I believe that when you find yourself at the grave of someone you love dearly, lost not to old age, to cancer or to a heart attack, but to suicide, the loss tears at the heart in a completely different way.

Although my brother took his last breath July 24, 2020, I think he began dying on the inside a decade and a half earlier while he was deployed to Iraq.

Sgt. Nashon Brown was a field artilleryman who served in Iraq as an Army gunner from October 2004 to November 2005. During his tour, he saw death as he never had before and endured things he thought he’d never have to face. This small-town country boy with a simple upbringing in deep-woods Georgia fought a complex and devious enemy that can enter and exit a crowd of men and women and children at will. An enemy within.

Years beyond deployment, continuing post-traumatic stress, bipolar disorder, constant migraines, and haunting images of war took their toll. The suicide of his best friend, struggles with relationships, and the isolation of the COVID pandemic added even greater weight to the burdens he bore. When he felt he could bear them no more, my eldest brother, a decorated combat veteran and devout patriot, took his own life in that summer of 2020.

He seldom talked to me about his combat experiences. But I’ll never forget one thing he did share that spoke volumes. “I never thought I’d see the day when I’d have to pull my weapon on a kid,” he’d said.

Why didn’t I probe more? Why didn’t I encourage him and just listen to him talk it out? Before, my brother had a great smile and was so funny. Before, if you became his friend, you had a friend for life. Did I fear knowing what was now behind the sad countenance that had taken the place of his persistent smile and the distance that now filled his eyes?

Suicide should never be glorified. It can never be a cliché or a slogan. Self-murder is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. You can’t take it back, and you can’t ever subtract the pain death inflicts upon others.

We should always be watchful for signs that someone may be considering self-harm, but perhaps more so during the dark and cold of the winter months and those festive times when it can be easy to forget that others may be suffering, facing hardships or lonely.

If we think someone is in distress or danger, we should be brave enough to ask, “Are you OK? What are you thinking? How can I help?”

At the end of the day, I’d rather have talked through the tough questions for as long as it took, than to watch the Army funeral detail fold an American flag and hand it to my niece as a bugler played ‘Taps’ and we laid my 45-year-old brother – a man who loved to grill, who was an avid fisherman, who loved the Georgia Bulldogs, and who served and fought without reservation for his country – to rest.

Take time to get to know those around you. It may mean having to ask tough questions and face tougher answers. It may mean empathizing with their pain and grieving their hurts and losses with them. But it may also mean we can help get them through the pain and realize that life is worth living.