A Weiner and a Windshield

Brandon White has been a firefighter in Las Vegas, NV for the past twenty years. 

To learn more about Isagenix, visit nmp.isagenix.com. 

Creators & Guests

Host

Troy Gent

Troy Gent is the Host of The Ghost Turd Stories Podcast. He served a total of eight years as an infantryman in the US Marine Corps.

Editor

Rebecca Gent

Rebecca is the editor and publisher of The Ghost Turd Stories Podcast.

What is The Ghost Turd Stories Podcast?

The Ghost Turd Stories Podcast was born out of a place of grief. Having lost my best friend from the Marine Corps in the early hours of 2023, I realized that this feeling was all too familiar. I wanted to do something, not only for the loss I felt, but for the loss I knew many families were enduring day to day.

We believe that a major way to relieve the stressors of life is to talk, laugh, cry, and share our experiences without fear of offense. We hope to attract veterans and first responders as well as anyone who is interested in knowing more about what it’s like to be in our shoes while we wear or wore those shoes.

PODCAST INTRO: Hello everyone and welcome to Ghost Turd Stories.

I'm your host, Troy Gent.

Ghost Turd Stories mission is using humorous stories from veterans and first responders to reduce the burden of families whose veteran or first responder committed suicide.

Ghost Turd Stories vision is to use humor from veteran and first responder stories to prevent suicide within our ranks and reduce the burden of families whose veteran or first responder committed suicide.

We hoped to attract veterans and first responders as well as those interested in knowing more about what it's like to be in our shoes while we wear or wore those shoes.

TROY GENT: Alright.

Welcome everybody.

This is Troy Gent.

Your hosts and the creator of Ghost Turd Stories.

Today I've got a very special guest.

He's a firefighter in Las Vegas.

His name is Brandon.

Welcome, Brandon.

How are you?

BRANDON: I'm doing great.

How are you doing, Troy?

TROY GENT: Fantastic.

What's the dumbest thing you ever saw anyone else do in the fire department?

BRANDON: The first thing as I thought about this, one of the dumbest things...

It wasn't anybody on the fire department.

It was an actual patient that we ran on a gentleman, a kid that was like probably twenty-two or twenty-three and we had ran on his family.

Their family home had burnt down probably six months prior to this.

The PR had called and said there was a female screaming in this car in the parking lot and it's in Las Vegas.

It's hot.

It's like ten o'clock in the morning and it's already a hundred degrees.

So we're thinking, "This could be pretty serious."

Anytime you have somebody locked in a car down there, you're always concerned.

So we show up and it's like a lowrider car, all tinted-out windows, and everything.

And the handles...

It had no handles, no way to get in from the outside.

My partner was walking ahead of me.

He was gonna go look in and the windows were so dark, you couldn't see.

And I remember just as he went to peek in, I saw movement in the shadow through the window.

I was like, "Hey!"

Before I could say it, the girl was just like a crazed cat jumped on the window.

"Hey, help me!"

Come to find out, this guy who owned the car, that was his girlfriend supposedly.

They'd been out partying and he'd left her drunk in the car.

She had passed out in the car.

Almost killed her, you know?

And we had to find him.

TROY GENT: Did you startle her awake?

BRANDON: The girl in the car had brought it to attention that she was stuck in the car.

She was already awake and freaking out.

TROY GENT: But she was stuck in the car.

BRANDON: Yeah, she couldn't get out because there were no handles...

TROY GENT: From the inside.

BRANDON: Yeah, from the inside around.

You know what there was...

I don't think there were handles from the inside of the car or outside.

TROY GENT: Okay.

BRANDON: And so he had it on remote.

But he accidentally locked her in there and almost killed his girlfriend.

He was kind of tweaker-looking guy.

Why, first of all, would you have a car that you couldn't get in and out of?

TROY GENT: Was it a pretty janky car?

BRANDON: No, it was done up.

