Let’s rewind time by about a year. Back then I would have said suicide was one of those awful things that impacted other people, strangers and so on — not me and my family. That all changed on February 6, 2019, when my brother chose to end his life. His suicide came as a terrible shock: I was blindsided. A solicitor and high-level public servant with the Queensland government, my brother was intelligent, hard-working, and well–respected amongst his peers. He died at the age of fifty-three. At the time of his death, he’d been living alone for three years, having separated from his wife with whom he shared four children. 

For those of us left behind, existence seems to have taken on a stark dichotomy: there’s the time ‘before’ my...