Faith Over Fear: Kirks walk through tsunami, choose to keep serving

■ Elliot and Brittiany Kirk have built their lives around helping families navigate loss. Now, with a baby in heaven and a three-year-old fighting cancer, they are living the grief they have always counseled others through.

By Floyd Miller | West Texas Tribune

On Wednesday, March 11, I went to North’s Funeral Home to visit Elliot and Brittiany Kirk. The Kirks had been on my radar for some time because I wanted to highlight how this young couple was successfully owning and operating Abilene’s oldest funeral home, dating back to 1905.

However, by the time the interview took place, the story line had changed drastically. This story is now about how the Kirks are leading others through the storm as they navigate their own tsunami.

When I arrived, Elliot and I talked a bit about the Abilene Black Chamber of Commerce, where we serve on the board together. I guess you could say that was the icebreaker before getting into the interview.

When he is not working, Elliot said he likes to get away by fishing — most often at Fort Phantom Lake — and he has been passing that love of the water on to his son, Elijah.

Brittiany, meanwhile, recently co-founded Faithful Steps Therapy Solutions, an Applied Behavior Analysis center serving children on the autism spectrum, adding yet another chapter to a family already deeply invested in this community.

My first question to Elliot was why he chose the funeral business as a career.

Elliot said he grew up watching his mother.

“Back then, they didn’t really allow women in the funeral business: I mean, there were women, but they were kind of in the back,” Elliot said. “She didn’t get to work that much, only when a personal friend passed away, or someone she knew.”

What his mother lacked in opportunity, she made up for in devotion. Elliot remembers people coming to their house in the middle of the night — not to the funeral home, to the house — when someone in the community passed. His mother would dress, go to the family, and walk them through what came next. That image never left him.

She started in the funeral business in 1988. It wasn’t until 2005 that the family finally had the resources to open their own business. They started small — a vacant funeral home in Coleman that the owner agreed to let them reopen. It had been called Jackson Mortuary. Under the Kirks, it became Baker Kirk Mortuary.

“We didn’t have the money for the nice, big, fancy places,” Elliot said with a slight smile. “I told my mom and my dad, ‘We have to start somewhere.’”

They grew from there. Today, North’s Funeral Home operates in Abilene, and Elliot runs it with Brittiany, who came to the work from a different direction entirely.

“I’ve always been in the field of helping others,” Brittiany said. “At the end of the day, that’s what this is. We’re giving someone’s last memory of their loved one, and our job is to make it the best one. Because it is our last one.”

A Good Funeral

Ask Elliot Kirk what makes a good funeral, and he answers without hesitation — and with a trace of dry wit.

“You know, it’s hard to mess up a funeral,” he said. “You really have to be completely off to mess it up. A good funeral is when everyone’s satisfied, the deceased looks good, everything goes as planned, everyone’s on time, and the finances are taken care of without an issue. No snags.”

Beyond the logistics, there is something deeper the Kirks are after — something that unfolds in the days and weeks after the last goodbyes have been said.

“We hope the family gets closure,” Elliot said. “We want to create a relationship with them so they know, when they need us down the road, we’re here.”

Brittiany described the way they think of the families they serve — not as clients, but as extensions of their own circle.

“We bring the families in as our families,” she said. “If that means staying up all night long with them until they’re ready, that’s what we’ll do. Some places give you a two-hour time block. That’s not us.”

The cases that stay with them most, they said, are the children.

“Kids are always different,” Elliot said quietly. “With elderly people, they lived their life. With kids, most of the time it’s an accident, or something just unfortunate. Those are the ones that are really hard for us.”

He paused. Then, gently, Brittiany added that they know that particular grief now in a way they did not before.

One in Heaven

On Sept. 26 of last year, Elliot and Brittiany Kirk lost a baby. She was ten days old.

“We have two living and one in heaven,” Brittiany said, as though she has had to find a way to say it that doesn’t open the floodgates of tears every time.

Brittiany recalled that during the pregnancy, a number of infants had passed through their doors — stillbirths, losses in the womb — and she and Elliot had served those families with the same care they extend to every family. She remembered the first time, years earlier, sitting in a restaurant with Elliot when they had just learned they were having a boy, and a call came in about an infant boy who had passed.