It had nice rims.

It was like a Monte Carlo two-door, tinted blacked-out windows.

You could barely see in the windows.

TROY GENT: When you are in situations like that, where it's blacked out and stuff, do you usually have a police officer on the scene first kind of thing?

So someone has a firearm or what?

BRANDON: Yeah, in this situation, Metro was coming and we were just more concerned about getting...

TROY GENT: Cause of the heat.

BRANDON: Yeah, because of the heat.

So we were just making sure that she was going to get out.

But usually, if it's anything suspicious we'll wait and let them come and clear it because we don't have the guns or the vests.

There's been close calls where we've walked up to people, they're slumped over at a light, you can wake them up, and they stomp on the gas.

They'll almost run you over or there'll be a weapon down in between the seats or something.

You just kind of have to go assess the situation in the scene as you show up.

If it's sketchy and if that butterfly in your gut's going off, you just sort of back off.

TROY GENT: Crazy.

BRANDON: Yeah.

TROY GENT: Some people are weird.

BRANDON: Yeah, that's an understatement.

TROY GENT: Did you ever see anyone throw up or mess their pants while running in formation or during a fitness test?

BRANDON: Actually, in rookie school, we would do a lot of physical PT.

We'd have to do the Eiffel Tower.

It's a stairwell and it was tight.

It's a small replica of the Eiffel Tower.

TROY GENT: So you had to go and train on that.

BRANDON: Yeah, so we'd go and do PT in the morning and we had our little bio bags for vomiting.

TROY GENT: Because it's a standard issue?

BRANDON: Yeah, we had them in the side of our turnout pants and if we got sick, we’d just pull it out and throw up.

TROY GENT: People got dizzy.?

BRANDON: Yeah, you got dizzy and you would get sick.

And so I've seen quite a few classmates throw up.

I have a funny story.

Not really while we were training but on a fire scene.

So I'll tell you...

There are two stories.

There are two parts to it and there's a reason why.

You'd get a call and you leave the station.

You don't have time to use the restroom.

So one day we get a fire call, we jump in the engine, and we roll out to this fire.

It was an apartment that had caught on fire.

We get there and put the fire out and everybody's kind of winding down and they're releasing crews to go back into service.

And since we were first on scene, we sat there with investigators and we kind of do the overhaul, kind of pick through things, make sure the hot spots are out, and make sure everything's okay.

Investigators were there.

We helped shovel through debris or whatever they might need to be moved.

So we're sitting there and I look at my captain.

I'm like, "Cap, I've got to go to the bathroom.

I gotta take a duce."

And he's like, "Well, go!

Just go there in the actual occupant's bathroom."

It had been unscathed from the fire, but it was still smoke-damaged and everything.

So I was like, "Okay."

I mean, it was to the point where I had to.

I've known quite a few firefighters or people who have had that situation do the same thing.

And so away I went.

I used the restroom and I went to flush and the water turned off because we turned the water off.

So the poor occupants got...

TROY GENT: Got a present?

BRANDON: Yeah, I felt bad.

So we left.

So fast forward probably eight years.

I was on a fire scene we have a mobile air unit that takes care of the bottles and like rehab stuff.

It carries water.

It gets called out this fire.

I'm on this mobile resource.

It also has a bathroom on it and we usually keep it locked because we have to clean it.

Knowing firefighters and the jokes they like to play, you just know some knuckleheads gonna go in there and blow it up and leave it.

I always tell people that unless I see brown in your eyes, you're not using it.

We're on this fire and it's a big working fire.

This rookie comes up to me about halfway and he's like, "Sir, can I use the restroom on the mobile air?"

And I said, "No, it's broke," thinking, "Go find somewhere else."

You know what I mean?

Like, "Hey, there's other avenues.

You can go figure this out."

And so he goes, "Ah," and you could tell he was in distress.

The fire winds down.

This is probably twenty minutes later.

