Dear Brooks

If you follow me on social media , you know that my brother committed suicide on June 19th. We held the memorial for him yesterday, July 27th, for immediately family and a group of his close friends who flew in for the service.

The memorial service is linked below. My eulogy is 32 minutes in, but I’ve also posted it below for remembrance. Writing this was incredibly difficult, but it was my attempt to reframe his story for others to see how hard he tried. How hard he fought. And how incredibly precious his life was and is to us.

Tom and I went to Colorado this month, and while there we binge watched the last season of The Bear. I had forgotten that the major premise of the show is a brother committing suicide – when we first watched it, that was just something that happened to other people, not to me. But I found that watching a show that reflected this new life we’ve been sprung into was surprisingly therapeutic. 

In the last episode of the season, there is a conversation between two chefs, Chef Sydney and Chef Luca. And as they discussed what it was like having a sibling, I saw my relationship with my brother captured before me. 

In this scene, Sydney asks Chef Luca about his sister: Did you like having a sibling?

And he says: Yeah, I mean for us it was nice to look over at someone who’s going through the exact same situation that you are, so you know that, when something feels crazy, you feel less crazy. If that makes sense. 

Sydney: But also, like if things were good, like you kinda had like proof, like, you knew it was good. 

Chef Luca: Yeah, right. It literally is like a best friend that you saw every day of your life and you kinda went through this sort of battle together. 

—-

Brooks and I grew up together. We experienced the bad together, and we experienced the really good together. We spent a lot of years fighting – a lot of me saying BROOKS and him whining BECCCCKY. But we were a pair. As we grew up, I felt less like the older sister – often, he stepped into a role of big brother to me. Our friendship grew deep, and it was a friendship based on history and knowledge, of walking through the same life together and emerging from it with a lot of good memories, but also a lot of wounds. 

This past year, I’ve made a lot of discoveries about myself. I’ve known for years that Brooks and I both had anxiety and depression, but I’ve realized lately how much that stemmed from the fact that Brooks and I are both neurodivergent. This term didn’t exist when we were kids, but we both knew our brains worked a bit differently from others. I have my theories about his particular cocktail of neurodivergence, theories that I will sadly never get to discuss with him in detail. But the jist of it was that Brooks and I always felt like our brains were on a different wavelength than most of those around us. 

And yet, we thrived in our early years in Canada. We had close friends on our culdesac, loving parents and grandparents, and we saw our Aunty Sheila weekly (who we called Aunty Ah-ha because every time I saw her as a child I would laugh with joy). We were surrounded by people who saw us and treasured us. 

Brooks was a hilarious, sweet, quirky kid. He always had a joke, one that rarely made sense. He was always learning and mispronouncing big words, and it was so hard not to laugh at him. One time at the end of dinner he said, “I’m as full as a duck on a hook!” He was hilarious, but also really sensitive toward rejection. His nickname was “boof”, because my parents had called him “big bruiser” and I said it as “big boofer” (apparently all nicknames came from my inability to say words). He HATED this nickname and eventually settled on a system to get people to stop using it: he would charge everyone 5 cents when they called him boof. My parents would slip up over dinner and Brooks would calmly say “5 cents”. My aunt would come over and say “Hey boof, how are you!” – “5 cents” No matter how small the slip, he collected.

Starting school was hard on both Brooks and me. I was the quiet, shy day dreamer, struggling to speak up and advocate for myself. But Brooks was the outspoken loud one, who learned in kindergarten that he had to use his inside voice. And yet, we still felt safe and cherished at our school in Canada, grounded by our surrounding family and friends. While looking through Brooks’ baby book, I found his kindergarten evaluation from Mrs. Ast(WITH A T, as Brooks would say). 

The good years were severed when we moved to the US in 1992. Brooks and I spent a lot of time processing our moves, and I think we both came to terms with the fact that they were necessary moves for our family, but they were also incredibly hard on us too. My dad was the age Brooks and I are now when we made this move, and I can see how incredibly difficult but necessary these moves were for him. He was setting himself upon a new career path, and it was scary but also essential for his own mental health. My parents did the very best they could to help us thrive during the moves, but entering brand new environments, completely different cultures, was terrifying. We moved 3 times between 1992 and 1995, and each one chipped away more of our confidence. By our final move to Louisiana, I was in full out rebellion, whereas Brooks had retreated into a shell. 

