Brandy Butzbach suffered a tremendous loss when her husband, Ben, passed away suddenly from a massive heart attack; he was only 33 years old. Brandy and Ben had been married just two years, and the couple was working on starting a family together.
In an essay for Love What Matters, Brandy recounted the devastating day she left her job to go home and check her house after not hearing from her husband for hours. She returned to find that her husband had suffered a heart attack while getting up that morning. They estimated his heart attack occurred shortly after Brandy left for work.
Months after losing Ben, Brandy began to think of a way to honor her late husband's memory. She decided on a photo shoot in her wedding dress after dyeing it. It would be just over a year before she felt emotionally prepared to have the photo shoot.
Brandy and Ben were introduced after Brandy commented on a Facebook post that a mutual friend put up boasting about how wonderful and single her buddy Ben was.
The couple had been together for nearly a year when Ben, a well-known Nashville Predators super fan in the community, proposed by painting the question on his belly and appearing on the jumbotron during the Valentine's Day game.
The two were married in September 2015.
Brandy lost Ben to a massive heart attack on October 31, 2017. He was just 33.
Brandy knew something was wrong when she hadn't heard from her husband, who would routinely text her throughout the day. She tried calling but got no answer. She checked their mutual cell phone account and found no usage information for Ben's phone that day.
Panicked, she returned home as soon as she could. In telling her own story for Love What Matters, Brandy explained the feelings she was having.
"As I pulled onto my street, I got an eerie feeling and immediately, for what at the time was an unknown reason, began to cry. I got inside, walked up the stairs to our room, and that is when I saw him and knew. He was gone," she wrote.
The loss was tremendous for Brandy. The couple had only been married for two years and had spent the past 10 months trying to conceive. All her ideas of what her future would look like came crashing down.
Robin, the friend who introduced the two, helped Brandy through the days that followed, helping her handle arrangements and acting as a barrier between Brandy and the things she was too pained to handle.
Brandy had the idea for the photo shoot days after her husband's death. With Robin reassuring her that the idea was a good one, she dyed her wedding dress gray.
Brandy believes she got a sign from Ben when she returned to check on the dress and found that one of the gloves she removed had fallen onto a side that said "I love you."
Brandy believes Ben was signaling to her that it was OK for this to be her method of closure and moving forward.
It took Brandy nearly a year to get the photo shoot done. The loss had been a tremendously emotional experience, and she needed to be sure she was ready.
She shared the photos with family and friends on what would have been her and Ben's third wedding anniversary.
While Brandy's initial vision for the photo shoot had been darker and more mournful, she changed her perspective in the time leading up to it.
"This was not just about loss and sorrow. It is about love. It is about honoring my husband, the man I planned on spending my life with. Lastly, it was about the hope of the future and the start of the next chapter of my life," she wrote when sharing the post on Facebook.