So Much

By: Melissa Seligman

So much depends on a glass of scotch. A stubbed-out cigarette. A fire burned down to the glowing embers while the cool mountain dew creeps across the milky-green pasture.

So much depends on the last text.

A thought passed.

A moment of laughter, forever silenced.

It has been eight months since he died. Eight months since he stood at the top of my stairs and hugged me goodbye. Eight months since he decided the barrel of a gun was preferable to the dawn of a new day.

I still feel him in my house. At night. At the end of my bed. His presence one of comfort to me and to my family. His heart felt in nearly every dinner we share. His laughter heard as we sit on our porch, listening to the wind. The hawk that likes to sit in the tree, calling out for us to come greet the new day. And reminds us to salute the sunset as it burns across the sky.

He was more than a friend. More than a trusted confidant. He was a brother to me and my husband. A veteran. A chosen uncle to my kids. A champion of mental health and sustainable vitality.

He was a beam of light.

So much depends on answers. Answers I will never have. Explanations that will forever swirl around me and feel just out of reach. I know they are not mine to have. I know they are all his and always were. That I did not have the right to his deepest inner thoughts or fears.

I know all this to be true.

Yet. Somehow. I still feel so betrayed that he didn’t tell me. I feel broken that I couldn’t see it. I feel lost that someone so vibrant and beautiful and big and precious in this world…felt so small.

It turns my world upside down and rips it apart. Daily. Sometimes hourly.

Loss to suicide is a different kind of grief. One that festers and sticks inside a person’s soul—where it burns and churns in some need to make sense of it all. Some deep, full, ache to understand why we weren’t enough to stay alive for. Why in the midst of so many people reaching out and showing love—it wasn’t enough.

What could I have done? Where could I have gone? Why did he have to leave us?

The questions are endless. The release, elusive.

So much depends on remembering. On knowing that I said all the things I needed to say. That I hugged him that last day. Talked to him that last hour. Told him I was here and that I loved him and I would do anything to support him.

So much depends on saying it out loud. Giving it life and putting it into the air to breathe. Where, while I know I will never hug him again, his spirit is here—listening. Laughing. Reminding me every day.

So much depends upon so much.

Have you been called to become a sacred passage end-of-life doula?