My brother killed himself this past October. In fact, my phone had died on Monday of that week, and I was still without one on Thursday when people were trying to call me to tell me what had happened. I still found out that night reading over the blog of a mutual friend.
TL;DR: Honestly, I knew it was going to happen eventually, and I was somewhat relieved when it did. It was at least his 3rd attempt over his 38 years, not to mention all the self destructive things he had done in between all of those. I DO love my brother - he is absolutely the foundation for the person I am, and he was more of a parent to me than my mom or dad (he was 12 when I was born,) and I think about him and miss him every single day, but when I think about how much I miss him, I mean I miss the person he had been, not the person that died on October 29th.
Context:
Growing up, my brother was that kid who knew what was cool. He was the kid that knew which bands were good, which rappers to listen to, he knew which tv shows to watch, he knew all the weird little spots throughout our rural area to skate and swim and smoke pot, and this was all pre-internet. When he died, SO MANY people came out to say that they would have had no idea about the late 80's/early 90's alternative lifestyle if not for him. I think he just spent a lot of time trying to be outside the house because we only had our mother (and whatever boyfriend she had) and she has narcissistic personality disorder. I remember tagging along with him and his friends on pretty crazy adventures - going to abandoned warehouses that had been turned into indoor skateparks or spraypainting under bridges - and this was when I was a little kid! I always remember him being excited to take his little brother along with him.
Through his early 20's, he was still all about living on the edge - he lived all across the country, and just made it work no matter what he had started with. There were times he was homeless, but he just made things happen - one week he would be homeless, the next he would have a job and an apartment and a bunch of friends. He eventually landed a pretty good office job with really great benefits, he met a girl, and got married, and they bought a house. But, the whole time, through everything, he had been drinking heavily. I think somewhere he thought settling down would make him feel better and more valuable, but in all honesty, I think it forced him to put some things in perspective - it wasn't "good time party drinking with friends" anymore, it was "alcoholism alone in the basement," and it took him away from a lot of the things he had used to distract himself from this overbearing sense of worthlessness.
After 6 years of marriage, his wife couldn't handle it any more. He just gave up the house and car they had gotten jointly, he gave up both of their dogs (who they treated like kids,) and he started drinking before and during work - so he ended up losing all of that within the span of a year.
His last few years were rough. He spent his 401k and other savings, and then he just couldn't get a job, and then he couldn't hold a job - for someone who had previously been able to do this with ease, I am sure that was pretty soul crushing. It got so bad he started stealing from the friends who let him crash on their couches and he would pawn it and buy beer and cigarettes. Over this time, I started encouraging him to go to rehab or at least therapy.
My last real encounter with him was when I was off, doing my adventure thing in Philadelphia. He had tried moving to Nashville, but things weren't going so well there - he couldn't keep a job, and he couldn't afford rent, and most of his old friends there were gone. He posted some cryptic "goodbye" on facebook, and I read into it, and got him on a bus that night to come stay with me. I immediately got him a job, and after that we arranged for him to stay with my roommates and I (boarders were somewhat common in that house) After 2 nights, he stole an UNGODLY amount of beer and liquor from one of my roommates - she worked at a bottle shop and couldn't conceive how he hadn't gotten alcohol poisoning drinking as much as he did (we had entire bands stay with us that drank less collectively and still got wasted.) He then proceeded to lie about it, but we found bottles under the couch he was staying on.
I had to kick my own brother out of the house. He ended up sleeping in the park down the street. About 2 days later he lost his job.
After that we had a really long talk. I wanted nothing more than to have my brother back. I told him I would do anything he needed if he could start getting help, if he could go to rehab or something, but he had given up. He had completely resigned himself to feeling like the kid that nobody wanted. I realized how much he had lost, how much he had given up to depression and alcoholism. I realized that something about who he was could probably get it together, and could probably start over again, but I knew he was tired, and I know that life is always going to have another way to kick you in the teeth when you aren't expecting it, and I didn't think he was going to weather that many more of those kicks, and I just knew after that - the person who had been my idol, my big brother, my dad, my mom, the person who could show up in Atlanta on Friday night with nothing and have it all sorted by Tuesday morning, that guy was already dead. It hurt so fucking much when I realized that - no matter what I did, no matter what I said, he didn't think he could get better. It came at me every day as some mixture of anger and despair.
So, I bought him a bus ticket to the town we grew up in. He stayed with a close friend of his who put up with him pawning off their things. Over the next year we spoke amicably, but didn't say much, didn't speak other than a drunk phone call at 2 am. And then one day he was gone. And he was never going to skate, or listen to the latest albums, or text me jokes he had written ever again.
He wanted his funeral to be a pizza party, so we threw one. I am sure he felt alone at the end, but there were people from all around the country there - he had meant THAT much to people. His ex wife was there, ALL of his ex girlfriends were there. I wished that he could have been there to see everyone that cared that much about him despite it all, to see the fabric he had sewn with his life.
And, I wanted to give this context because I am sure there are a lot of people out there who lost a girlfriend or a job or something, or maybe have been battling with addiction and want to kill themselves. I am sure a lot of you think that you are a burden on the people you love, and maybe you are - I bet you reach out to them in ways they don't understand. All of my life plans had a place for my brother in them - I wanted to get myself to a place that I could give him the opportunity to deal with his problems with no strings attached. He didn't have to be my idol, or my "big brother," or protector, or parent figure anymore, I just wanted my brother back. We are not the sum total of our burdens, and those that love us understand that. I never stopped loving him, no matter how bad it got. I just wanted him to WANT to get better, and to commit to that.