A couple years into our time in Louisiana, we both switched from public to private school. I was the one that wanted the switch, but the move to Westminster wasn’t quite as easy as I had imagined. I struggled to make friends, and instead hyper-focused on my grades. But at Westminster, Brooks met his soulmates. I’ve rarely seen a group as friends as special as the ones he made there.

You guys got him. You saw him. And you fought for him. Thomas, you started fighting for him the moment you punched a guy that was picking on him – maybe not the preferred method for dealing with conflict, but it was an act for love for Brooks. Someone saw him enough to fight for him. And you earned his trust from then on. Our family could never fully express how grateful we are for all of you guys who saw him and stuck around, no matter how much he pulled away. 

Brooks’ life after school wasn’t easy. When I think about this current bout of depression, I also think about the ones he pulled himself out of. His time in Austin, when he was paralyzed by what to do next – but he got out of it, moved to Houston and worked his ass off to become a CPA. His struggles in Houston, when he hated his job – he pulled himself out of it. Losing his beloved dog Benson ripped out a part of his soul, but he went to therapy and sought resolution for his pain. And when he couldn’t do his job at Quanta anymore and was once again paralyzed, he pulled himself out of that, too. He moved to South Dakota to be near family, and he fought like hell to find a job that fit his skill set. For Brooks to do all these impossible tasks on his own – it was huge. Every single day was a battle for him, but every day he was alive was one he tried. 

For so much of my life, I sought to be Brooks’ greatest advocate. I listened to him and I reframed his story for my parents, because I saw the good in his core and I saw how much he was fighting. I lost that these past few years. I have to come to terms with the fact that I stopped seeing him. We got into several arguments, and I was mad. I was mourning the loss of my brother and best friend, the one who listened to me and discussed topics with me with an open mind. But in doing that, I saw his actions as a shift in his identity instead of symptoms of how hard he was trying and failing. Instead of waiting for Brooks to come back to me, I wish I had gone to him and told him that I loved him no matter what. I would do anything for one more hug and one more I love you.

I’m going to share a clip of Taylor Swift now. I’m unsure of how Brooks would feel about that. I’m sure he would rather me share a clip about the collapse of the Bronze age in 1300 BC or the history of precision manufacturing or the perils of the early settlers in Saskatchewan. But since he’s not here to explain to us why these clips hold significance, you get this instead. I like to think if Brooks had been able to be the uncle he longed to be for our girls, they would have eventually made him a reluctant Swiftie, at least for the Folklore era. Tom (who has begrudgingly become a somewhat Swiftie himself) sent me this clip after Brooks’ death, and it says everything that I want to say about his battle. Taylor Swift is not Jordan Peterson, but in this clip, she sums up everything that Brooks was in the way that only art can do. 

This was Brooks trying.

Every day of Brooks’ life – until the very end, was him trying. We got the autopsy results back this week, and I was shocked that his drug analysis came back as “none detected”. The empty bottles of booze weren’t drunk that night. The piles of drug paraphernalia, the credit cards that had been canceled now used to line up coke – none of that was used the night he died. He was completely sober. I wanted him to be high as a kite, so he didn’t feel any of the pain or grief. But there is some comfort in him being sober, as well. He knew what he was doing – and this was his last act of trying. It was the best he could do with what he had before him, and he saw no other way of finding peace than in this final act. 

And there is something about this note that he wrote us while sober. His last words fully encompassed who Brooks is. I want to read them to you now. One caveat I’d like to make is that, while he addressed several of you by name in this note, I know he would apply these words to every person in this room. To all of us who loved him, these were his last words:

And then he wrote on the third sheet “call an ambulance” and taped it to his door, for his neighbors to see. And he tucked his dogs into their crate. And put puppy pads on his couch, so he wouldn’t make a mess.

And then he sat on his couch. And performed his last act of trying.

—-

I love you, Brooks. And I am so proud of you for how you fought your battle, until the very end. I wish I could have told you that while you were alive, but I believe you are with us now, hearing the words we wish we had spoken. We love you. We miss you. And we are so thankful that you fought so hard to give us 41 years with you