Erika Kirk, the wife of the late conservative activist Charlie Kirk, reflected on the advice second lady Usha Vance gave her in the aftermath of her husband’s killing in a New York Times opinion piece published Monday.
Kirk recalled telling Vance, the wife of Vice President JD Vance, the day after her husband was fatally shot that she didn’t know how to move forward.
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Kirk said Usha Vance replied with an analogy about the pandemonium of flying with children before the airplane finally lands, which she said is forever “seared into my heart.”
“You know when you’re on an airplane with your kids, and you’re going to land in 15 minutes, but the kids are going crazy, screaming, throwing things, and then the plane lands, and the kids relax, and everything is fine again?” Usha Vance said, according to the essay. “That’s how it will be. Just get through the next 15 minutes.”
Charlie Kirk was fatally shot on Sept. 10, 2025, while delivering a speech at a campus event at Utah Valley University. He was 31.
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Charlie Kirk and his wife Erika Kirk tied the knot in 2021. Samuel Corum via Getty Images
Last week, Tyler Robinson, a 23-year-old Utah man, pleaded not guilty to the murder of Charlie Kirk at a hearing on Sep. 1, after a judge ruled that prosecutors can seek the death penalty at trial if he is convicted.
In her NYT piece, Erika Kirk, the now-CEO of her late husband’s conservative nonprofit Turning Point USA, recalled what it was like coming home within the first 24 hours after her husband’s death.
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“The past 24 hours feel like a fever dream as I land in Phoenix from Utah and return home,” she wrote. “I get out of the car, and my kids run into my arms. They have no idea where I was or what I was doing. They care only that I am home.”
Noting that “grief is strange,” she continued in her NYT piece, “Time continues even when every part of you wants it to pause or, better yet, rewind. But the people we love who have passed on would not want us to spend the rest of our lives trying to rewind.”
She added, “At first, I needed to survive the next 15 minutes. Over time, I’ve realized that Charlie would want me to live them.”
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