What was your worst day?

Why was it your worst day? Did you learn anything from it?


My worst day (so far?) was April 16th, 2015. I was at Target with my husband and very pregnant. My little brother had been missing for a few weeks but he did that kind of thing sometimes (he was 22). My mom called and she could barely speak but managed to shout at me through the phone, "he's dead, he's dead, Brendon's dead!"

I didn't faint, but I got very dizzy and my husband pulled a chair off a display for me. My blood pressure sky-rocketed, by midnight that night I was in the ER. My daughter was born the next day in an emergency c-section and she is the light of my life.

My worst day right before my best day.

Brendon shot himself in the chest with a hand-gun in the woods behind his dad's Oregon property. He had been laying there for weeks when his dad found him. This suicide shattered my family.

What I learned? That nothing, no matter how terrible it seems is bad enough to take your own life. I have spent a lot of time wondering if he was cold before he died; I wonder if he cried before or after he did it; I wonder how long it took him to die and why he didn't just shoot himself in the head.