A few weeks back I mentioned my intent to publish today, the first day of National Suicide Prevention Week, a post I wrote about my nephew’s suicide earlier this year.
I had to release myself from that promise.
That piece is too personal to publish at this time. I had to take care of my own mental health. I need to de-escalate, not escalate my anxiety, and publishing that piece would put me into a tailspin come Monday, when I need to be calm and ready. I’m still too much in the orbit of grief.
Instead, since I had committed to writing something for Suicide Prevention Week, not wanting to let the 9 people who were interested down, I wrote something else.
My nephew was “one of you.” He defended Obama against the conspiracists in his family for 10 years, campaigned and volunteered for Bernie, then for Hillary, stood up since he was a teen for respecting queers like me, for Black Lives Matter, and supported so many of the causes that we here support.
He was 34.
He had fought for a better world, and while I know very little about anything at all in the aftermath of his suicide, I know he will never see whatever world you and I and everybody else here at this place will eventually forge through our force of will and our daily effort.
His part of our future is gone.