My brother, Danny, killed himself. I’m writing about his suicide to honor his life, with the hope this helps another person.
Author’s note: I started writing this 2 weeks after Danny’s death. Over the following 2 months, I’ve thought about this post and finished it. It was impossibly hard to write, as it’s been impossibly hard to live through.
October is Mental Health Awareness month. I felt compelled to finish writing and share this with the hope that it can impact someone’s life for the better. Suicide can happen to any family — from someone you never expected — I hope it never does. It’s time we talked about it.
Friday, October 30th, 2020
[Friday, August 28th] 2 weeks ago today, I got the call, “Danny’s dead.” It was just after 8pm and I’ll never forget it — things will never be the same.
My brother, Danny, was just 24 years old. He died from a self-inflicted gunshot to the head — just above his right ear. I saw the crusted wound from the open casket we had for his funeral the following week.
When Gabe (my brother) called me that Friday night, he sounded mostly calm, but I could tell immediately something was wrong. I was on a bike ride with my girlfriend, Friday evening — one of my favorite things to do — when he called me, we were overlooking the Austin skyline and it was so pretty. There were roller skaters skating on the big slab of pavement at the Long Center. What a stark contrast for the news that would soon blindside me.
“Hey, Gabe!”, I said when I answered — as I always do.
“Hey Russ, what are you doing? You should stop riding…”
“What happened?” I knew something was wrong.
“Danny’s dead. He shot himself.”
I broke there immediately, crumbling to the ground. “No, Danny! No! Please, no!” Screaming and crying — the roller skaters still skating around the concrete slab just yards away. Gabe had to pass the phone to his girlfriend because the cops who just arrived had to talk to him.
Gabe found Danny in their shared apartment. Nobody had heard from Danny that day, Friday, August 14th, and his work first notified my parents that nobody had heard from him. My dad arrived first at their apartment, but since only Gabe and Danny had keys to the apartment, my dad couldn’t unlock the door and be the first to see Danny.
As soon as Gabe arrived at their complex, he burst out of his car and ran up the stairs to unlock the door — far ahead of my dad. Gabe can be so fearless. Especially when it comes to someone he loves — to someone we all love. There are things that people rise to the occasion when they have to. I hope nothing like this makes you, dear reader, rise to such a horrible, terrible occasion. May you be spared having to have such fearlessness in the face of the death of your brother.
After 10 minutes, seemingly an eternity, of a hellish nightmare that didn’t seem like it could be real, I picked myself up off the ground and started biking back to my house with my girlfriend to drive to San Antonio from Austin. It was a horrible, gutturally sad bike ride sobbing while biking. You’ve never seen someone so sad riding a bike. The juxtaposition was not lost on me. Life has a sad poetry to it sometimes.
I drove 95 mph from Austin to San Antonio with my emergency lights flashing to be there with my family. The first person I saw was Gabe. Sobbing, I hugged him. Then made it to Ian. Then my dad, who said, “he’s not hurting anymore” — shaking, sobbing, we bear-hugged each other. And finally, our mom. Sobbing, anguished we held each other like holding on for our lives, for Danny’s life. I’ve never before felt the depth of sorrow that filled us that night in the parking lot outside of his apartment.
Anything but suicide…
It’s bound to be one of the most-used phrases when it comes to suicide, it’s trite but so impossible to understand until you hear yourself saying it, “we had no idea. We never thought it’d be Danny. Not Danny. Danny would never do this to himself” Danny didn’t show us how much he was hurting. “We had no idea he would do this to himself.”
For the next 5 days, we tried to piece together what could have happened. “Was he cleaning his gun and it went off? Was there a home invasion and someone did this to Danny? Was it an accident and he didn’t know there was a bullet still in his gun?” Was it anything but the final action of a pained, young man, my brother, who showed no signs of mental anguish?
We saw Danny every weekend for family dinners. I saw him the Saturday before this and told him I’d see him next weekend. Our brother, Ian, texted with Danny the day before we found him. Danny was so loved — he was also in so much pain. He was so lonely; but also his family loved him so much.
It’s hard to write about this, but writing about Danny’s life is to be honest about what took him away from us. To not hide how he died, and further the stigma of suicide. It was the stigma of depression and suicide that caused him to not tell us about what he was going through. Him thinking that he was sparing us from what he was going through, until now of course. My dad said recently, “his pain has now transferred on to us” — I think there’s a lot of truth to that. We want Danny back, because we wish we could have helped him before there wasn’t a chance to help him anymore.
A journal with some answers
While going through Danny and Gabe’s apartment we finally found something that helped give us answers about what happened to Danny. There was a black journal in his nightstand, tucked away in the bottom drawer, that Ian found about 5 days after his death, a couple of days before his funeral. The first entry in the journal was dated back to Saturday, January 30th 2016.
In the journal we saw how long Danny had been fighting his battle with depression, suicidal thoughts, low self-esteem, and an image of himself that was extremely and unduly harsh on himself. The journal that spanned over 4 years, documented times when he was feeling bad about himself, and he explained that in the journal himself. He started the journal at a time when many people have a difficult time in life: the stress, isolation, and uncertainty of being in college. He didn’t write often in the journal, but he wrote in the journal during times that he was feeling suicidal or generally depressed. There’s a lot of hard things to read in his journal.
It’s so hard to read the painful thoughts that he had about himself, when we had no idea how much he was hurting. I’ve wondered if it’s helpful or hurtful that we found this journal of his. I don’t think there’s a correct answer, because it’s both of them. It’s helpful to have some answers that provide some degree of “closure”, but it’s hurtful to think about what he was going through and felt that he couldn’t tell any of us.
