It's especially hard to mourn those who have died, especially when a body is never recovered. Sunday, family members read the names off a memorial for those lost at sea for the seventh year in a row.
On April 2, 2005, Murrells Inlet fisherman Johnny Brown and two others were off the coast of the Outer Banks in North Carolina when a rogue wave hit the boat. Two of Brown's shipmates were found, but Brown never was. For his mother, Brenda, dealing with the loss was unbearable.
"When we lost Johnny we had nowhere to go," Brown says.
Since 2006, and every year since, Brenda Brown and her family attend a ceremony for those lost at sea at a monument the family helped erect. More names are added each year. The monument is paid for entirely by donations and has cost more than $10,000.
Brown says the ceremony gets both harder and easier each year.
"A couple of years ago I told my husband I don't think I can go through this. It's like a funeral for Johnny every year," she says. "But, when I see what it does for the other people, you have to keep doing it. It's now more for the other people."
Today, there are 29 names on the monument with the earliest "lost at sea" dating back to 1925. No new names were added from 2011.
