Category Archives: Guest Post

I just found this site, I wanted to find people who’d been through this. My brother, Andrew, died by suicide yesterday morning.
It’s been less than 48 hours but it feel so long. The house creaks and I think it’s him in his room. I don’t know what to say to my family. I don’t know what to do, how to be with family without him. We would always be together at times like this, we’d be glued to each other’s sides. We were always on each other’s team and I feel so alone.
When we were together we could almost read each other’s minds and so I feel like I should have been able to stop it. He was so ill for so long and the pain was just too unbearable. He left a note but didn’t say he loved us.
I don’t want to wake up tomorrow and him still be gone.

My brother shot a killed him self in the room next to mine this past Monday. He was only 15 and I’m 17. He was my best friend. I heard him open and close the door before he shot himself. After he shot himself I didn’t even know. I called his name three times to no answer and assumed he just dropped something. 30 minutes later the police are at my house and I find out my brothers been dead. All I want to do is leave so, so I try to leave in my truck and two officer jump out it front of my ram 1500 I proced to use the truck to get them out my way. After they pull there guns on me I turn off the truck and get arrest and spend the next four hours in the back of a police car after my brother scuiside.

My baby brother hung himself in a train station toilets 20 years ago on March 9th 1999
He had just celebrated his 19th Birthday 7 days previous.
I hate this time of year, I miss him so much we were close, or I thought, both serving soldiers at the time. I am still angry with him, he left us, left the family to cope with the grief, which has gradually ripped our once close family apart.
20 years and it still hurts. I miss you John xxx

I woke up to 13 missed phone calls. I don’t usually keep my phone on silent at night but that night was playing games on my phone and didn’t want to sound to disturb my sleeping husband. I just feel asleep around 10:30 pm with the sound still off. According to the time stamp the calls starting coming in not long after 12:45pm. All of the calls where from my father. Calling me to tell me my brothers car was found stopped, still running, in the middle of the road, well a bridge. He was no where to be found. The only mark left behind, was the melted frost from his hands and butt on the bridge railing. According to todays date, that was a year ago. A YEAR AGO… It feels like just one day ago.
I am still kept awake at night wondering how long he sat on that railing. If another car wasn’t about to drive past, would he have still jumped, would he have thought longer about what he was about to do?
I’m kept awake sad you didn’t call me, but thankful I didn’t miss his call too.
I am still kept awake wondering that if it wasn’t so foggy that night, maybe he would have seen how far down that river really was.
I am still kept awake, tortured by the thought of what he was thinking while he fell.
I am still kept awake at night wondering if we will ever recover his body from river that I now hate so much.
Every night I wonder and every morning I wake up with no answers. So yeah, it really feels like it has just been one day, not one year.

A year ago on January 19-2018 I lost my younger brother Todd to suicide. He shot his self in the head and that is a phone call I will never forget. It’s been so hard to try and understand why. He was not only my brother he was my best friend. I think about him everyday and the pain never goes away.

I thought of you this week. Mostly I prayed for your wife and boys you left behind. It’s been 3 months and it is their first Valentine’s day without you. They are hurting. I’m hurting. I had a dream of me and mom and Tiffany going through our boxes from when we were kids. Every time we got to your stuff we would say “remember when Branden…” and we would cry for you. Today I just thought of you and now I can’t stop crying. I miss my brother. I’m mad and I’m sad and I want to why.

