i asked my Christian brothers the same thing. "why shouldn't kill myself?" bc im fucking serious, i ask u the same.

Two years ago, a few days before his 65th birthday, my brother tied a rope to the inside door handle of his closet door. He threw the rope over the door and made his noose.

It was on a Saturday night and when he didn't show up for work on Monday his boss went to his apartment. When the boss and the super of the apartment building couldn't get an answer they called the police.

They found him semi-crouched, hanging, dead. He was neatly dressed. He had cleaned his apartment, had a glass of wine but hadn't finished the bottle, he left no note. But he left a clear, screaming statement of pain and distress. He had carefully staged his hanging by using the closet door that directly faced the apartment door.

He had been aloof from us, his birth family for years, sort of stand-offish. He had suffered increasingly from alcoholism and as many alcoholics was doing everything he could to hide his disease.

About a year earlier he had planned to come and visit us, a real treat that hadn't happened in over a decade. The morning of his drive up he called. He had an accident, damaged his car, and the police were coming. So he never made it home. I look back now and wonder if maybe he was coming home for help ...

We learned after the death phone call from his wife that he was drunk that morning of his trip home and ran into a ditch. When the police came they took his license. The Friday of the weekend he committed suicide, a year later, he had a court hearing about getting his license back and the judge denied it.

His boss, who went to the court hearing with him, told him he had to get sober or he would lose his job. That night he tried to kill himself with a knife across his wrists. He was too drunk to do it right and again his boss, being concerned had checked in on him. The boss took him to the hospital who bandaged him up, sent him home, and told him to find a rehab.

...Sorry ... got to breath here for a moment ... this still hurts and I think it will hurt forever and forever and forever ...

My sister-in-law, a woman who hadn't spoken to me in four decades, called that morning and I knew the moment I heard her voice that my brother was death. All she said in that call was that "Your Brother committed suicide and he's dead. The police think he did it on Saturday night and I am going up for the body tomorrow." The call was less than two minutes ... two minutes to for her to close the book on his life.

The Body ... BITCH!

She is such a devote, good Catholic woman and has been all of her life. She treated his illness, and yes, alcoholism is a disease, as a direct insult to her. Because of his job he had to take a job several states away from his home and get himself an apartment. We learned nearly a year later that just a few weeks before he died that she had told him he could not come back to her house without a direct invitation from her. She had kicked him out!

We also learned about a year after his death that the previous Christmas .. when she had allowed him to visit ... that he was visually showing signs of advanced liver problems with large areas of bruising, excessive bleeding, and perhaps the beginning of alcoholic diabetes. But she, who works in the health field, never got him to the hospital or to a doctor.

She wanted her Catholic divorce. She couldn't go to a lawyer and file for divorce because it would have put her soul in jeopardy, she would have been committing a sin. So she got her Catholic divorce by blocking him from any means that might have saved his life, including me.

I have in my life helped my father find help with is alcoholism and he died with 15 years of sobriety. I was directly involved with my father-in-law's drinking problem, and he died with 12 years of sobriety. My hubby celebrated 27 years of sober living this last Christmas. I know now what I did not realize then, that the reason she had driven a stake between me and my brother was that I was a direct treat to her getting her Catholic divorce.

I had to tell our 90 year old mother, who lives with me, that her first born died. I was the one that had to tell her how he died. I held her and she shock so violently that I thought she was dying too from the grieve. I held her as we learned a little new each day about how he died and the why he died.

I didn't get to cry, I had to wait because she had to come first. So I just shock inside with her and waited until night when I could cry into my pillow so that she would hear me sobbing.

I lose my faith over three decades ago, and I lost it from going to AA and Alanon. I never was devote, but the program helped me realize that God was nothing but a made-up myth. But Mom still believes so when her preachers - a husband and wife team - came to visit I encouraged her to share with them in hopes that they could offer some type of comfort.

They responded to her tears with dead silence, they never even had the guts to talk about my brother, his death, his suicide, or where his soul went. The silence was almost violent and then that son of a bitch preacher leaned over her to 'pray the devil away, out of from her soul!' That Jesus Christ would cleanse her soul of the devil's taint of grieving for a man that committed the most terrible of sins and now will burn in hell for eternity. Son of a bithch.

Breathing ...

His wife damned him through her Catholic believes, she murdered him by doing nothing. AA would have damned him again by talking about a god that would send him to hell. Even a preacher who never knew him damned him.

The hole that is inside of me will never heal. I will never again hear his voice on the phone, never another stupid email joke, I will never get another political screaming match where his hotheadedness and mine collide. Every October will be filled with his memories, every Christmas there will be an ... Oh, this is just about too much for me ... He's gone and he never can come back and I hurt so much.

Please don't do this ...

PLEASE THERE IS SOMEONE OUT THERE IN YOUR LIFE JUST LIKE ME THAT WILL HAVE TO CRY INTO HER PILLOW FOREVER AND FOREVER ... PLEASE CALL SOMEONE, ASK FOR HELP. SOMEONE LOVES YOU, I LOVED HIM. PLEASE.

/r/Atheists Thread