In many ways, loosing Kody was more challenging than loosing my mother. My mom died a year and a half after her colon cancer diagnosis. The time that she had was time that she lived. I lived it alongside her. By contrast, suicide loss is sudden and shocking.

I wonder often why for me the shock wasn’t less. Didn’t I know this was a likely end to all those attempts? Hadn’t I watched Kody suffer for years with depression? How different is this than watching a person go through cancer treatments? Depression is as much a disease as cancer, and in Kody’s case just as terminal.

For me, the real shock comes in all those glimmers of hope I saw over the years. The days where Kody was healthy, smiling, and really living. The loss of the chance of more of those days is the part that is so challenging. When I think of Kody’s life, I mourn the days unlived.

I miss the days of sunshine he’d have spent going to the river with his niece and nephew. The conversations we would have shared. This summer there should have been hikes and pictures of him in nature. He ought to have found passion in all he created and made more beauty in the world. There are so many days that must go unlived now.

Thirty years just wasn’t enough time. It’s like reaching the end of a book and finding no resolution, no proper ending. The proverbial rug wrenched out from under your feet. We are left with the should haves, could haves, and would haves that never were lived. Suicide loss, no matter how predictable, leaves blank pages never to be filled.

For me, those unlived moments hang in the air. They exist only a breath away. If only he hadn’t, if only I had, if only they’d tried, these moments would have been. So close and yet so far away.