Thankfully my brother only killed himself and not my nieces and nephew

It's something I think about a lot

Photo by khampha phimmachak on Unsplash

Yesterday in Sardinia a man murdered his wife and two of his children, along with his neighbour and landord who intervened when he heard the noise next door. He also shot his mum in the head. And then he killed himself. Only his 14-year-old son survived.

I can’t imagine what the friends and relatives are going through - losing my brother to suicide was bad enough - but my mind has definitely wandered there on various occasions, flashing back to the moment I was told Matt was dead.

It was an unseasonably warm March morning and I was sitting on my balcony in the Sardinian sunshine before work. As I was knocking back the dregs of my espresso, the landline rang over and over again. Realising it might be urgent, I finally picked up, only to hear my mum’s voice whisper down the line “It’s Matt, he’s done something stupid.”

The split second before she told me what had happened seemed eternal. I contemplated all kinds of scenarios. Maybe my brother had been drink driving and hit someone. Perhaps he had run someone over by accident. My mind - which had already started to play tricks on me with its imagined scenarios - saw him pick up his gun and annihilate my sister-in-law and my nieces and nephew in their cottage in the north Dorset countryside.