by Kirk Olivier

Created on: October 11, 2009   Last Updated: October 12, 2009

It's already been 17 years and 8 months since my brother Anthony, (Tony as he was called) took his own life. His death was sudden and horrific and devastated my family. The events leading up and on that fateful morning of 11th January 1992 are still vivid in my mind and although I have tried for so many years, they cannot be forgotten. A brief background was that Tony had lost his beloved wife of 13 years on 31st December 1990 (aged 30 to the day). Shirley was diagnosed with cancer 9 months prior to that and no treatment had worked. Tony was left to cope with bringing up his 2 young daughters. He seemed to eventually be coping, he was working for my father's construction business and his daughters were doing quite well under the circumstances.

On Friday 10th January 1992 we had our usual meeting / get together at the office. The difference between this and every other Friday, was that we were saying good bye to Tony, in a more final way than we ever expected. He was leaving the company and moving on to better prospects. We sat and had a few drinks, I drank soft drink as usual and my brother and father had a few beers. There were no cellphones in South Africa back then. We did however have a good old paging system. Tony asked if I would like to take over his pager as he no longer need it in the new job he was starting on the forthcoming Monday. I said it would be handy to have and agreed to take over the payments. I have regretted this decision ever since.

I left the meeting at around 6:30 that evening and went home to my wife and four children. I left my father and brother at the office. The following morning I took my family shopping. This was our usual Saturday ritual. I will never forget my excitement when the pager went off, it was like having a new toy. My excitement very quickly turned to horror. I could not finish reading the message, my eyes filled with tears so it was difficult to see the writing on the screen. The message read "Tony dead, please call dad urgently". I rushed around from one public phone to another, trying to find one that worked. I was unable to find one, so we rushed to my wife's parent's house as it was the closest destination with a telephone.

As we pulled up into the driveway, my father in-law came out to meet us. He was a small man but he had a big heart. He grabbed my hand tears rolling down his cheeks and said "I'm sorry, your dad called, your brother has shot himself". I was finding it difficult to believe what I was hearing,

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