• Amby's Myspace.


• Be somebody, or be somebody's fool.

• Rose - Some Questions


• Kevin - I had a dream I saw you and now wish I'd known it


• Kim - Happy Birthday Cousin!


• Wade - Happy Birthday Amby.


• Simon - 25th Birthday

This is a place to collect stories and pictures, to share experiences, and remember Amby. Please direct any memories or images for posting to ethan.sletteland@gmail.com

Posted by Rose at 3:30am on Thursday the 24th of April, 2008

Amby,

I will never really understand why you left us but you are really missed.  You will not be forgotten.  Every day I have a new question for you.  One day I will have better answers, or something, to understand.

Posted by Kevin at 4:11am on Thursday the 17th of April, 2008

Last night I had a dream I saw you and it was as though we hadn't seen each other in the long while it has indeed been. I was very excited to see you and told you I was so happy that this was all a dream. I told you how many people thought you died and how incredibly sad it has been and how much everyone will be exctatic that this was all not real. I told you that I don't know you super well but that you are a person that I never want to leave by taking your own life. I told you all this stuff about the few times we really ever hung out and the way that you've impacted people I know just by being yourself, that this world is greatfull to have you here.

And I wish I had known it was your b-day cause I would have wished you a happy one, but I still do happy birth day ambrose.

Posted by Kim at 7:20pm on Wednesday the 16th of April, 2008

 Just wanted the Breen cousins  to know we were thinking and praying for them today.  We love each and every one of you so very much!

Posted by Wade at 3:48am on Wednesday the 16th of April, 2008

Wish I could tell you in person. 

Posted by Simon at 12:59am on Wednesday the 16th of April, 2008

Amby would have been 25 today.  Instead, he's always going to be frozen in time as a 24 and youthful.  He never wanted to get old.  He told me that on several occasions.  It looks like he found a way to stop the aging process and stay young forever.

I have no illusions about Amby's death.  He had a lot of things working against him.  He had skewed ideas that getting old meant becoming a lesser embodiment of yourself.  He would tell me how he wasn't going to let himself get old.  I tried changing his mind about this but he couldn't be convinced otherwise--stubbornness, as anyone who knew him knows, was another factor working against him.  His biggest problem was drugs.  When you compound a drug problem with Amby's warped notion that he had to tackle his problems alone, it becomes a little more clear why he did what he did.  If only he hadn't felt like he had to carry the weight of his burdens himself, things could have been different.

I have a lot of regret I wasn't more perceptive to these factors at work and what they could mean.  I saw them all individually, but I was too blind to realize that, taken together, they were an obvious recipe for tragedy.  That's not to say that I never tried to help him with each and every one of these problems--I did.  But he always gave me the same routine of "Stay out of my business."  It's when I consigned to let him shut me out that I really failed him.  I believe now that really, all Amby ever truly wanted was to be shown love--the kind of love that protested against his stubbornness and forced him to get his life back in order because he was much too important to his loved ones to continue down a destructive course.  The kind of love that didn't take, "Stay out of my business," for an answer.  By following his wishes I failed to show him that kind of love.

It's useless now to talk about what could have been done.  Now, what's important is keeping his memory alive.  That isn't hard to do with an unforgettable character like Amby.  As time goes by he might not always be in the foreground of our minds, but he's always going to be there.

This is his birthday, so it's only fitting to give a birthday memory.  This isn't a memory of one specific birthday, but of Amby's birthdays in general.  Growing up, Amby loved his birthdays.  My dad might sometimes feel like he was too hard on Amby, but when it came to birthdays, my dad spoiled him.  There are a lot of us Breen kids, which meant that money was always tight for birthdays and holidays.  Dad did his best to make sure these occasions were special for us, even if the gifts couldn't always be expensive.  Poor Tim got just a bible once, but it was what he was interested in and it made sense.  Amby and I were interested in video games, which are quite a bit more expensive than bibles.  So on our birthdays my dad always spent much more money on us buying us games than he spent on Tim, Rose, Julie, Theodore, Angie and Thea.  Amby loved it.  Since our birthdays are only about three weeks apart it was like a double birthday for both of us.  My birthday came before his.  I'd get a couple new Sega Genesis games first and we'd play them together nonstop.  Then his birthday would roll around shortly after and he'd get some games that he'd share with me.  We had a lot of fun then.  Even after we weren't children anymore, playing video games together remained one of our most popular bonding activities that we never outgrew.  I think we felt guilty knowing that our birthday presents were so much more expensive (and so much cooler) than our other siblings' presents but we weren't about to go asking for bibles instead.

Dad, if you read this please know that you brought a lot of love and joy into Amby's life.