Samantha Busch marked her family’s first Father’s Day without NASCAR champion Kyle Busch with a raw, grief-filled tribute posted to social media one month after his death.
Kyle Busch died on May 21 at age 41 after a severe case of pneumonia developed into sepsis. He is survived by Samantha and their two children, 11-year-old Brexton and 4-year-old Lennix. Sunday, June 21, brought the family face-to-face with a holiday that had previously been a source of celebration — this time without the man at the center of it.
A Drawer Full of Cards With Nowhere to Go
In her social media post, Samantha described lying awake through the night thinking about what the day should have looked like. Among the details that struck hardest: Father’s Day cards the children had already made, sitting untouched in a drawer. “This still doesn’t feel real at all,” she wrote, adding that those cards had “no one to give them to.”
She painted a picture of Kyle as a deeply present father — one who raced the kids around the neighborhood, stayed up for extra bedtime books, and never passed up a chance to be silly with his children. “Nothing made him prouder than being Brexton and Lennix’s dad,” she wrote.
Revisiting memories, Samantha admitted, has been agonizing, though she described those same moments as a reminder of how fortunate the family was. She went further in describing grief as something physical — an absence felt in the body, not just the mind. “Our bodies hurt from missing you, from reaching for someone who isn’t there, from loving someone we can’t hold anymore,” she wrote. She closed with a promise to keep telling Kyle’s stories and ensuring their children always understand how deeply their father loved them.
Racing World Adds Its Own Tribute
The Father’s Day post came one day after a significant moment for Richard Childress Racing, the Cup Series team Kyle drove for. On Saturday, driver Austin Hill won the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series race at Naval Base Coronado in San Diego — the organization’s first trip to Victory Lane since Kyle’s death.
Hill said he found himself thinking about his late teammate during the final laps, quietly asking Kyle for help. He credited a last-minute adjustment to the car for turning those closing laps around, describing how the car “just came to life” after he began working the front brake differently. Following the checkered flag, Hill honored Kyle with a burnout beside a tribute that had been painted on the track.
A month removed from his passing, the outpouring from both Kyle’s family and the broader racing community shows no signs of fading.
