April 10th of 2016. It was a Sunday morning. I was asleep in bed with my boyfriend, Tj. And at 7 am I wake up to the sound of knocking. My parents are here. Just 8 days before my mother called to tell me my older brother Sammy had run away. He had been struggling to our knowledge for only a month or two. Since his passing I’ve found his journals… he had been contemplating suicide since 2013. We had no idea. He was a beautiful man. 21 years young. Handsome and tan, blonde and strong. He had so many friends and participated in marching bands and indoor percussion and drumline all over the US. He could play the trumpet and the bass drum and the symbols. He was a leader in everything he did. He took charge, was considerate of feelings and would go out of his way unprompted to help a friend
He understood me in a way nobody else does…or ever will. Not even the relationship between my little brother and I could ever compare. He accepted me as I am. Loud and impatient, silly and overdramatic. I never had to explain myself to him. He always just knew… he understood.
On the chilly drizzly morning of April 6th 2016. He was found lying face down in the back parking lot of a Kmart in Maui, Hawaii. He had put a ziptie around his throat and tightened it until it cut off blood supply and oxygen. The coroners report says it took a few minutes. He stumbled around. And when he feel he scraped his knees and the side of his beautiful cheek. Then he died. Alone in the rain. My heart aches for that moment. For if I couldn’t have prevented him from killing himself… I so terribly wish o could have at least held him. No man that wonderful and beautiful and full of love should have to die alone in the cold rain. Behind a f…ing Kmart. It’s been 2 years. He missed little Ethan graduating highschool. He missed my wedding. My parents cry each and every day. I wish I had known. I would have told him how much I looked up to him. How much I respected him. How much I loved him like no other. His name was Samuel Thomas Spott. And he was my big brother. The best big brother.
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As someone who has suffered the loss of an irreplaceable person, my heart goes out to you. There is no remedy for this kind of loss and pain, for you or your parents. No day passes without some moment of indescribable sorrow. My best advice is to channel that pain toward every positive and loving moment you did share with Samuel, and think of those compounding good times far more than those last tragic and desperate minutes behind the f’ing k-mart. Your brother was many many many beautiful things, I am certain, and he and you deserve to place your attentions there. Suicides are filled with names and souls almost too sensitive and too beautiful for the pains of this world. In some ways, they are brave and misunderstood beyond measure. I believe, as well, and with every once of my heart, that you and he are still connected and always will be, so remember him with a smile even as the tears pour down, which is love not pain, and cleansing.