So I get released and give everybody their bottles and everything they need.

And just as I'm pulling out of the parking lot, command comes back and says, "Hey, do you want to stop right there for a second?"

I stop and it's this guy, the captain I know pretty well and he looks at me and goes, "I know that restroom's not broken.

Let this guy use the restroom."

And this poor little rookie had like tears in his eyes, man.

Just, almost, you know?

He's like, "I'm so sorry, sir."

And as a rookie, they don't have bidding spots.

They roam around from station, kind of fill the voids until they have enough seniority to bid something.

So he gets bounced in and roped into our station like two or three weeks later and I recognize him and am like, "Hey, you're the bathroom boy."

He's like, "Yeah, yeah.

Thanks so much, man."

He's like, "I was like, I thought you're gonna crap your pants."

And he's like, "To tell you the truth, sir...

I did a little bit."

So I felt a little bad about that but he did have a little accident when he said he had to go home and change his underwear.

But at the same time, I'm like, "Hey, man.

Back in the day, we'd just go use the bathroom or go crap in the corner under the fire, wherever, because we just didn't have that opportunity."

But it was funny.

And the funny thing is he got a nickname from that.

He grew his mullet out.

He was growing his mullet because it's a trend now.

So we called him...

We called him Mudflats from that point on.

That's his nickname today.

Mudflats.

TROY GENT: Yeah, do they have a lot of nicknames in the fire department?

BRANDON: Yeah, they do.

TROY GENT: Yeah, in the Marine Corps they do too.

BRANDON: Yeah, it's very similar I think as far as camaraderie and a lot of ex-military guys that I work with always comment.

That's the best part of the job.

It's the camaraderie, the relationships, and the bantering.

TROY GENT: You've been in the fire department a long time now.

Is there less of that now or is it the same or is there issues going on with like, political correctness and that kind of thing?

BRANDON: Yeah, it has changed a little bit from the time that I've gone on over the almost twenty years.

It's definitely changed.

When I first got on, I remember guys saying, "It's changed now."

Like the hazing and all that that went on prior to me was out of control, as it was everywhere else.

So it's changing.

It's an evolution.

It definitely has changed now and it is a lot more politically correct.

You have to watch your tongue.

Definitely watch your audience.

TROY GENT: It seems like there used to be way out of control, like whatever you want flies.

And then it's gotten to a point where it's just outrageously strict.

Like it should have stopped in the middle maybe somewhere.

BRANDON: There's no middle ground.

Yeah.

TROY GENT: It just kept going and now it's just out of control the other way.

BRANDON: Well, and that's the thing too is we're noticing a lot.

Our department is quite large.

We have a high turnover because of the retirement.

Over the last couple of years, we've had a lot of promotions to captains and so we have a lot of these new captains that are...

And I can't blame them because it falls on their head if something goes wrong and so you know, they really are like, "Hey, you got to tighten your lip and watch what you say," and they're really cautious, which I don't blame them.

That's what's changed a little bit, whereas before it was laxed.

But it's still good.

Like my crew we have now, we have a good crew and the banter goes on.

You just have to know where your limits are and where everybody's limits are.

TROY GENT: Well, I know you said you had some other stories you wanted to share with us, so I'll just let you share those.

BRANDON: I've just got some funny stories to tell.

I can't tell you how many calls we'd come back in with the engineer of the rescue, like, "Man, if we could make a movie of the things we see, people would never think it's real.

It's like fictitious.

TROY GENT: I don't like reading novels and fiction because real life is so outrageously funny and dramatic that I don't understand why you would need novels.

I get enough just from real stuff.

BRANDON: Yeah, that's why I love people watching.

TROY GENT: Yeah.

BRADON: People-watching is just as entertaining as reading a book.

I love going to the airport, waiting for my flight, and just sitting there and watching people.

It's the best thing in the world.

Totally, why would you leave that when life is so colorful?

