My brother Alex died by suicide on November 7, 2023. In the weeks that followed, I found myself unable to speak or write about what had happened. Every attempt at language collapsed into silence. Journaling, drafting a memorial piece, even forming a simple sentence felt impossible. Shock had erased the distance needed for reflection. All I could articulate was the immediate pain.
As in earlier crises in my life, my attention locked onto the smallest details, the weather, the time of day, the sequence of events, who was standing where, as if cataloging facts would anchor me. I couldn’t sleep, convinced that one more unexpected blow might arrive at any moment. When I tried to write, my thoughts narrowed into something like an incident report, drained of meaning.
Between these attempts, I focused on helping my mother, who was suffering intensely. My wife spent hours supporting her. Mom’s friends appeared daily with food and company. I made phone calls, scheduled the memorial, and attended therapy. But internally I felt untethered. I couldn’t think about caring for myself. A part of me felt missing, and without that part, everything else dulled.
It soon became clear that my mind was trying and failing to reroute itself around the space where my brother had been. Time, thought, and movement slowed, while emotion surged unpredictably. The world around me seemed altered, edged with menace. I imagined the pressures he must have endured: the weight of obligations, the fear of judgment, the dread of changing direction in mid-life. I had seen traces of those feelings in his posture, his drifting gaze, the heaviness in his silence. Now those same shadows pressed on me.
His exhaustion reflected my own latent anxieties. I felt myself edging toward a depressive threshold, pulled by thoughts of his pain. They seeped into my mind and coated everything—memories, routines, moments that should have offered rest. I’d find myself staring at nothing or sinking to the floor in tears. My wife would find me in the hallway or shower, and she stayed with me quietly, steady in ways I couldn’t be.
During these weeks, memories surfaced with the force of an involuntary update—one that paused everything and rewrote my inner landscape around his absence. I wondered whether this was simply grief or something of his presence. I longed to speak with him, but even my imagined conversations disappeared. He became a faint echo—unreachable, fading in and out. I saw him on the ground by the tree. A cruel thought followed: that I had failed him, and the silence was what I deserved.
When my mother shared what he had confided to her about his hopelessness, I remembered the January 2022 conversation in which he voiced similar thoughts to me. The belief that I should have acted differently grew sharper. I replayed that moment, thinking of what might have happened if I had called 988 in his backyard. It would have broken every unspoken rule we followed—never push, never make a scene—but it would have shown him he mattered more than discomfort. I’ll never know what difference it might have made.
Therapy kept me above the surface long enough to prepare for the memorial: contacting people, arranging the slideshow, attempting a eulogy that could reflect the whole of him- his humor, kindness, quirks, generosity, and the steady effort he put into everything he touched. I wished I had told him more clearly when he was alive that he was enough.
As November dissolved into December, the memorial approached faster than I felt ready for. On December 3rd, three days before what would have been his 43rd birthday, we gathered at a community center in Tualatin. In the days leading up to it, I called cousins and drafted memories that revealed something of his character. But the eulogy remained the hardest part. How could I speak about his life when words still felt so unreachable?
I kept asking myself what I would say if he were sitting right in front of me. The answer was simple and devastating: that his life mattered, that his warmth and generosity had shaped others, and that even in moments when he doubted himself, he had been a source of meaning. The eulogy became the version of that message I never got to tell him.
When the rainy and overcast Sunday arrived, I reached the community center early to set up the chairs and test the slideshow. The room felt cavernous and quiet, as if every empty chair questioned whether anyone would come. But they did. Family, friends, neighbors, coworkers, around eighty people in all. They were living proof of his impact, each carrying memories of warmth, humor, or quiet help he had offered.
As I spoke, something shifted. The words that had eluded me for weeks began to return, fragile but present. Standing in front of those who loved him, I felt a faint coherence reemerge. Speaking of his life, his goodness, his complexity, his care for others brought a small measure of order to the chaos inside me. And hearing others share their own memories restored, however briefly, a sense of connection that grief had strained.
When the room finally emptied, silence returned, vast and insistent. The memorial hadn’t ended the grief; it had only given it shape long enough for me to speak his name. My voice, though still unsteady, had returned in those moments.
But as I stepped outside and felt the rain settle on my shoulders, I understood that nothing had been closed. Grief had only kicked the door wide open, leaving me to walk through what waited beyond, carrying his absence, his memory, and the difficult work of learning how to live in the world he left behind.
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock
