On 5-15-15 Joe Hayman gave up his long fight with mental health issues and ended his own life. It was a regular day of work for me and that evening as my parents were being notified as next of kin, I was in my sweetheart’s backyard picking some kale for dinner but felt off with no explanation.
The next morning as I was making breakfast I checked my voice mail and listened to one new message that sounded like that call I’d dreaded getting for years. I called my folks back and just got voice mail. Called my sister and her first words after asking if I’d talked to our parents was “are you sitting down?”….uggggggg. I’ve been punched and kicked in nearly every part of my body in 10 years of karate but that hit me way deep inside, beyond what any tensed up muscles could protect a blow from reaching.
It has now been a month since Joe left one last voice mail message to his sweetheart then dropped 11 floors to the hard ground below.
In the hardest times of my life I’ve always awaited talking with him about what was going on. Now I cannot do that check-in with him and never will be able to again because it is his absence that I’d need to talk with him about.
Now they are monologues that I have with my brother. And like conversations with God, there is no reply that I hear.
He left no goodbye note but had been hinting at this for years and we’d urged him over and over to find another way to be in this world.
On this web site bearing his name I hope to share the best of what he’d been before the darkness overtook the light in my kid brother’s heart and mind.
–Doug Hayman, Seattle, Washington