We had a lady.

She was probably fifty or sixty.

She was off her meds.

Metro was on the scene, they get there, and they say it's code four for us to go in.

We go in there and we're with the crew.

I was with this crew.

It's probably the, tightest crew I've been with.

Like I looked forward coming to work every day with those guys.

First thing we walk in the door...

She loved cats obviously.

She had taken and bought I don't know how many cat calendars and taken the pictures with the cat, not the date, and wallpapered her entire wall with cat pictures.

We come in and Metro's trying to get her stuff to go cause she's going down to the hospital.

Metro's like, "Okay, we gotta hurry now."

And so my partner goes, "Okay, let's go right meow," and started saying meow.

So it caught on.

So everybody started saying, "Meow!

Let's go meow!

Meow! Meow! Meow! Meow!"

Right?

And Metro's laughing, we're giggling, and just funny stuff.

So we finally get her in the car or get her on the gurney and get her back into the ambulance.

And as we're loading her into the ambulance, my partner...

People thought he looked like Ryan Gosling.

I guess who is off of The Notebook.

As we're loading her in, she reaches out and grabs his hand like she had instantly fallen in love with him as her eyes hit his.

He played right along.

She goes, "I love you.

Will you marry me?

Marry me.

I love you."

And he goes, "Thank you.

I love you too."

And as they're loading the gurney way, their hands are like slowly slipping away.

And he goes, "Wait! Don't go!"

And it was the funnest thing in the world.

And she was like, "Wait!"

It was like a perfect love story right there in the back of the ambulance.

It was in a mockery sense but it was funny.

It was a good time.

With this same Ryan Gosling guy.

He was a character.

He is a character.

Still is and just a good guy.

We were on the rescue one day.

I was driving and he was in the passenger seat.

We get this call for a psychiatric problem going on.

Guy walking in and out of the street naked.

So we hold short about a block away down the street we still have visual of this service station where the guy stated he was at.

So we're sitting there and we see Metro driving around and they go into the parking lot and drive back.

We had pulled into this little strip mall parking lot.

And all of a sudden out of the blue, from our right...

Butt naked.

And we're like, "Oh, here he is!"

And he's going crazy.

And he sees us, cause we're right there, and he's like, "Oh, help me!"

Ah!"

And he's going crazy.

He's butt naked.

So we lock the door me and my partner we're just chuckling.

He gets going and he jumps on top of the hood of the rescue and they're not like an ambulance.

It's on like a chassis.

It's on a bigger, heavier...

TROY GENT: Smaller than a full-size fire truck?

BRANDON: Yeah, but it's not quite a small ambulance so it takes some agility to climb up to it.

And he's like a spider monkey on my windshield.

Butt naked.

TROY GENT: The front?

BRANDON: Yes, and he's like, "Help me!"

And we are giggling.

And so I turn on the windshield wipers trying to get him.

My partner starts laughing and he's chuckling and I'm just going, "Nobody would ever believe that this happened."

Finally, we get on the radio and let dispatch know that, "Hey, will you let Metro know the patient's down here with us on our window naked?"

Just all the time, those type of things come up.

As you're driving back to the station, you're like, "There's no way people would never believe that this happened."

TROY GENT: Just a few months ago, my wife and two daughters went to California to my wife's grandmother's funeral and they went to the airport.

The flight got delayed so they got back in the car and started driving around Vegas a little bit.

He must've been three hundred fifty to four hundred pounds.

Butt naked.

Metro had him up against the cop car with his crotch into the grill so no one could see his crotch.

I couldn't believe he was that big and he had no butt.

His butt was so small.

I couldn't because they took a picture.

BRANDON: Oh, wow.

TROY GENT: And they said, "Check this out!"

I'm like, "How does he not have a butt?"

BRANDON: Yeah, that's a weird.

TROY GENT: Anyway...

BRANDON: That's funny stuff.

You see stuff like that all the time.

