It’s been 18 years since my brother Adam took his own life, but I still think about him every day. I still recall the words my mother spoke when she called to tell me: “We’ve lost Adam.”
Adam had struggled with depression for years, though my children never noticed that their beloved Uncle Adam had a problem. Whenever we visited, he was playful and fun; when I told them that he’d shot himself, they struggled to understand.
It was a struggle for me, too. On the day that he died, he had just come home from being hospitalized for suicidal feelings. He was feeling better, he said. Once home, as soon as he was alone, he found the rifle that he’d inherited from our grandfather and used it to kill himself.
Did he lie to the doctors, planning to kill himself as soon as he could be alone? Or did he see the gun and impulsively give in to the feeling that he had been fighting for so long? We will never know. We do know this: We miss him every day.