A plate of Coffee Call beignet fingers sits untouched while a steaming mug of hot chocolate cools. A chair, once occupied by Christopher Broussard, sits vacant on an early Sunday morning, his mother Lisa seated beside it.
Her husband, Mike, usually joins her, unless he’s on the golf course after an LSU football game, as he was this Sunday. Mike and Christopher often played together, participating in an annual father-son tournament every Father’s Day weekend.
The trio would often meet at the Baton Rouge beignet spot for a quick lunch or a respite from their busy schedules. As an employee at Exerfit Family Fitness, Christopher picked his mother’s brain on her methods of working with children. Lisa, a physical education teacher in the Catholic school system for the last 15 years, would happily oblige.
“I never thought my son would enjoy working with kids like I do,” Lisa said. “When he got to LSU, he just blossomed, especially once he joined a fraternity and got involved. We were becoming much closer, and we had a lot in common.
“That’s another reason it hit me harder.”
Last month marked the one-year anniversary of Christopher’s death at 22 years old. On Aug. 27, 2013, he drove home from Bogie’s Bar, flipping his truck into a bayou on Highway 30 in St. Gabriel and succumbing to multiple blunt force trauma.
The two days that surrounded the search for Christopher remain stark for Lisa. She replays the “woulda, coulda, shoulda” hypotheticals, remembering the last time she saw her son alive on a Sunday night after he returned home from fraternity rush. Lisa was up early on Monday, so she never saw him leave for school.
As the pair often did, they exchanged text messages Monday afternoon. Christopher went to the LSU Bookstore to start designing the senior ring he was set to receive three months later, so the pair discussed payment options and Christopher’s plans for a night at Rotolo’s.
Lisa left the front porch light on for him to return that night, but it was never turned off. Her text messages and phone calls Monday night and throughout Tuesday went unanswered. When Christopher didn’t show up for his shift at Exerfit, Lisa immediately knew something was awry.
“When your child is missing, the first thing you do is start wondering,” Lisa said. “Then you start praying. I mean praying hard.”
They checked local hospitals and prisons before filing a missing persons report. Mike and Lisa spent that sleepless Tuesday night crying together on their couch, while their now-27-year-old daughter Michelle circulated word to Christopher’s friends that he was missing.
Those friends organized a rally at Bogie’s the next afternoon, and a helicopter was summoned to check the route Christopher drove home. A caravan followed, including Lisa and Mike. The helicopter began to hover near the bayou in Geismar. Lisa instantly knew it was Christopher.
“We ran across the road, and [the authorities] wouldn’t let us anywhere near it,” Lisa said. “I never got to see him. As a mother, I never got the chance to tell my son goodbye. I wanted to have that chance.”
Lisa described every day since as “an eternity.”
After a three-week leave, she threw herself back into her work at Most Blessed Sacrament Catholic School, where she was welcomed back with a banner and cards from her students.
She avoids Casa Maria Mexican Restaurant because it was one of Christopher’s favorites. The same goes for boiled crabs or crawfish, if she can even eat at all.
She was diagnosed with Stage 1 breast cancer in December, discovered partly because of her drastic weight loss. After a successful surgery to remove her tumor in January, doctors discovered a tumor on Mike’s adrenal gland that required a specialized surgery at the Mayo Clinic.
Mike said he and Lisa are in remission and “on the upswing.”
“That’s been nothing, though, compared to losing Christopher,” Lisa said. “I consider having cancer a bump in the road that never existed.”
Mike continues to golf, but without his playing partner. He always takes an alternate route to the LSU Golf Course from the family home because the easiest route passes by the bayou where Christopher died.
“It’s nothing that you can ever prepare for, to lose a child,” Mike said. “It’s just one day at a time. Christopher’s with us in every single moment of every day. You just have to try to manage that as best you can.”
In the days after Christopher’s death, the support was overwhelming. The University paid Christopher’s student loans, refunded his student football tickets and, at his parents’ request, donated those tickets to another student. At a public memorial service, it presented the Broussards with an encased LSU flag that flew on the Parade Ground in his memory.
Since his death, Christopher has been awarded a posthumous bachelor’s degree in sociology from the University, and a memorial scholarship was created in his name, which Lisa hopes to one day turn into an endowment.
To make those hopes a reality, the family must raise at least $40,000 — a feat that starts today with fundraisers at Raising Cane’s restaurants on Perkins Road, Lee Drive and State Street. If patrons mention Christopher’s name, 15 percent of each purchase from 3 p.m. until 10 p.m. is put directly into the scholarship fund.
“LSU was so important to Christopher. He loved everything about it,” Mike said. “This is an opportunity for us to give something back to LSU and, at the same time, continue Christopher’s legacy.”
A year later, Lisa remembers the changes she noticed in Christopher. A shy, reserved high schooler developed into an outgoing, charitable collegian. A founding father of the University’s chapter of the Theta Chi fraternity, Lisa said Christopher wondered if he would get special recognition as a founder if the chapter bought a house on campus.
Mike remembers his mischievousness and goofy sense of humor. Aside from playing golf, he said he tries his best to embrace Christopher’s favorite things and internalize any grief.
One year later, the Broussards are still grieving. Lisa said her worst moments come in her alone time, which occur more and more frequently. She said she isn’t ready to seek counseling, though she acknowledges she’ll need it at one point. Some have suggested support groups, but Lisa is skeptical.
For now, she sticks to a routine.
“I have literally cried every day since he passed,” Lisa said. “Your mind works 24/7 when something like this happens. You think of something you should have done, could have done, why couldn’t this have happened. It’s just non-stop.”