‘A beautiful light;’ Community mourns loss of Medicine Hat man who died of an accidental overdose

MEDICINE HAT AB- Hugging each other tightly two men hold back tears, each mourning the loss their dear friend whose life was taken from an accidental overdose.

Brayden Nunweiler died last Sunday on August 23. He was 25- years-old.

His death is one of at least five deaths involving young men in the city that have occurred the during past several weeks.

Nunweiler’s death has left his friends and family shattered.

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“Hug your loved ones as often as you can because you never know when the last time you get to see them is, so hug them close and hug them often,” friend Thomas Balmer said.

Nunweiler was known as a caring, supportive friend who would put others before himself.

“He was always smiling. He was always trying to get you to smile and if he couldn’t then he would do everything he could to make you feel good at least, “ friend Justin Doyle said.

But behind the smile, and the desire to make others happy was a battle with opioids and addiction.

“ Heroin was something that he would dabble in and I think that’s what killed him, to be honest, but yeah I think that’s what his biggest struggle was, and maybe some medication as well” Balmer said.

The death of a close friend to overdose, an even more painful reality for Balmer.

“I was screaming. I was so angry to lose him and to lose such a beautiful light in this world like I can’t even express that but anger like I lost my sister, my cousin and now my really good friend to the same thing the same overdosing and its hard,” he said.

Balmer says more funding for counseling and addictions treatment needs to occur in order to help more young people in the city that are struggling.

“We could be facilitating more for these people we could be doing so much more for these people and Medicine Hat hasn’t and we don’t,” he said

The stigma and attitudes surrounding people who suffer from addiction also need to end.

“Brayden was a light. Brayden was the nicest, kindest most genuine person I’ve ever had the privilege of meeting or knowing, and before you judge somebody because of their drug addiction, if you haven’t been affected directly by drugs, or your family members have not been directly affected by drugs, I don’t want to hear it. This man was an absolute gem,” Balmer said.

Skate 4 Brayden

Before his death, Nunweiler was an avid skateboarder and was often at the Inland Skateboard Park.

“He taught so many people down at the skate park how to skate, how to ride, encouraged them to get up when they fell down. He was an angel,” Balmer said.

To honour his legacy, skateboarders from across the city took to their boards, a week after his death on Sunday to skate eight kilometres in his memory. The skaters started at the Medicine Hat arena downtown and finished at the Inland Skateboard Park, a route Nunweiler loved to skate.

“That’s exactly what he would have wanted, and that was the type of person he was a skater to the heart and to the death, and I think he was smiling down on us when we were all skating together,” Balmer said.