Something rose in me that felt exactly like grief, that throat-closing, heavy longing for the irretrievably lost.

Grief, when it comes, is nothing we expect it to be. Grief has no distance. Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life. –Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

It's a phone call that you hope never to receive from a friend, especially not on the way to the rehearsal dinner for your own brother's wedding. Phone rings. You answer. Friend, T, crying. You ask what's wrong. "Nicole, S killed himself." S is her older brother, the same age as yours. What do you say to that? "I'm so sorry," I say. We've had the conversation about what this day would look like, God forbid it to come. It plays out nothing like expected.

He did it at my parents house. Why didn't he call me? I told him to call me. He didn't even say goodbye. My dad found him.

I'm so sorry. I love you.

I shouted that he needed help. No one wanted to listen, they wanted to stay in their denial. What kind of therapist am I if I can't help my own family? How can I go back to work.

I wish I could be there to be with you. You live so far away.. Your family lives so far away.. Do you need anything?

I wish you could be here, too. Sigh, why?

I don't know.

There's nothing left to say, T is clearly in shock, repeating herself. Bereft and exhausted, 12 hours after she first found out, thousands of miles away from her family. I hang up the phone. Part relieved that I get to escape from the grief by closing my cell phone, part annoyed that I must stand between my friend's utter loss and my own family's joy at my brother's rehearsal and wedding, part knowing that the overwhelming grief of my friend is chasing me in the down times, when I try to sleep, when I escape to sit, when I think of something that isn't immediate and action oriented.

Aware. Aware I'm being selfish. Aware also that I feel joy for my own brother who has managed to elude his depressive pursuer these many years. The last few years of my brother's life have been successful, fulfilling, joyful, and in pursuit of God. His own pursuer of depression, and my own, was never as unforgiving and relentlessly out of control as S's. Our bouts of melancholic sadness contemplated meaning, searched for purpose. S's gave themselves to bipolar excess. His past few years had been full of divorce, and alcohol, hospital visits, and wringing hands by his sister. It all seems very happenstance, much too random a pattern to who overcomes and who is consumed.

The grief continues for T, with the trip home, the funeral later this week. My heart breaks for her and my heart fears what experiencing such grief of my own would be like. Such fears make me caution my brother and sister-in-law to stay together on their honeymoon cruise, being cautious. Such fears make me say an extra "Be Careful" to my husband as he gets into the car. Such fears threaten to make me not live life, to lose my life to fear of loss.

T doesn't have that choice, the loss and hurt have come. I pray for her, although a believer for a few decades, she hasn't mentioned God, and I'm not going to bring up God's place or lack of it in this tragedy. I'm not sure what to pray for her..peace? hope? relief? God help her is about the only thing that seems to fit. Trusting that God knows more than I of what she needs.