Sister Wives Cameras Caught The Moment Kody Brown Broke News Of Son Garrison’s Death By Suicide — See How TLC Handled It

It was an emotional episode of Sister Wives on Sunday as the Brown family mourned the tragic loss of Kody and Janelle Brown‘s 25-year-old son Garrison Brown, who died by suicide on March 5, 2024. The show did not shy away from showing the immediate aftermath of maybe the most tragic thing that can hit a family…

The episode began with Meri Brown, one of Kody’s exes, sitting down for a confessional. Kody quickly started blowing up her phone with calls — even though she texted that they’d talk later. After he told her it was an emergency, she picked up the phone and looked stunned, exclaiming, “What?!” The show then cut to a title card announcing Garrison’s death. Whoa. Heartbreaking they caught that raw moment on camera.

Later, Meri recalled the moment in another confessional, sharing:

“He told me the words that I’ll never forget. He goes, ‘Garrison took his life.’ And it was just like this weird, weird, surreal moment. Not one of our kids. They’re not gonna do that. I left and went up there to Kody and Robyn‘s house.”

What Ifs

Kody and his son weren’t in a good place when he died, and that’s left the patriarch with a lot of doubts about what could’ve happened. They’d been bickering over Kody’s COVID rules — with the father believing his son was prioritizing his social life over safety and the latter feeling as though his dad was putting his family with Robyn first. In a conversation with his last remaining wife, Kody reflected in the episode:

“Grief comes in waves. It just wasn’t supposed to be this way. It’s just heartbreaking and I don’t … I didn’t get a chance to really make things right. Just not being able to say goodbye. Just don’t know what to do with his death because it’s like I’ve got to do something different because I could have had more time with him and I thought there would be more time.”

He continued:

“What if I’d have called him? What if I’d have been in touch more? What if we’d have gone done more? What if? What if? What if? It still makes me wonder if something could have been done. It makes me feel connected to him to do the what ifs. It’s just heartbreaking.”

Getting emotional, he wondered:

“How am I going to do this? How do I do the rest of my life with every holiday and every birthday. All the frustration I had over stuff with COVID and everything like that, all of a sudden, that’s so unimportant. I’m just sad about what would have been.”

Reconnecting Family

The difficult loss helped reconnect Kody with another estranged child, Gwendlyn, who wanted to be with him, he shared:

“Gwendlyn called me and said could she come and see me. She called me, brokenhearted, ‘Can I come over?’ and I’m like, ‘Come on over sweetheart.’”

He noted the “first moment grief really clobbered me” was when she arrived and they held hands.

“I feel this grief come up out of me and everybody’s silent. Gwendlyn’s sobbing, Robyn’s trying to console her, this grief comes out of me and I wailed and that’s when I became really aware that this situation has gone down and it’s just, it’s sort of unreconcilable. I don’t know what to do, I’m lost in this.”

So, so tough.

Janelle’s Last Moments

For her part, Janelle shared that she was texting with Garrison throughout the day he died, which was “not unusual” for them as they often spoke multiple times a day:

“I knew he was struggling and I always just picked up the phone and I always make it a point to just talk to him. And it wasn’t really about anything, I think he needed the connection.”

She recalled getting ready to go to bed at around 8:30 p.m. the night he died and noticing “he kind of stopped texting me.” She knew he’d started drinking again (as he would go through periods of binging), so she asked her sons Logan and Hunter to check in with him. She said “they were on it,” and remembered going to sleep — only to wake up to the worst call of her life. Her son Gabriel called, “and he’s like, ‘Mom, he’s gone.”

“He said, ‘He’s dead. He killed himself.’ I don’t remember the next few minutes. I got in the car and drove.”

Brutal.

Janelle also said that looking back, Garrison “really struggled” with alcohol, something that started during the pandemic. She explained:

“I don’t know what happened. He was never a drinking kid. He didn’t like it, didn’t like the taste of it. He started to drink during COVID. Something happened in this last year, and it really just got him.”

While the family offered him “all the love, all the support, all the help, [and] all the resources” they could, she’s not sure what made the night of his death different than other times:

“I don’t know what happened that this night he did that, because he’s had other nights like this where he would drink and then pass out and he would go kind of radio silent, but he’d be back in the morning.”

Ultimately, Garrison was discovered with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, but alcohol poisoning was also listed as a contributing factor to the young man’s death, per People.

Janelle recently moved from Flagstaff, Arizona — where Garrison was living when he passed — to be closer to her kids and grandchildren, a move she was very happy about. In the episode, she got together with her sister Carrie, breaking down in tears while continuing to chat about her late son’s mental health challenges:

“He had anxiety and depression. He started drinking as a way to soothe that and then it just became the animal he couldn’t get ahold of. We did everything we could. And I know that.”

In a confessional, she expressed:

“I know that he’s dead, but I forget that he’s dead and then I’m like, ‘Oh, I remember.’”

Gabriel’s Rare Appearance

Janelle also expressed that she was “worried” about Gabriel, who discovered Garrison’s body. She noted he was already in therapy before the loss and had been doing really well. The death “set him back,” understandably. But he was doing “okay” now, and the sad turn of events was leading the family to have more “frank conversations about mental health.”

Gabriel even chose to make a rare appearance in the show to share a tribute to his brother, saying:

“Gare really was like, so genuine and he didn’t let onto it a lot, but he also felt a lot deeper than he expressed. Everyone in my family knows that. He brought an air of ease. He made an incredible effort to everyone around him to make them comfortable. And I think that that’s the real mark of a gentleman. I think that Gare did it well.”

His sister Madison also revealed she was talking to her mom a lot on the day of the death and that her mother broke the news to her:

“There’s few moments in your life that I feel like alter your brain chemistry. I definitely feel like calling siblings that a sibling has died definitely alters your brain chemistry.”

Sadly, Madison and her husband had been trying to encourage Garrison to move closer to them, and they believed they “almost had him here too, almost had him.”

Meanwhile, Mykelti, Kody’s daughter with Christine, remembered Garrison as “cool” and the “jokester of the family.”

Kody and Jannelle chose to cremate Garrison based on his wishes and brought his remains to Wyoming to be buried near other family members. Kody called it as a “pilgrimage” of sorts, noting:

“I just want to take his body home and put him in the ground.”

But first, they held a viewing for family and friends, which Meri called “really, really difficult” and “really, really painful” because it was the “last time we saw his body.” Kody said the strongest memories he has after the loss are being with Janelle at the funeral home, recalling:

“I didn’t know what to say to anybody besides I’m sorry to everybody.”

Christine called the service “beautiful” and shared the moment she broke down in tears was while speaking. Her speech ended with a quote from the 1996 movie Dragonheart, she referenced:

“It was completely fine until I made eye contact with Mykelti and said the last line. It’s a movie quote that he loved. At the end of the movie, the dragon dies. He turns into the constellation Draco, who’s a dragon. The last line is, ‘When we want to look for him again, we look to the stars.’ And I looked right at Mykelti and said, ‘to the stars.’”

Awww.

Janelle also shared that the family was waiting to hold a funeral in Wyoming during “a better time of the year,” such as “the summer, when everybody can be there and we can celebrate him properly.” We’re sure it will be really cathartic to continue to gather as a family to honor their loved one. Our hearts go out to them all. Such a gut-wrenching loss.