Being a sibling survivor of suicide can be truly isolating, as I’m sure you all know. I have a wonderful group of friends to talk with but none of them have a clue what I go through on a daily basis. That behind every smile there’s a hint of guilt that my brother can’t smile anymore, that my birthdays are a reminder that I’ll be older than him soon, that I would trade every positive thing in my life since his death rup go back to our old lives in a heartbeat. So I found this site, in search of those who can relate. Sometimes it’s comforting, and other times I feel even more isolated.
My brother was 5 and a half years older than me. He was my only sibling. We were not that close once he became a teenager. He struggled with addiction for years. I hated him at times (that kind of hate where you still love them but choose to not have themin your life). But then he got clean for good, on his own terms. We both lived with our parents. We started becoming friends for what felt like the first time. I was SO happy to live in the same house. He seemed so happy. We went to the movies and cooked each other food. We had three amazing years of really being brother and sister.
Then one night, he and his new girlfriend got in a fight and she walked out on him. She came back to find him hanging on our patio. My parents and I ran to him. My dad and I took him down and performed CPR while my mom called 911. The paramedics shocked him 4 times, so he still had an electric rhythm. After taking to an EMT friend of him, he said we were probably only a few minutes too late.
So after 3 years of feeling really alone in this grief, I just want to ask if anyone has had a remotely similar experience? Sometimes it’s hard to read other people’s stories who heard the news over the phone, were estranged from their sibling, were best friends with their sibling, have other siblings to talk to… I know everyone here has had an unimaginable loss and I am so sorry for each and every one. I in no way mean to downplay one loss from another, they are all the worst loss any of us have experienced. I’m just looking to not feel so alone. Can anyone relate? Or does anyone else feel this isolated in their grief?

One year ago I posted the entry below.
Half my life ago today, 31 years ago to be exact, my younger brother died. He had set himself on fire and lived for 43 days.
Tomorrow he will be gone more than half my life. It is odd to ponder this milestone. Like all of you here, I did not think I could survive those early years. I had to will myself to take one breath and then the next. Everyone else’s lives were going forward, and I was lost in this unfamiliar and crushingly sad place.
For those new to this awful experience, I want to let you know what it is like to be half my life in this place. I have a full life. I can be happy. My brother’s suicide is still the worst thing that has ever happened to me. But over time this life is my familiar life. His suicide has been woven into the fabric of that life. I am not longer raw with emotion. I have learned to see what gifts have come from this. I can be a voice for others. I can share my experience, strength and hope. While his death was a catastrophic event, it colors who am today. I am in a healing profession and I know the good I do is colored by good times and bad.

Here are some of the things that helped me long the way: writing in a journal gave me a 24/7 outlet, therapy (both with other survivors and individually), learning about better physical health, eating better, waiting (when the awful moments happen, just wait; they will stop), leaning into the sadness instead of running from it. Find someone who can listen. Make a list of what is comforting to you. Keep it close by. Use it.
Breathe. Breathe. Breathe, until you can breathe without thinking about it.

A therapist once asked me what I thought my brother wanted for me. Without thinking the answer came out, “Peace. He wants me to be at peace.”

I still believe that. Keep coming back here. We know. We understand. We care.

It’s been 10 days since I got the call I never thought I would get, even though now I think I should have known. My brother has not passed yet but according to the drs there is no hope and he is “gone” as they not so gently put it. He’s 31 and I’m not ready for him to leave this world. I have so much guilt and anger and sadness all at the same time. I can’t even cope. He’s dealt with depression and alcoholism for over 10 yrs, he’s talked about suicide before but I’ve always been able to get to him and calm him down. Right before Christmas he called me for help. He was feeling very low and reached out to me, after a long convo he finally agreed to get help and I brought him to the hospital. 5 hrs there they told me they would keep him for a minimum for 72 hrs. It was late and I had to bring my infant son home, so I left and told him I’d be back in the morning. They released him 15 min after I left. The time between then and now he was feeling better or so he said and I believed. He wanted to wait to get help till his insurance started on the 1st of this month. Looking back I wished I would have pushed harder for him to go sooner but I never saw this coming. I never thought he would really do this. He posted to Facebook not long before he hung himself in his room in our parents house – how he just wanted to sleep. I saw the post but figured he was just drunk and I was exhausted and honestly thought if I called him he would think I was calling just because of that. I wish I would have just called him. I can’t stop thinking about why I didn’t. I feel like this is all my fault no matter how many times I’m told it’s not. I should have been able to stop this.

I lost my brother back in October of 2018. My work’s response was essentially to not talk about it. I feel like I and my brother have been dealt an injustice simply because he died from suicide.
Earlier in the year another coworker lost her father from “natural causes” and we all signed a card for her. Half of the office doesn’t even know I lost my brother because his cause of death is taboo. I’m angry and hurt.
It’s been four months since he died and I feel like it’s too late to bring it back up again and have everyone sign a card.