Dear Brooks

Dear Brooks,

This will never get easier.

Time brings gifts. It brings space and perspective and growth.

But time will never change the pain I feel when I remember you.

You on your couch. With a gun. Sitting on puppy pads to absorb the mess. Making that final decision. Pulling the trigger.

I dream sometimes that it didn’t work. The scientist in me keeps whispering in the dreams that that isn’t possible, but you are there, still alive after a gunshot wound to the head. And yet you are still so sad. We still can’t access you beyond the sadness.

And that’s the thing. My mind can’t come up with a way to have you on this earth and not sad. I have barely been able to lead myself out of that place. I can’t envision a world where you could find peace too.

I don’t know what to do with that. It will never be “for the best” that you are gone. It will always be the greatest tragedy of my life. And yet, I believe you are whole now. I believe you see clearly now. I believe you are now fully known.

I know you couldn’t predict in your mental state how this would wreck us. I know you thought your note would be enough. Your brain lived in those black and white areas – “I told them it wasn’t their fault, so they should know it’s not their fault”. But that wasn’t enough. We love you way too much for that to be enough.

I have spent the last year in therapy, with regular visits to my psychiatrist for med adjustments. I am on a long and carefully curated list of meds. We’ve added meds, discontinued meds, adjusted doses, adjusted timings. I think we finally have it right. I wouldn’t say life is easy for me, but we are effectively managing focus, depression and anxiety. Therapy is helping to fill in the spaces, to help me stretch and adapt to life, accomplishing what medication can’t.

But MAN has it been hard. The sheer number of appointments, the meds that didn’t work, the need for continual adaption, the requirement that I advocate for myself in ways that will never feel comfortable – it is all like trudging through wet concrete, hoping you’ll make it before it turns solid and locks you in forever.

The most freeing has been the diagnoses. Treating my brain as a neurodivergent brain has made all the difference. Nothing has made more sense. I know what I’m dealing with now – I’m trying to help a neurodivergent brain function in this world, recognizing and taking seriously the accommodations it requires, not trying to change it into something else.

These are all things you didn’t have. I do think you saw a path forward, that you knew there were options. But you’d given everything you had already. You had nothing left.

I see you in Livvie every day. And that is bittersweet. It feels like the greatest, most tragic irony that I’ve learned to respect her need to retreat during social situations, because of you. Not only that, but I’ve realized I usually need it too. I spent years not understanding why you would disappear during holidays – often spending more time in hiding than you did with us. And yet now I’m realizing how much I needed the same, I just didn’t allow myself to do it. My mind has always been too aware of other people’s opinions, whereas your mind could only see what your body needed. Livvie is more like you; she vehemently fights for the space she needs. Her bed has become a fort, with blanket walls protecting her safe quiet space. And she regularly retreats there when noise and lights and expectations get too much for her brain to handle.

It’s just one of the ways that your death has helped me learn how to live. Losing you crushed every part of me, but remembering you is causing new parts to emerge and grow.

Last week in therapy, I talked about how, when I let myself truly feel the grief, it feels like it will drown me. It’s so heavy and all consuming and paralyzing. My therapist asked me if I could ask you to help carry that burden, to help me hold that grief. It was shocking how much that worked, how I instantly felt the weight shift off me, how it became something that unites us instead of separating us.

I don’t know what to do with those signs of your presence here with me. But I know that when I let myself feel you, you are here. And you are proud of me. You are watching our girls grow. You are laughing at the fact that I got a goldendoodle because cocker spaniels were so quirky – only to end up with the quirkiest, most ridiculous dog our family has ever owned. You are cheering me on. You are telling me you’re proud of me.

It will never be enough. The chasm will always feel endless and devastating. Your loss will always be a gaping wound in my soul. But I’m still here, I’m still moving, I’m still learning and growing and trying.

I love you, Brooks. And I miss you endlessly.