Mother leaves behind a present

Owen Langan has a smile bright as the sun. He has the solid love of his father, and doting grandparents.

A blur of energy, the toddler greets a visitor with a bouncy ball in his hands. He’s ready to play.

Someday, he’ll be ready to know about his mother. He’ll yearn for more than he can see in pictures of the pretty young woman displayed prominently in his Everett home.

Breana Langan died April 30, 2006, when Owen was 5 months old. She was 29.

She’d had health problems before and after her only child was born, and she was on medications. “She went to sleep one night and didn’t wake up,” said Cynthia Mitchell, Breana Langan’s mother.

“She was so crazy about Owen. He was a miracle come true for her,” said her father, Dewey McCandlis. “When I think about her and the baby, it just kills me, all those little moments she’ll never get to see. It just breaks my heart.”

The loss of the vibrant young mother shattered many hearts, none more deeply than her husband’s.

Ben Langan, 30, married Briana McCandlis in 2002, about a year before he was sent to Iraq. It was January, but winter cold didn’t keep the couple from an outdoor wedding at her father’s home near Mukilteo.

“He was going to Iraq, and she wanted to marry him before he left. We put up a tent out here on the water and had the wedding in our yard,” said Dewey McCandlis. A former beauty salon owner, McCandlis now owns Pacific Wine &Kitchen shop in Everett.

Langan, an Army veteran, served with the 1st Ranger Battalion and, in Iraq, with the 3rd Infantry Division. Based at Hunter Army Airfield in Georgia, he was in Iraq seven months and was part of the initial invasion.

“All the stuff we saw on TV in the beginning, he was there,” McCandlis said.

Langan now owns an Everett espresso stand outside Brecyn Salon, which is owned by Mitchell, his mother-in-law. A 1996 graduate of Cascade High School, he’s also a volunteer baseball coach at Everett High School, his wife’s alma mater.

These days, his true life’s work is being a father. Owen attends a Montessori program in Everett and regularly spends time with grandparents. McCandlis and his wife, Lindalee, take their 17-month-old grandson to a weekly music program. For Mother’s Day, the boy will visit his paternal grandmother, Arlene Gallagher, on Whidbey Island.

“We think we should build a big house and all of us live together,” said Mitchell, who spends as much time as possible with her daughter’s baby. She and McCandlis divorced when their only daughter was small, but they remained friends.

Owen is surrounded by love, but he knows that home is with dad.

“It’s not easy, but I couldn’t imagine it any other way,” said Langan. He’s been a hands-on father, beginning with late-night feedings, right from the start of his son’s life.

“He’s happy and good-spirited. The only time he throws a fuss is when I change his diaper or clothes,” Langan said.

Pictures of Breana decorate Owen’s bedroom. But the boy whose eyes resemble his mom’s is too young to understand the family’s tragedy.

Someday, Langan will tell his son about the beautiful woman he first dated in high school. She was a real person, not perfect like an image in a photograph.

“She was really into music, she liked rap. She loved new places and seeing new things. Her mother has a cabin at Mount Baker, and she loved going there and taking walks,” Langan said.

His wife was opinionated; she’d say what was on her mind.

“She was one of those people who always wanted to know more, she’d ask a hundred questions,” Langan said.

Mitchell remembers her daughter’s sense of adventure. They traveled to Europe together, and later Breana went alone to Africa. “She met up with a safari group, she wanted to see gorillas,” Mitchell said.

Breana had a soft spot for animals and took in cats, a dog and a turtle, her mother said. “She was incredibly loyal to the people she loved,” Mitchell added.

The young mother loved her baby. She lives on through him.

“She always had one question when the baby was born,” McCandlis said of his daughter. “She’d look at you and say, ‘Isn’t he perfect?’ And he is.

“Owen is a gift.”

Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlsteinjulie@heraldnet.com.