It hurts to think that he was bearing the weight of his sadness all alone for so many years. It hurts to see in plain writing that Danny never saw the kind, gentle person who we all loved.
A pattern of, “I didn’t sleep well last night”
Danny would often say that he didn’t get good sleep the night before, or he hadn’t been sleeping well lately. We, or at least I, didn’t think too much of it. He said that he had loud neighbors, so we, or I, chalked it up to that. Now in the time since his death, we’ve looked into various indicators of suicide. A lack of good sleep is often a contributing factor. We didn’t know that.
We didn’t know that this was a cry for help. We didn’t know that the response that I think he was looking for was, “What kept you up?” Or maybe he didn’t even know these were cries for help either.
There was so much we didn’t know.
Now knowing what to look for, a quick Google search of “lack of sleep and suicidal thoughts” produces a wealth of resources. We didn’t know that. We didn’t know that him saying that he didn’t sleep well was a cry for help. We didn’t know how gravely serious it was. We didn’t know that there could have been something else keeping him up other than noisy neighbors. We didn’t know that when he couldn’t make family dinners because “he was tired” was a cry for help — a pattern of being tired and not finding rest.
Danny had such a hard time finding restful sleep that he even purchased custom-molded earplugs to sleep with. We found them on his nightstand after his death.
Not being able to rest at night, calm one’s brain, get a rejuvenating sleep, and wake up recharged the next day must be more than exhausting. It’s possible that Danny killed himself the night before we found him. I wonder if the thought of having another night tossing and turning all night, only to wake up exhausted the next day was more than he could handle, again.
Suicide is the second leading cause of death among young adults in the US, according to the CDC. Danny struggled with sleep so often and we had no idea this was a warning sign.
Ulcerative colitis, shame, depression, and suicide
Danny had a tough life from the beginning, including gastrointestinal issues. Going to the bathroom is something so innate, natural in us, that when things aren’t working right it can produce such a deep shame in oneself. This was also a warning sign that we weren’t aware of. People with ulcerative colitis have shown statistically higher rates of suicide than the rest of the population.
If you have a loved one with ulcerative colitis or other gastrointestinal issues, please know they may feel ashamed of this condition and think less of themselves because of it. It’s a deep issue they may not even be fully aware of. Danny had just completed a successful colonoscopy in the weeks before his death and had a healthy horizon in front of him.
“These are the good ol days.”
It’s something I’ve long believed; chosen to believe that “these are the good ol days.” It helps me remember that at some point I’ll look back to the present time and think, “those were the good ol days” — and it’s terrible to not know that something is great until after it’s over. We too often only look back and say it was great — and so rarely look around and see how great it already is.
I didn’t realize how quickly I’d have to look back on the times with Danny and know I was right when I looked around the table with my family and we were all there, and I’d think to myself, “these are the good ol days.”
I still choose to believe “these are the good ol days.” These are still the days where I have Grandma Sally and Grandpa Dan, both of my parents, my 3 remaining brothers, and my full health. Life and health are so fundamental, a shift in one makes me think of the time before Danny and after Danny. When I stop and think about this phrase, I now think to myself “these are still the good ol days, after Danny.”
How to move forward in life. How to not forget, how to not get stuck in death…
Trying to continue with life feels like forgetting Danny. I don’t like that feeling. How do we not forget, but not get stuck in death? I was talking with our parents and they put it well, “this isn’t something that we will ever get over, we will just keep getting through it.” Every Thursday night and Friday tends to be really hard, thinking about how much hurt Danny must have been in to do what he did.
I can’t believe it’s been over 2 months now since he passed away. I can’t imagine the thought of his memory, and even this pain, fading over time. The pain has to be less sharp as time goes on. To live in the grief and anguish of the first 2 months after his passing would be impossible. We get through this by coming together as a family and also importantly, sharing Danny’s story so it doesn’t happen to anyone else if it can be prevented.
Why did I write this? What’s next? What is there to do?
I hope everyone understands that this could happen to anyone and the point of writing about Danny is to help the chance that it happens to at least one fewer person. That, you reading this causes you directly to reach out to a family member or therapist, or that you check in and ask someone if they are hurting or thinking of killing themself. Or to just tell them another time that you love them; you never know when it might be the last time.
There is no one with a family or group of friends who is excluded from this possibility. Danny kept his hurt and pain to himself. He hid his pain from us on purpose, he wrote in his journal — that he would never tell someone the kind of thoughts he was writing down. We had no idea how much he was hurting.
I will always remember the last time I saw Danny. It was the Saturday before his death and we had spent the evening as we usually did, at our grandparent's house. We stayed there until about 11pm. If I had known it was going to be the last time I’d see him alive, I would have never left. I would have never let him leave. The following weekend, we were going to celebrate our brothers’ Gabe and Ian’s birthday. So I said to both Danny and Ian who were sitting at the table outside, “I love y’all, I’ll see yall next weekend!” I vividly remember looking back at both of them sitting there together at the table; brothers who would spend the next hour and a half talking — Ian would later tell me.
The point is, cherish time with family and friends, when someone tells you they haven’t been sleeping well, ask them “what’s been keeping you up?” because it can be a matter of life and death. Suicide can happen to any family, so let’s be open about it, and talk about it to remove the stigma, it might save someone’s life.
And remind yourself, “these are the good ol’ days” before they’re over.
Addendum
For Danny’s funeral, our family wrote letters about him to share what he means to us. We’d like to share the letters here to honor his life and let people know how great a person Danny was.
Letter from Ian, our youngest brother and closest to Danny
Letter from Louie (our oldest brother) and Bekah (his wife, our sister in-law)
