I found out on a Monday. Sitting at my desk in the office, a text message from my mother saying that you'd had a bad fall. That it didn't 'look good'. 

A phone-call later that day. The info was patchy and more and more confusing. You'd taken a fall down the stairs from the attic. The ambulance had arrived quickly and drove off slowly - a bad sign, signalling head injuries, broken spines, the futility of speed. But you were conscious. Unable to move, but conscious and stable. 

How could that be bad? That was a good sign, surely? 

More details seeped in as the week progressed. An operation was possible, but risky. Without it you would never walk again, but with it the percentages weren't great anyway. I thought back to my oldest memory of you - how easy it had been to fall in love with you when I was five years old and you were a grown-up, both of us bouncing on my bed at my granddad's house, laughing.

It was several days later - after you had gone from us - that the full story came clear. You had been depressed for a while, panic attacks and periods of blanking out were getting more and more regular. There was a history of it in your family, apparently. I guess you saw what was coming …

In my better moments I like to think you took control. A decision made rashly, but made nonetheless. But there are times when I don't know you. The cruellest cut of all - that maybe you left us a stranger.