Erika Kirk is carrying the weight of grief in the most personal way possible… by wearing the blood-stained pendant her late husband, Charlie Kirk, had on when his life was cut short at a Utah Turning Point USA event less than two weeks ago.
In a candid conversation with The New York Times, Erika revealed that she now wears the small St. Michael icon that emergency medics pulled from Charlie’s body as they tried desperately to save him. The pendant, still marked with traces of his blood, has become both a symbol of her loss and a sacred reminder of the conservative leader’s final moments.
Erika shared that law enforcement initially advised her not to view Charlie’s body, warning of the devastation the gunshot wound had caused. But she refused to be shielded from the truth. “With all due respect, I want to see what they did to my husband,” she said, recalling how she kissed him goodbye at the hospital. His “semi-open eyes” and faint, “Mona Lisa-like smile,” she described, looked almost as if “he’d died happy… like Jesus rescued him. The bullet came, he blinked, and he was in heaven.”
Now, the mother of two is navigating an unimaginable new reality. Erika admitted she cannot bring herself to sleep in her bedroom, instead rotating to different spots in her home each night. She’s even held onto the towels Charlie used during his final shower, unable to let go of even the smallest fragments of his presence.
For Erika, every trace of her husband… from his smile to the pendant around her neck… has become a way to keep his spirit alive, even as the nation mourns the shocking loss of a controversial yet influential activist.
