The warning signs came too late to save my brother

My brother believed in the mystical. He believed in numerology and the tarot. He combined numbers when he bought a lottery ticket. He saw signs everywhere — birthdays, anniversaries, milestones — and twisted them every which way to beat the odds.

Sometimes he succeeded, but in the end, he drained his savings and took his life on a day that summed to the number 16. In the tarot deck 16 is the tower card. A dark card that foretells an unforeseen tragedy. In numerology it breaks down to the number 7 (1+6 =7). The number of one who seeks answers.

My brother suffered from an undiagnosed mental illness. No one in my family understood his struggles. None of us knew the warning signs. In his 30s I recall him seeking out help for depression. We all brushed it off. None of us took it seriously. We didn’t support him when he needed us the most. Instead, he self-medicated with alcohol and drugs. I never understood the correlation. He had multiple car accidents. Yet only now do I grasp those accidents as prequels to my brother’s final act.

He’s become part of a horrific statistic where the suicide rate is highest among middle-aged white men, according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP). Maybe he’d still be with me if my family had asked, “Are you ok? Talk to us.” Followed by, “We are here to support you.” Research shows that 46% of individuals who die by suicide have an underlying mental illness, according to NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness).

If I could visit him in heaven and say, “Guess how the numbers played out?” He would laugh and proclaim it to be kismet. He would look at me with that telltale glint in his eye and philosophize over the cosmic connection. Then he’d boldly announce, “This is why I was always a displaced person on earth. I had no purpose.” Thoughts he parroted throughout his journals.

But what I’d really want to say is I am sorry. I never understood your pain, and now it’s too late and I’ve lost you.

Although three years have passed, his departure has left a hole in my soul. I don’t know how to find closure knowing I missed all the warnings that foreshadowed why he wanted to erase himself.

Perhaps it’s because he refused to talk to me a month before his eviction when I asked the police to do a welfare check. After that I lost track of him. Or perhaps it’s the way I learned of his death, six months after he hung himself playing the fainting game with a metal door knob in an abandoned shed. A guy picking up bricks on the property happened to look through the window and saw my brother’s remains. Slumped over, a rope around his neck. If not for this man, I might have never known what had become of him.

When a South Carolina phone number lit up my phone at 11:30 p.m., I sensed before I answered my brother was gone. I just had no idea it had happened six months earlier. His body had decomposed so severely in the humid South Carolina climate that identification looked to be impossible. But there were clues. A prescription bottle of metformin with my brother’s name. His little black journals with his ramblings, his suicide note, and a mention of me.

Due to the uncertainty, it was days before the coroner agreed to release his remains. During that time I had difficulty processing the fact there was so little left of him. I decided to have him cremated and spread his ashes among nature. Our closest times together had been by the ocean, fishing off a pier or on a pontoon in the Florida Keys, or walks spotting a favorite bird. In that stillness quiet brought serenity. Again, something I never realized was critical to my brother’s sanity.

The day the mortician gave me my brother’s ashes, I also met the coroner who handed me his journals, a watch, and a flashlight. I had my brother’s entire 63 years in a paper bag. It hit me like a gale force wind and I broke down and cried.

No one talked about mental illness in the 60s and 70s. Stigma kept it sealed. Discrimination kept it buried. Hell, no one talked about it at all until the COVID-19 pandemic hit us two years ago and mental health became an epidemic. Except this crisis was always here.

I never imagined suicide could happen in my family. But I have since learned no one is immune. Mental illness is a cruel equalizer. Our defense is recognizing the signs of mental illness and suicidal ideation through education and early intervention and prevention. Organizations like AFSP have local chapters as does NAMI regarding mental health awareness. The new 988 suicide and crisis lifeline is also available 24/7. These tools give us a fighting chance to save lives.