They were here, and they were loved - Evie’s Lived Experience

Suicide loss changes you forever. You view your life through the lens of before and after. Your world spins on a different axis, and nothing feels quite the same.

There are no words.

I have found myself repeating that phrase, both to others and to myself. No words feel big enough to hold what has happened. Yet we search for them, knowing they will never be enough. Nothing we say or do will ever change what happened. Words will never bring them back or undo their pain.

Most people will not understand. You carry the weight of an unbearable absence, surrounded by people who cannot comprehend its depth. Many of them never will, and you hope they never have to. Yet that divide—the difference between knowing and not knowing—sits uncomfortably in the spaces between grief and daily life.

Something that has helped me is understanding suicide differently. The people we love who died by suicide weren’t trying to hurt us. They were trying to relieve their pain in the only way they knew how.

I wish, with everything in me, that they had never felt that pain. That they were still here. Instead, we are left holding the weight of everything we wish could have been different. Grief is love. It is love that has nowhere to go. Love that doesn’t know where to land. We can’t direct it to them in the way we used to. And that is so hard. Because the love endures. The world does not stop to acknowledge our loss. There is no pause, no reprieve. Life continues as if nothing has changed, though for us, everything has. There are no allowances made for the grief we carry. We still have to brush our teeth. Eat. Shower. Pay the bills. Support those who are grieving alongside us. Somehow, we are expected to keep moving. That is why we must give ourselves credit. We are here. We are still standing, carrying them with us wherever we go—we are doing something that takes immense strength and bravery.

The people we lost loved us. And we love them. They were here. They were alive. They left their beautiful mark on the world. And nothing—not even death—will ever change that.

Evie lost her younger brother, Arthur, to suicide in May 2022. He was just 19 years old. Arthur was an incredibly gentle and kind person who brought so much laughter to his friends and family. He was a skateboarder, a talented musician who played both guitar and drums, and a skilled squash and tennis player. His enthusiasm for adventure knew no bounds.