grieve and inspired him to grieve in a way that didn’t ignore the dead but could figure out a way to still make them a part of our lives.
Hilling’s other son had an opportunity overseas and invited him to come with him while he was grieving and he took Preston’s charm with him, and decided to keep traveling to several countries with the charm including Vietnam, Taiwan, India and Dubai, as well as to all 50 states in the US with the charm. It not only gave his travels a renewed sense of purpose but also gave him the opportunity to speak to strangers he wouldn’t have otherwise about the charm and allow him to process his own son’s death at the same time.
While this was happening, Bagley was making hundreds of charms and began leaving them wherever they thought someone would happen upon it. “We pretty much don’t leave the house without a big stack of them,” says her husband, Bill. She had also started a Facebook page to connect with the people who found the charms and were touched by the story. It gave people a place to tell their own stories and grieve and heal together.
People kept emailing the address on the charm with stories of how or where they found the charm, many of them taking the opportunity to speak about their own grief and what they have felt about it. Around the time Hilling was finishing up his trip across America, a few other moms from the Facebook group decided to make charms for the sons they had lost: Julie Avila for her son, Army Sergeant Christian Andrew Avila; Chery Voigt for Marine Corporal Richard Gomez and Angie Jernigan Austin for Navy Petty Officer Second Class Matthew John Austin, all of whom were in their 20s when they passed.
The mothers sent their respective charms to Hilling who is taking it on another trek to all 50 states. He will be traveling to Elk’s lodges where he will leave copies of these charms and write their names in the visitors logs to honor their legacy. While he is traveling, he will be raising money and awareness of a new nonprofit organization called Moms of Veteran Suicide, an organization that offers comfort and empathy to mothers of veteran victims of suicide. To find the Gofundme to help support the journey go to the Preston’s Charm Facebook page. Hillings 48-state journey started last week and will end on Nov. 9, Preston’s birthday where there will be a ceremony at his grave in Taylor. Hillings said that this is not only about the charms and remembering them, but this road trip will also raise awareness for Moms of Veteran Suicide and hopefully connect struggling mothers around the country with a group that they can empathize with.
After the tour is done Hilling and the mothers with the charms are all co-authoring a book about this journey they have been on. Not all of them have been making charms as long as Bagley but they all have their unique paths that lead them there. The book is still being written but once complete, the book will also help fund Mothers of Veteran Suicide and help grieving parents even more.
The thing that is so special about the stories Bagley has gathered from the emails and the Facebook page is that everyone has a different run in with grief, not all of them their children, not all of them recent but all have been given some comfort from these charms.
Richard, Bridget’s brother, said that not only did the charm help him with the grief of losing his nephew but “gave [him] permission to grieve his brother the way he always wanted to,” grief he had carried with him for more than 30 years. because Bridget was right; you don’t move past losing someone close to you, you can only move forward.
