Jaaden Luke Abraham
Jaaden Luke Abraham was born 03 December 1992 in Brisbane. Ross and Kathy knew pretty early on that they had a highly energised and determined boy on their hands.
His first school was Christian outreach College in Brisbane. But he ended up going to several schools throughout his life due to the family moving around a lot to start churches.
They moved to GC in 1996 and then back to Brisbane 98. Then to Denver Colorado in 2003. Then back to the GC 2006. He finished school early in year 10 at Varsity College due to, let’s say being an outside learner. Let’s be honest, schools not for everyone.
Jaaden was straight into the building industry as a labourer and then an apprentice carpenter. He had an on and off love for the building industry (actually, for work in general).
Because of his years in the church, Jaaden grew up with a love for music. He trained his ear as an audio engineer by being frustrated at other volunteers who weren’t doing it well. He seemed to have a way of learning on the job like I haven’t seen before. He truly defined the term ‘experience driven learner.’ (I’m sure there’s many here who would agree).
This love for music and sound led him into the music industry. The first band that he cut his teeth with was Art Of Sleeping. And also the wiggles.
As he toured different venues and shows he networked like only Jaaden could. He grew in his connections and opportunities. We want to give a big shoutout to Marcus who helped show Jaaden the ropes and led him into wider opportunities with bands like Flight facilities and many more.
As these opportunity grew he realised the Gold Coast simply wasn’t the place for this industry. This led him to move to Sydney. Living in Bondi he expanded his career and also a whole new group of friends.
Jaaden ended up touring the world. Which is hilarious because we called this from a young age saying “Watch, Jaaden will end up rich and famous and go around the world.” Not too sure about the rich part, but he definitely did some really amazing things that an untrained sound engineer and tour manager should simply not get to do.
“Only Jaaden” is a term used a lot in our family.
After a good few years in the music industry, Jaaden felt like the steam was running out. This led him back into the building world and he got an apprenticeship as a mature age apprentice carpenter with some great builders in Sydney.
In 2021 he decided his Sydney season was done and decided to move back to the GC. He then moved to Billinugel in northern NSW where we believed Jaaden really started to find his people and his place to live.
After the floods in 2022, he went and did insurance work in Lismore and was making some big money. Funnily enough he didn’t pay his parents back the debts he owed them. But I’m sure they would go through all of that again just to have him here. It seemed like this was a turning point for him.
He then moved to Byron and started working for Blaze Constructions. The last job he was working on was the old Byron hospital where Blaze are transforming it into a community centre. From all the stories we’ve heard from the blaze guys is that Jaaden was growing from strength to strength as a project manager and could have really gone places with it. I guess when you’ve got the gift of the gab it doesn’t matter if you’re running festivals, touring the world Or running building projects, the gift and passion on Jaaden’s life just seem to make a way.
It was while living in Billnugel and Byron that Jaaden found one of his true loves, BOXING. We’ve seen Jaaden go hard and fast into most things and move on pretty quickly, but boxing seemed to be the beautiful fit for Jaaden’s energy and drive. As he grew in his ability he ended up training with the world champion Maloney brothers who gave him some amateur fights. We are very thankful for the people he met in this world of boxing as you all had a great impact on his life.
On Saturday April 13th Jaaden was riding his e-bike home from a catch up with his best friend Mitchell, when he hit a curb and crashed. This led to severe brain injuries and he was flown to GC University hospital. These are the moments no parent or family are ever ready for as your world is thrown into an absolute spin of anxiety, pain and grief.
It’s in these moments that you truly find what your life is built on. As Jesus says in his parable about the building of our lives. If we build them on the rock (which is Jesus), when the wind and rain and storms of life come against us, we will see a strength that we wouldn’t have otherwise.
Because of our faith in God, as crushing and painful as it was getting this news, we were praying for a miracle, as we’ve seen them before. While also holding the tension that Gods plans and desires may be different to our plans and desires.
We’re not going to lie, those 4 days in the hospital beside Jaaden were some of the hardest moments anyone can face. But we are thankful to those first responders who acted quickly on the scene which allowed emergency services to get Jaaden airlifted to GC hospital where family and friends were able to be by his side, talking, crying, laughing, singing and praying over him.
Jaaden passed away peacefully around 4am on Wednesday the 17th of April with his girlfriend by his side.
To see that he was surrounded by so many loving family and friends over those 3-4 days was amazing.
Jaaden was deeply loved and was someone who loved deeply.
Jaaden posted to his Facebook in 2010 a quote that says this,
“Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live”.
We will honour Jaadens legacy to live boldly, take risks, love deeply and laugh loudly.
We love you Jaaden!!