**Content note:** This post includes suicide, the aftermath of a death, and descriptions of a death scene. Please read with care, or skip it if today isn't the day. If you're struggling, you can call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline) any time. --- It was a Friday morning at 8am when I got the call I knew was coming. It was my mother on the other end, crying like I had never heard her cry before. She could barely get the words out. When she did, she said, "Your dad is dead." I was 19. My body went into shock, yet disconnected at the same time. He lived in Salem, about an hour away. We turned the corner onto his street and all I saw was ambulances and police cars. Law enforcement was treating it as a homicide, so we weren't able to go in the house. They told us it would be several hours and that we shouldn't be there when they brought him out. One of his employees had found him and positively identified him. So Mom and I went to the piano shop my dad owned, down the street. I remember sitting on the floor, paging my brother, who lived in LA at the time. He wasn't surprised by the news either. Time felt like forever. At 4pm Mom got the call that we could enter the home. The detective warned us about the smell, and that the biohazard company hadn't arrived yet to clear the leftovers, so to speak. We parked and walked up to the door, both with tissues over our mouths and noses. I had never smelled death before. When we entered, the smell was so dense the tissues were instantly saturated, which made it worse than just breathing it in. His Baldwin grandfather clock stood in the entryway. He lived in a Street of Dreams neighborhood, so the house was large. The second floor was just his master bedroom and bathroom, like a penthouse. They had found his body in his walk-in closet. We went to the right, up the stairs. Two sets and a landing. Mom went first. His bedroom looked ransacked, and there were two Colts on his dresser. Mom started to enter the bathroom and I followed. The detectives hadn't said what the damage was, just that he had shot himself. We weren't sure what we were going to see.