Family blows up 'cancer' couch to mark somber anniversary

MIDLOTHIAN, Texas — A little more than a year after a 13-year-old Texas boy died from a four-year battle with cancer, he continues to have an impact on those who knew him best.

Ethan Hallmark's public and courageous message of optimism, in spite of a stream of never-ending treatments, inspired Team Ethan signs to pop up around this town about 25 miles southwest of Texas, as well as a lengthy documentary.

His mother, Rachel Hallmark, said she still thinks about her eldest almost every minute of every day.

"It's always there," she said. "But I really learned from the best kid ever on how to face adversity."

The family's home remains decorated with photos of Ethan and his siblings. There are also the famous beads, each one of which represented a dose of treatment, trip to the hospital, or memorable step in Ethan's cancer battle.

But one thing visitors won't find anymore is the couch where Ethan spent countless hours during his treatment. It also was the place where he died on Sept. 26, 2014.

"I struggled with looking at it every single day. It killed me," Rachel said. "Most people who came in my house, they didn't know where he died. And when they would sit in the spot he died on. It felt like my heart was being ripped out over and over."

To mark the year anniversary of his passing, the family decided to finally do something about the couch.

On Saturday, a group of friends helped them haul it to a rural field, where they packed it with seven pounds of explosives, and blew it into pieces.

"It was a way to honor his memory, and therapeutic to us," Rachel said. "It's an important step in the grief."

She and Ethan's dad, Matt, uploaded video of the explosion to YouTube.

He hopes it serves, in part, as a way for grieving or troubled families to realize there isn't one way — or even, necessarily, a right way — to process grief.

"As time goes on, those emotional ambushes are still there," he said. "You don't know when they'll happen or how bad they will be, but you sort of try to cope with it as best you can."

Ethan's father said while they debated moving away, too, in the end, they knew the home wasn't the problem. It was just one thing in it.

"The couch had to go," he said.