When someone takes their life, they don’t only steal the future out from under our feet, they also desecrate their past. It makes it hard to hold on to the good things about them. And no one deserves to be judged on the worst five minutes of their life, even if those five minutes turn out to be their last.

Taking off all her layers of clothes made her smaller and smaller and smaller until I was left with this tiny dark creature in a nest of unpeeled clothing. I felt like a huge pale blob beside her, as if undressing me made me bigger and bigger, loosening all the layers that had held me in.