Sometimes, it escapes your notice, the simple fact that someone else is in pain. You don’t realize that they are considering ending it all with a bang, until they do. My universe ended, the earth stopped rotating, and the planets stopping orbiting the sun, one cold winter day in March, with snow on the ground.

The phone, ring, ring, ringing; ringing off the hook, taking up the time, slipping into the lonely backyard, filled with crystalline snow. This is how it starts, one icy evening in March. I hear the phone ringing, my mother picking it up, one cold evening in March. I hear the lengthy silence on her side of the line, one day in March and the sound of the news in the background, one hard day in March. The sight of tears, drip, drip, dripping down the side of her face, making the collar of her shirt wet, one terrible day in March. Not just tears, but a river pouring from the corners of her eyes, running down her cheeks, droplets of despair.

“Asher, he killed himself,” she says in a whisper.

Oh my God, I think. I somehow made it downstairs, but I don’t remember walking down the carpeted steps; I don’t remember sitting down on the smooth, cold wooden bench by the window. The only thing I recall about the minutes after I found out, is sitting slumped, holding a crumpled tissue in my cupped hands, staring outside at my dog running through the snow, my breath fogging the glass, and catching in my throat.

This is how it starts; the phone rings, horrible news is delivered, and the next thing I know, my whole world starts to spin on its axis. A feeling of numbness spread from my toes to my fingertips, to the tip of my nose. There is no going back now. My universe will never be the same again. And the horrific part, no one knows. Not the ragged guy on the corner, not the person sipping soup, not the woman selling peanuts in a cool lilac suit. Nobody knows, but me.

People think that the three most awful words in the human language are, “I hate you,” or, “This is war,” but in reality, it’s, “He killed himself.” The thing, I don’t want anyone’s pity; I don’t need it. It just about destroys me though, that all the things he would have done in his life, he won’t. He won’t get accepted into college, he won’t listen to his favorite songs, he won’t get married, he won’t ever get his pilot’s license, he won’t ever have his first solo flight, and he won’t ever see Germany.

In these months that have passed, I have wondered: How did he do it? Why did he do it? Didn’t he know that he was loved? That he mattered to so many people, that we all depended on him in a different way? The way he did it doesn’t matter to me anymore, it’s the why that bothers me. Sometimes, (and it’s hard for me to write this) I am so angry at him, I can hardly breathe; how dare he leave us all behind? How he could be so selfish, is beyond me. But whenever I get mad at him, I feel guilty. What right do I have to criticize him? He was everything to so many people, and in all of the lives that Asher affected, he will be remembered fondly. Except, I don’t want to remember him- I want to get ice cream with him at a little café when it pours outside , look at the toy trains on display in the Seattle Children’s Museum, I want him back. But we can’t have everything we want, and nothing can ever be perfect.

So, for those of us who remain, we are left with only a handful of ashes and a rowan tree in the front yard. And every spring when it rains, and the white tulips bloom, we will think of you.