I Stopped Looking for the “Why” and Found This Instead

CW: suicide loss, grief

For a long time after my dad died, I was a detective.

I replayed conversations. I analyzed text messages. I interrogated my own memories like a witness who couldn't keep her story straight. What did he say that Tuesday? Did his voice sound different? Was that comment a clue I missed?

I wasn't just grieving. I was investigating. I thought if I could just figure out why, something would click into place. The chaos would organize itself into a narrative that made sense. I could file it away under "tragedy, explained" and move forward.

Fourteen years later, I can tell you: the why never came.

The Reconstruction Phase

If you've lost someone to suicide, you probably know this phase intimately. It's the mental true-crime documentary that plays on loop in your head. You're the detective, the witness, and the grieving family member all at once.

You go back to the last conversation. The last visit. The last time they seemed okay — or didn't. You wonder about the things you didn't know. The things you maybe should have asked. You build timelines. You look for the crack in the foundation where everything started to crumble.

And here's the thing: some of that is natural. Our brains want coherence. When something incomprehensible happens, we reach for explanation the way we'd reach for a handrail on a dark staircase. It's not pathological. It's human.

But at some point, the investigation stops serving you. At some point, it just keeps you circling the same drain.

What I Was Really Looking For

It took me years to make conscious within me what was behind chasing that "why." It wasn't really about understanding his death. It was about trying to undo it.

If I could just find the reason — the real reason — maybe I could locate the moment where things could have gone differently. The intervention I could have made. The words I could have said. The timeline where he's still alive and this is all just a terrible hypothetical.

The search for "why" was a backdoor to "what if." And "what if" is a room with no exit.

The Shift

I don't remember the exact moment I stopped investigating. It wasn't dramatic. There was no epiphany, no therapist's insight that suddenly unlocked everything. It was more like... exhaustion. Like my brain finally got tired of running the same simulations and coming up empty.

What I found on the other side wasn't closure. I want to be clear about that. I don't believe in closure — not the way it's usually sold, as some final chapter that wraps everything up neatly. My dad's death will never make sense. There is no way to frame it that makes it okay or easier to reconcile.

But what I found was something else: space.

Space that used to be filled with investigation. Space that used to be occupied by the endless loop of why, why, why. When I stopped pouring my energy into solving an unsolvable equation, I had energy for other things. For actually feeling the grief, instead of thinking about it. For remembering who he was, not just how he died. For living my own life, which kept going whether I participated in it or not.

What I Believe Now

I don't think there's a satisfying answer to why someone dies by suicide. Even when there are contributing factors — mental illness, trauma, circumstances — they don't add up to an explanation that makes the loss make sense. Because it doesn't make sense and I reckon it's not supposed to.

Some things in life are like that. They resist meaning. They refuse to be lessons. They just are — brutal and chaotic and incomprehensible and true. And no matter how we try to be good people, we are not immune from tragedy. Our "goodness" cannot spare us from heartbreak.

I used to think accepting that was giving up. Now I think it's the opposite. It's putting down a weight I cannot carry. The why was never mine to figure out. My dad's internal world, in those final moments, belonged to him. I will never have access to it. And as much as that hurts, it also releases me from the impossible task of trying to reconstruct it. And today I explain it differently. I say, "Suicide is how my father died. That's the short story. There's also a long story. And there's a story I will probably never know." And it feels okay.

What I Found Instead

When I stopped looking for the why, I found that I could hold my dad's death and his life at the same time. That I could talk about him without it being a tragedy first. That the way he died doesn't erase the way he lived — the way he made people laugh, the way he showed up, the ways he was complicated and human, and the way he was deeply loved.

We have this idea about endings in life, that we need closure to move on, or even that we are owed closure. I found that we don't.

Grief doesn't need resolution to soften. It doesn't need answers to become bearable. It just needs time and space and, if you're lucky, people who can sit with you in the not-knowing.

I found that my own life kept asking things of me — kept inviting me into joy, into purpose, into connection — and that saying yes to those invitations wasn't a betrayal of my grief. It was just living.

I still think about my dad all the time. I still wish I could talk to him. I still feel the absence like a phantom limb. But I don't investigate anymore. I don't run the simulations. I've retired from detective work.

The case is cold. And somehow, that's ended up being okay.

If You're Still in the Why

If you're reading this and you're still deep in the investigation phase, I'm not here to rush you out of it. You're not doing anything wrong. Your brain is doing what brains do when the incomprehensible happens.

But I want you to know there's another side. Not a side where it all makes sense — that side doesn't exist. But a side where you're not spending all your energy trying to solve something unsolvable.

When you're ready to put down the magnifying glass, you'll know. And there will be space waiting for you. Space for grief, yes. But also space for everything else.

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I walk alongside survivors of suicide loss in Befriend Your Grief, a 3-month companioning program for people who are tired of carrying this alone. If that sounds like what you need, learn more here.