My therapist and I were always able to speak pretty frankly about suicide. It was my default "coping" mechanism which really wasn't about coping, but more about an inability and (honestly for me) unwillingness to cope.

I reached a place where I took suicide completely off the table as an option. In a period of a year, I lost two friends to suicide and my sister to cancer. The personal devastation of those deaths, and witnessing the devastation to others also affected by those deaths, made it glaringly clear to me that I never want to willfully inflict that devastation on my family and friends. I realized I never want to do that to my loved ones. I had to find a better way.

Three days ago I helped my husband make the decision to not go on life support, and I held his hands as he ran out of breath. We are deeply saddened and our lives will never, ever, be the same without his presence in our lives. If his body could have healed, he would have stayed because the relationships and promise of future in those relationships was always most important to him despite the constant pain he lived with for 35 years. But this time, he really didn't have any choices left. His body gave out.

Again, as I watch and live the devastation of that loss, I have absolutely no doubt that I will always choose life until, like my husband, my body reaches its time to go.