After some time, finally Meri message about Garrison could be the moment that finally ends her feud with Janelle!
Kody Brown is looking back with a new perspective.
More than one year after the Sister Wives star and his ex-wife Janelle Brown lost their son Garrison Brown to suicide at age 25, he reflected on their complicated dynamic prior to his tragic passing.
“It wasn’t supposed to be this way,” Kody told his wife Robyn Brown outside of their home in the May 4 episode. “It’s heartbreaking. Robyn, I didn’t get a chance to really just make things right—just not being able to say goodbye.”
“I just don’t know what to do with his death,” he continued. “I’ve got to do something different because I could have had more time with him. I thought there would be more time.”
Kody—father to 18 kids with Robyn and his three previous polygamous wives, Janelle, Meri Brown and Christine Brown—has had strained relationships with “90 to 95 percent of his children,” his ex Janelle previously shared.
It was no different with Garrison and his 23-year-old brother Gabe Brown, whose relationships with their dad had gotten worse amid Kody and Robyn’s strict protocol during the COVID-19 pandemic. As the Brown patriarch now navigates his grief journey, he shared how his perspective on his past behavior has since shifted.
“All the frustration I had over stuff with COVID and everything like that, all of a sudden, that’s just like, that’s so unimportant. I’m just sad,” the 56-year-old said. “How do I do the rest of my life with every holiday and every birthday?”
Now, Kody—who also shares kids Logan Brown, 31, Madison Brush, 29, Hunter Brown, 28, and Savanah Brown, 20, with Janelle—often thinks about what he could’ve done differently before Garrison’s death, despite loved ones telling him not to indulge in that line of thinking.
TLC“So many people have told me, ‘Don’t get caught in that what-if train,’” he told Robyn in the recent episode. “I’m going to because that’s part of the process for me.”
Among those thoughts, he wondered, “What if I had called him? What if I had been in touch more? What if we’d have gone and done more?”
“It still makes me sad,” he said. “It still makes me wonder if something could have been done. It’s the what-ifs. The what could have been.”
Janelle, who now lives in North Carolina to be closer to Madison, said that “staying busy” and keeping her “mind occupied” has been a necessity amid her grief journey. The 55-year-old noted that being there with the grandkids “makes it easier.”
“It’s minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day,” she added. “There are good days, bad days, good days, bad days, good days, good minutes, good bad minutes.”
Read on for more insight into the current season of Sister Wives.
Ida Mae Astute/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty ImagesMeri Brown Says Kody Brown Gave Her Hope for Their Marriage
Kody Brown insisted he was ready to divide himself from first wife Meri Brown shortly after their 1990 vows. But “he led me to believe that he would work on things by saying, ‘Oh Meri, when we move to Flagstaff, this will be a good time to have a new beginning for us,'” Meri shared in the Sept. 15 premiere, referencing their 2018 move. “Like he led me to believe those things. This is what he’s done for many, many years.”
Her main gripe, she shared, is “his lack of communication and how he really felt and what he really wanted or what he really didn’t want and the story that he’s been telling for all these years.”
And while Kody acknowledged that there may have been “mixed messages,” it was only because as he started to work on things, “I’m like, ‘Why would I do this?'” he explained. “I would not court and date her now.”
Either way, Meri’s friends were thrilled when she finally pulled the plug in early 2023.
“They’re like, ‘OK, we’re here for you, we’re supporting you. And it’s about damn time,'” she confessed. Blinders off, she now feels that he had been trying to get her to walk away for years by insisting he didn’t love her, “Because if he can push me out and I leave, he’s not the bad guy because he didn’t walk away.”
TLCKody Brown Wanted to Sell Coyote Pass
Years after the family purchased the 14-acre plot of land they planned to build on in Flagstaff, Ariz., Kody confessed in the season premiere that he was ready to let the dream wither. Unable to build without paying off the full $820,000 price tag (which the family reportedly did in 2023), he told remaining wife Robyn Brown, “I’d almost rather scrap it or sell it and then just start again somewhere else.”
As for Robyn, “I can’t talk about that,” she responded. “That is so not where I’m at.”
Photo by Gabe Ginsberg/FilmMagicJanelle Brown Left Kody Brown for This Reason
While second wife Janelle Brown previously told E! News, “We just kind of started to grow apart,” ultimately it was Kody’s lapses as a parent to some of their kids that pushed her to leave.
“The big spark for me was when his relationship broke down with my children and he didn’t seem like he would move heaven and earth to fix it,” explained the mom to Logan Brown, Madison Brown Brush, Hunter Brown, Garrison Brown, Gabriel Brown and Savanah Brown. “And I thought, OK, that was what was really holding me here.”
Even when Kody broached the idea of reconciling in the Nov. 3 episode, it was a non-negotiable for Janelle.
“I don’t know how I would ever reconcile with him and have him not have a relationship with my kids,” she said. “No, I’m going to always choose my kids.”
