How Sister Wives Handled Garrison's Suicide In Heartbreaking, Emotionally Raw Episode

Sunday's new hour of Sister Wives was a tough watch, as the Brown family learned the shocking news that one of their own, Kody and Janelle Brown's 25-year-old son Garrison Brown, took his own life.

The emotional blow to the family came about a quarter into the episode, as Meri Brown -- one of Kody's ex-wives -- sat down for a confessional interview with producers. As she was about to start answering questions about another topic, she started getting phone calls from Kody, who was ignoring her texts to talk later. Finally, he said it was an emergency, before she picked up the call and looked shocked.

The camera then cut, before a slate announced Garrison's death.

"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," Meri said in a later confessional. "Not one of our kids. They're not gonna do that. I left and went up there to Kody and Robyn's house."

Garrison, the son of Kody and ex-wife Janelle, was found dead at his Flagstaff, Arizona home by brother Gabriel on March 5, 2024. He died by suicide.

The rest of the episode showed the family grapple with the news, mainly in confessionals in which they detailed how they found out about his death and the aftermath.

Kody and Garrison were still somewhat estranged before his death, it seems, following a shifting family dynamic over COVID. Kody felt some of the kids -- especially his sons with Janelle, Garrison included -- weren't respecting his COVID protocols and were prioritizing their social lives over safety; they, however, felt he was prioritizing his family with wife Robyn over everyone else.

In the episode, Kody made it clear that not being able to fully mend things before Garrison's death was taking its toll on him.

"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," he said in a conversation with his wife. "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 then started to go through the many "what ifs" going through his mind.

"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," he shared. "It makes me feel connected to him to do the what ifs. It's just heartbreaking."

Getting visibly 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."

After he and Janelle decided to cremate Garrison, based on his wishes, and bring his remains to Wyoming to be buried near other family members, Kody said he looked at the trip as a "pilgrimage" of sorts. "I just want to take his body home and put him in the ground," he added.

In the wake of Garrison's death, another of Kody's estranged children, daughter Gwendylyn, apparently needed to be with her father.

"Gwendylyn 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 shared, adding that the "first moment grief really clobbered me" happened when the two were holding hands once she showed up to his home.

"I feel this grief come up out of me and everybody's silent. Gwendylyn'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," he explained. "I don't know what to do, I'm lost in this."

Garrison's mother, Janelle, said she and her son had been texting each other all day before his death -- something she said was "not unusual," as they often talked a few times each 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 said, adding that she knew he was often talking with his brothers as well.

The night he died, she laid down to go to bed around 8:30pm and he "kind of stopped texting me." She said she knew he had started drinking again and would go through periods of stopping and binging, so she reached out to son Logan and Christin's son Hunter, asking them to also reach out to him. "They were on it," she recalled, saying she went to sleep, only to be woken up by a call from son Gabriel -- "and he's like, 'Mom, he's gone," she shared.

"He said, 'He's dead. He killed himself.' I don't remember the next few minutes. I got in the car and drove," she revealed.

Looking back, Janelle said that he "really struggled" with alcohol in recent years, something he started to do during COVID. She said the family offered him "all the love, all the support, all the help, all the resources," adding, "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."

Janelle explained she was happy she wasn't living in Flagstaff anymore and was happy to be closer to her kids and grandchildren after a recent move. Her younger sister Carrie also came to stay with her for a while, as viewers saw a very raw and emotional conversation between the pair, who continued to break into tears.

"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," Janelle told her sister. "We did everything we could. And I know that."

She added that she was a bit "worried" about Gabriel, who found Garrison's body, but said that, because of counseling, he was already in a better place that he had been "for a long time" before his brother's suicide. While the death "set him back," she felt like he was doing "okay" -- and added the whole family was starting to have more "frank conversations about mental health."

In one heartbreaking confessional, Janelle said, "I know that he's dead, but I forget that he's dead and then I'm like, 'Oh, I remember.'"

Gabriel made a rare appearance on the show to talk about his late brother.

"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 recalled. "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."

Madison, another of Janelle's children with Kody, shared that she and her mother had been talking a lot the day of Garrison's death. Then, her mother told her he had committed suicide.

"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," she recalled. Madison also said that she and her husband were trying to get Garrison to move out near them and felt they "almost had him here too, almost had him."

Mykelti, Kody's daughter with Christine, later remembered Garrison during the episode as being "cool" and the "jokester of the family."

Following his death, there was a viewing for family and friends -- something Meri recalled as being "really, really difficult" and "really, really painful," as it was the "last time we saw his body."

Kody said his strongest memories in the days after Garrison's death were being with Janelle at the funeral home -- as he admitted, "I didn't know what to say to anybody besides I'm sorry to everybody."

Christine went on to call the service "beautiful," opening up about the moment she lost it while speaking at the memorial.

"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," she explained, referring to the 1996 movie Dragonheart. "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.'"

While they had a viewing in Flagstaff, Janelle explained they were waiting to have a true funeral "in a better time of year" in Wyoming -- "until the summer, when everybody can be there and we can celebrate him properly."

If you or someone you know is struggling with depression or has had thoughts of harming themselves or taking their own life, get help. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (1-800-273-8255) provides 24/7, free, confidential support for people in distress.