My last exchange with Anand on September 28, 2018 was by text. He wrote “Thanks for everything. I really mean it. Goodbye.”

I immediately called 911 and asked the police for help with Anand yet again. In a desperate attempt to get through to him I sent him a meme saying Suicide passes the pain on to others,  I had no idea what to say after 3-4 months of trying to work with him and convince him to get help from the time he expressed wanting to end his life.  Prior to that I spent 2 years of trying to help him through his depression and took him to marriage counsellors for I myself was clueless as to how to help him. Marriage counselling was the only thing he agreed to after a year of begging him to get help.

As his partner and caregiver I know in my bones if Anand got professional help and stuck with it he would still be here today.

In my recent counselling sessions I talked about my late husband’s actions and behaviour. My social worker asked me “was Anand bi-polar or manic?” I told her he was never professionally diagnosed but based on his own reading and research he self-diagnosed himself as being bi-polar. I knew this before we got engaged, although I never really entirely understood what it was, I never denied it.

As a child, adolescent and as a young adult he was often labeled and misunderstood by his family as stubborn, rebellious, reckless, irresponsible, difficult and lazy. But these were all symptoms of his childhood trauma. Even after his death if I tried to talk about the things Anand told me, I was met with “you know how he was.” There was still denial about WHY he was the way he was. This comes from cultural conditioning, but how long are we going to give that a pass and not address it?

Thus because you can’t support something you deny, dismiss and ignore, I was the only true support and caregiver he had in his life other than his friend and former manager Ananya whom he confided in almost as much as he did with me. She is the only other person other than myself that I know of with whom he himself was candid about his first suicide attempt when he was 20.

Anand expressed along the lines of “Maybe I should have gotten professional help a long time ago. It’s not ego or pride. It’s about, so many times having been denied my feelings and emotions that I don’t think I have a place where I could talk about them.”

Those who know me, know I protect, defend and bend backwards for my loved ones and would move heaven and earth for them. When it came to the underdog, I always fought for them whether amongst family, friends or in my work place. Anand would say to me “I wish you were there while I was growing up, I know you would have stood up for me, you would have protected me from my father.”

His French course classmate after learning about Anand’s passing wrote to me telling me that “He had often told me about you as a superwoman.” The irony is while he thought I could have saved him from others…. I couldn’t save him from himself.

I don’t see it as a failure on my part because as I have said I know I did everything I could in my power with the knowledge I had and attempted to acquire, to the point that it caused me to burn out. I left no stone unturned.

I see it as a failure of society; it’s unwillingness to embrace vulnerability and being human and obsession with perfection. Telling people to get over it and move on. Society’s willful ignorance and discomfort about trauma and mental health causes people to suffer in silence.

Keep in mind this is Anand’s and my story, what he and those close to him shared with me, and my perspective and does not necessarily apply to everyone dealing with Mental Health issues.

I learned much later that the message in the meme I sent Anand wasn’t the best message to convey to someone who has suicidal ideation. One never really knows the right thing to say or do, we learn when we have open dialogue and authentic conversations.

I thought by not talking to family or friends I was protecting Anand and our marriage. By keeping quiet all I did was alienate myself, which led to me handling everything on my own, being overwhelmed and falling into a depression; this is common with many caregivers and is known as “Caregiver Burnout”. Counselling can only help so much. I needed a support system of my own to hold me up to support Anand just as much as he needed one.

Therefore, I will keep learning, listening, sharing and speaking out, so you don’t suffer alone as a caregiver or suffer the same loss I have. So unlike Anand maybe you will get the help you need and not wait for someone’s approval or acknowledgement. Unlike Anand’s family, maybe you will listen when your loved one talks about their pain instead of dismissing it.