They answered the call then, and they answer them now. That is the particular weight of being in this business: grief does not wait for you to be finished grieving yourself.

Brilee

Their daughter Brilee is three years old. She has neuroblastoma — one of the most aggressive childhood cancers, and one that disproportionately strikes children under five.

It began quietly, as these things often do. A cough in the fall that seemed like a cold. Another cold a few weeks later. Her leg was hurting, so they took her in for X-rays. Nothing, the doctors said. A low-grade fever came and went. They were told to give her Tylenol or ibuprofen. An ear infection was diagnosed. Three months passed.

Then on Feb. 12, blood work flagged anemia. The anemia led to a scan of her abdomen. The scan found the mass.

“A lot of the families we’re meeting at the hospital … same thing,” Brittiany said. “Joint pains, low-grade fevers, doctors saying it’s a virus. Three months in, and then: let’s get blood work.”

Brilee’s treatment is now underway, but the hospital equipped to treat her is more than two hours away. “If her fever spikes above 100.4 — which happened just last week — she needs to reach a pediatric facility within 30 minutes. Abilene does not have one,” Brittiany said.

Elliot said of the local hospital’s response during the fever episode: “We hope that during this process Hendricks establishes a better, more strict protocol when dealing with minor oncology patients when trying to transfer them to a better-equipped facility.”

But the Kirks know that “okay” has to hold together across 18 months of treatment. And the logistics grow harder by the week.

Their insurance — purchased to cover the doctors and facilities in Abilene — is not accepted at the Fort Worth hospital treating Brilee. Twenty days into treatment, Brittiany received a call informing her the family owed $46,000 by Tuesday.

“I said, so you’re telling me that if I don’t pay you half, you’re not going to see my daughter?” Brittiany recalled. The hospital offered another path forward, but the message had already landed. A GoFundMe campaign has since helped cover the gap — the new insurance runs approximately $5,000 a month, with the GoFundMe covering the $3,000 difference above what they were already paying. That buys them roughly ten months.

A benefit car show, organized by Kyle Beck and held annually at the convention center, will be dedicated to Brilee this summer.

What Gets Them Through

“Brilee does not look sick. That is both a mercy and a strange kind of grief — watching a child who dances and plays and chatters and doesn’t yet understand why pieces of her hair are coming loose,” Brittiany said.

“She’ll bring me pieces of her hair and say, ‘Mommy, I know my hair is going to grow back,’” Brittiany said. “She’s very knowing. She’s very strong.”

Every day, Brilee tells her mother she feels good. Every day, the Kirks pour faith and positivity into her and try to take the next hour as it comes.

“What’s getting us through is our faith,” Brittiany said. “We serve a big God, and he is going to walk us through every step of the way — good, bad, ugly. We have faith he is going to heal her, one way or another. She’s a Jesus lover. She sings his praises and prays for herself.”

Beyond Brilee

Even in the middle of this, the Kirks are already thinking about what comes after — not just for Brilee, but for every West Texas family that will one day find itself where they are now.

Last week, Brittiany sat in a waiting room with three other mothers from Abilene. Different diagnoses, different hospital rooms, same problem: no nearby treatment, no place to stay, hotel costs adding up on top of everything else.

“We thought — maybe we need to buy a house out there,” Brittiany said. “When we’re done with it, we could have it for the West Texas people to come and stay. There used to be something like that near Cook Children’s. When the lady who ran it passed, the grandchildren sold it. We need something like that again.”

For anyone who wants to help the Kirk family, prayers top the list. The GoFundMe remains active. The car show benefit is planned for this summer. And beyond donations, the Kirks said, people can reach out through North’s Funeral Home.

“We just need miracles,” Elliot said. “We need prayers. And we know the Lord is going to show us what to keep doing.”

It has been that kind of year for the Kirks — the kind that tests every conviction a person holds. And yet the doors of North’s Funeral Home remain open. The phone still gets answered. The families still get walked through.

Because that is what the Kirks do. Like his mother before him, Elliot is committed to his families. Even now.

If you would like to contribute to the fund for Brilee, you can give online: https://gofund.me/592c116e0