My story - the week before

We still felt that amazing happiness surrounding us, I think it was one of the happiest two weeks in my life. The first week of our 'normal' life had passed. On April 30 my mum came to visit us and brought all the presents (we did not want to take them along on our honeymoon...). She stayed for one night. We were all worried about Alexander, more than we had been in a long time. During the week I had picked up a brochure about depression, I had talked to my aunt about how worried I was that he did not seem to enjoy the wedding celebrations. We could not see him on any, ANY picture of the party in the evening! It turned out later that he had spent most of the evening talking with one of our guests, a priest, and even went to sleep during the party, came back but left early. I talked with one of my other brothers and mentioned my worry. He planned to move to the same town as my other two brothers, including Alexander, and told me how he was worried about Alexander coming to him often to talk about his problems - Alexander was running in circles, we all knew what he would say, we would listen, we would say whatever we thought might help him, we did that many, many hours. I told my aunt that I felt that Alexander needed to do something now. It was in the air that he needed to decide and get help. I never imagined the other possibility of that decision although Alexander had mentioned suicide on several occasions to me. We had even debated the pros and cons about it together. One time I was on the verge of driving 250 miles one day to be there and help him find a therapist. Although I took it serious I did not know how to really help him. However, the week before I said to my mum that the next time he would mention anything like that I would call a helpline to have him taken into hospital. After referring to a therapist we were encouraged, however, to go and be with him immediately. Apparently, it would not help to have him hospitalized if he did not want to be treated or did not see himself as being sick. He would just feel like he could not trust me any longer. Instead, we were encouraged to go and be with him asap to help and be there. I even laid out a plan how to help him the week before!!
So my mum came to visit and was visibly nervous since Alexander was going to start with hunting season on the morning of May 1st. However, nothing happened, and he went hunting again that evening and the next day. My little cousin was with him on those trips to the forest. All of us relaxed a bit. It seemed that Alexander could handle weapons and was not harming himself. We were wrong.