DEER ISLE, Maine — For two hours, laughter and tears filled the gymnasium at the local high school Sunday afternoon.
In keeping with the relatively short life of Brandon Higgins, who died last week of a brain tumor at the age of 19, there was more laughter than tears.
More than 250 people gathered at Deer Isle-Stonington High School to remember Higgins, a 2014 graduate of the high school who was diagnosed nearly four years ago with brain cancer. In the service, the Brooklin teenager was described as loving son and friend who never lost his sense of humor despite being ill.
Childhood friends, close relatives, camp counselors, a former work supervisor, his driver’s ed teacher, and nurses from Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor all spoke at Higgins’ funeral. Almost everyone had a story about his penchant for cracking jokes, even as his health faded over the past several weeks.
“They say if you have a positive attitude, you can prolong your life,” pastor Leon Licata of Lighthouse Church of God in Orrington said during the service. “Brandon really took hold of that. He outlived the doctor’s predictions.”
Higgins had been given 18 to 24 months to live in January 2011, when he was first diagnosed with the inoperable tumor on his brain stem. He survived beyond that diagnosis, which gave him time to obtain his driver’s license and to graduate from high school.
On Sunday, it was mostly Brandon’s sense of humor that people recounted. One friend, Jacob Cole, said he snuck a girlie magazine into the Bangor hospital last month when he went to visit Higgins. Someone else had brought Higgins some ice cream, and Cole asked which of the two presents he liked better.
“‘I don’t know,’” Cole said, quoting his friend, adding that Higgins kept a straight face. “‘That was pretty good ice cream.’”
Higgins’ mother, Louanne Higgins, added later that the radiation treatment her son was getting made him sensitive to light, which affected his eyesight.
“He asked Jacob to bring him the nudie magazine in Braille,” she said, causing laughter to ripple around the gym.
On a more serious note, Higgins’ mother urged parents to spend time with their children.
“If he loved you, you knew it through and through,” she said.
Higgins’ driver’s ed teacher, Nancy Gilbert, recounted how she told Higgins — as she does all her students — that she was not inclined to use the brake pedal on the passenger side, where she rides during lessons. He would have to be prepared to use the brake on his side, she said.
“He put it in park and said, ‘You know, Nancy, you may want to reconsider that,’” Gilbert said. “I have brain cancer.”
O.J. Logue, a school administrator who ran a marathon last spring in Higgins’ honor, said that he was impressed with the teenager’s attitude when he first met him in August 2013. Though he did not know Higgins for a long time, he said, he will always remember the example he set.
“Live every second like it is your last, because you never know what life might throw at you,” Logue said. “[Brandon] didn’t pity himself in the least.”
After the funeral, Higgins was interred at Mt. Ephraim Cemetery in Brooklin, then a reception was held at the Brooklin School.
Contributions in Brandon’s memory may be made to the Brandon L. Higgins Scholarship Fund, c/o First, P.O. Box 1664, Blue Hill 04614; Make A Wish Foundation, Suite M1, 477 Congress St., Portland 04101; or Ronald McDonald House of Bangor, 654 State St., Bangor 04401.
