I hear the question repeated by family members who are dealing with suicide deaths. When someone dies by suicide, the people left behind are left with endless whys. Why would they do something like that? Why would they leave their family behind? Why was this person so sad?

If you’ve never been depressed, these questions are ones that are so difficult to answer. Having lived with someone so deep into depression, I still don’t have answers to the whys. I just know that living life was so challenging for Kody.

Something as simple as going to work, would be impossible for him. He would leave for work and then stay parked in the Home Depot parking lot all day or park behind the dog park and sleep. There was no rational. No reason. No answer to why.

I begged him to just go to work. I know now, that if he could of he would have. But at the time I just got so angry. I was so frustrated and so scared. I would beg him and beg him to do something to try something. Sometimes he would. Sometimes he wouldn’t.

I remember thinking why wasn’t I enough? Why wasn’t I able to make him happy? It was incredibly difficult to see him struggling and to hear him talk about dying.

I wanted him to be able to tell me anything, so I listened when he told me about suicide attempts. He told me about the research he did on different methods and things he had tried. He was ashamed of the attempts, but he seemed to almost feel more ashamed of failing.

Shame was a huge part of his depression. He had a lot of shame about the person he was. He was often ashamed of the hobbies he enjoyed. He felt shame about his sexuality. He had shame about the fact that he was so smart and doing so little with his life.

To me, Kody had nothing to be ashamed of. He was a unique and incredible person, but that wasn’t something he could see. Why? I will never know. Why wasn’t I enough? Why wasn’t he enough for himself? I will never know.

I suppose the answer is that depression is a disease and it needs to be treated as one. We need to make it easier for loved ones to voice concerns to the right authorities. We need to make it easier for people who are depressed to get the help they really need. We need to get rid of the taboo and the stigma that comes with being labelled as suicidal. Only then will it be possible for people to stop being left with unanswerable whys in place of someone they love.