A home video was how Odin Lloyd’s mom wanted to remember her only son: happy and laughing.
But that is not how she remembers him now, after hearing prosecutors describe how they allege Aaron Hernandez shot and killed him.
“I was so hurt. I thought I could have felt his pain, I could have done something. Wish I was there to take the bullets for him. I wish I was there,” said Lloyd’s mother, Ursula Ward.
Lloyd’s sister Olivia still has the last voicemail message he left her on her cell phone.
“Sometimes I think of him and I laugh, cause there’s a lot of great things, but then I think about those same memories and it’s kind of like I won’t have any of those any more,” said Olivia Thibou.
The hurt was deepened by the close relationship the two had, and the special bond Lloyd shared with Olivia’s 9-year-old daughter, who wrote her uncle a letter last November when she lost a tooth.
“Dear Uncle Odin, I love you so much. Can you tell the tooth fairy to get my tooth? And can you help grandma so she will not cry for you? I love you.”
It’s a love Lloyd’s only nephew never got to experience, as he was born to Lloyd’s sister Shaquilla, months after Lloyd was murdered.
“His hands are like so huge and everyone’s like, ‘that’s Odin’s hands.’ A lot of people say he looks just like him,” Shaquilla Thibou said.
Lloyd’s mother sees the resemblance and hopes it will give her thestrengtht she needs to get her through the trial without falling apart.
“Every time I go to court, I will go to my son’s grave grave and I will ask him to just hug me tight. And he’d see that I’m about to fall apart. And I have been feeling his arms around me several times. He say, ‘ma I got this. I got you, ma.'”