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      After receiving the phone call that my brother had suddenly departed the world in a whirlwind of agonizing emotions, I became a stunned survivor of suicide loss. Within a few hours, unlike Elizabeth Kubler Ross, who claimed that denial was the first stage of grief, I was overcome not by denial, but by fact.

        My brother’s painfully abrupt departure from life was unfathomably true.  It was already tearing my soul apart. Hours after speaking with his friends and a detective in order to grasp what might have happened, I picked up a pen to write.

             I surprised myself by outlining a chronology of occurrences that proceeded his death. I could not express my pain or abject confusion at this infant stage of grief. But I could break up my personal catastrophe, and his, into tiny increments of time. I craved to make order from the chaos. I began tracing recent events, pinpointing  significant things that occurred in the last months of our relationship.     

             Tracing  certain events was like connecting dots to find the overwhelming picture within!

             He had called me out of the blue and told me of his dream to move down to Florida. 

             When I tried calling him,  a month later, his phone was disconnected.

             I wrote him an email. It bounced. I called the firm where he worked. What? He had just retired and moved south, leaving no forwarding address?

             Then I messaged my children in alarm. Their uncle Rob, I wrote had dropped out of the world, so it seemed.

             After that, I searched the internet and Facebook for a friend of my brother’s, who might tell me where he was. I found that friend out in California. I messaged him, explaining who I was and that I was worried. 

             The friend replied. My brother had moved to Florida. All was well with him. But his email account was closed, and he had changed his phone. He would have my brother contact me. I suggested in turn that we swap cell phone numbers.

              A few hours later it was my brother who called to my delight.  He was as funny as ever. Yes, he had migrated to Florida, but his 2 cars had two different GPS systems each one took him a different way. Ha. Ha. He kept getting lost.

            He gave me his new phone number and email address. Then I messaged my kids, I found your Uncle Rob!

            Three weeks afterwards, I called my brother using the new contact information he had given me. But this phone, I discovered, was also disconnected. And my emails went unanswered.

              I  decided to call his friend in California the next day. 

              But suddenly, his friend called me. 

               I jumped to answer the phone, “Is everything okay?”

             “No,” he cried,  “Rob died. Police found a note.”

          Writing a brief chronology of my brother's last month on earth was  my initial way to search for hidden clues that I might have missed, hints that maybe his destiny was glinting…. before it hit me like a bolt of lightning.   

          IF YOU HAVEN'T ALREADY DONE SO IN YOUR GRIEVING, WRITE A SEQUENCE OF THE LAST DAYS OF YOUR LOST ONE

          Here is THE PLAN

  1. Look for reminders about things that happened on certain of those last days. (sticky notes you took/calendar entries/ text messages/emails/audios/photos

2.  Become aware of emotions you were feeling

3. Now write your sequence of the last days of your loved one

WHEN YOU GET THESE THREE THINGS  RIGHT, THIS IS HOW IT WILL AFFECT YOU.

1. You will be dealing with your grief in a creative way

2. You will gain new insights

3.  You will become empowered by this terrible experience

     Understanding how things unraveled sequentially can be immensely healing for survivors of tragic loss.  I am here to help you.

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