It's crazy.

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BRANDON: We had a call to a lady who had had a GI bleed.

TROY GENT: What's a GI bleed?

BRANDON: So a GI bleed is like, you're bleeding internally in your intestines and it builds up and then you excrete it out.

This bloody, coffee ground looking nasty...

TROY GENT: Okay.

BRANDON: It's stinky.

You walk into any emergency room and the smell hits you and you know, "Oh, they got somebody that has a GI bleed.

it's one of those.

It's just nasty.

Well, this poor old lady, she lived in this senior living home.

They kind of not totally assisted but they were there to take care of her.

Anyways, so she was downstairs eating breakfast with everybody and went up and had to go to the bathroom.

She passed out in the bathroom.

One of the maintenance ladies had found her, pulled her out, and she'd woke up.

As we get there, we're doing our assessment, my buddy's hooking her up to the monitor and everything, and the cleaning lady's like, "Hey, do you want to see..."

Because I was like, "What color of blood?"

It just tells you where different areas of the bleed was and so forth.

So she goes, "Do you want to see it?

I've got it."

She'd cleaned it all up and kept it in a little waste basket.

So I go around the corner.

We're in a hallway, maybe four feet wide.

So it's kind of tight and it's about ten feet long and I step over the patient to go around the corner to look what color this defecation was and my buddy like is kneeling down around her.

So I had to kind of step over him, look at the bucket, and as I looked in the bucket, I caught the whiff and the visual at the same time and it was over.

TROY GENT: Oh, man.

BRANDON: I started bullfrogging.

TROY GENT: You lost it.

BRANDON: Yeah, I almost thought I was gonna...

I mean, I thought I was gonna throw up.

TROY GENT: But you'd already seen like years and years of crap.

BRANDON: Yeah, but for whatever it was.

TROY GENT: Because it was the visual and the smell at the same time.

TROY GENT: Yes, at the same time.

And it just...

It punched me in the face.

And so I started bullfrogging.

And I thought I was going to throw up.

TROY GENT: I've never heard of bullfrogging before.

You were just gagging?

BRANDON: Yeah, just gagging.

TROY GENT: Okay.

BRANDON: So I started cat backing or whatever you want to call it.

And I ended up running down the hallway back down towards the patient cause the exit was down past them.

I jumped over my partner and out the door and never threw up but my eyes were watering and gagging and gagging and my partner was laughing.

It was probably one of the most unprofessional times I've been but it was bad.

I thought I was going to throw up.

I haven't ever thrown up on a patient yet but there's been a couple times.

That was one close one.

TROY GENT: That's the thing about military and first responders.

You have people who haven't really been in those environments hear a story like that and they might think, "Well, why is his buddy laughing at him?"

But in those situations, that's just our humor.

They call it a silver bullet.

So if someone is hiking or we're on a run or something and someone, for whatever reason, their electrolytes are low or they're not hydrated enough or whatever, and they fall out of a run, they got to check the temperature.

The most accurate way to check the temperature is to stick a thermometer up their butt.

They call it a silver bullet.

So we'd be on hikes and people would be falling out and the doc would have the pants down.

Everyone would be like, "Yeah!

Silver bullet, man!"

Making fun of him as they go.

And the guy's like, "Whah?"

He doesn't even know where he's at or who he is anymore.

You know, we're making fun of him.

BRANDON: That's awesome..

That's awesome.

I mean, that poor guy but that's the type of humor you deal with, right?

I mean, that's a silver bullet.

I'm going to have to pass that on.

That's a good one.

Silver bullet.

That's funny.

I have another story.

All my stories have to do with poop because we see it a lot.

Same complex, same area.

We get in for a lady who's just sick, has flu-like symptoms.

We go in.

She's sitting in the middle of her bed.

She's in her underwear and a bra and her underwear I thought, at first, was a diaper.

And instantly the smell of diarrhea hit you in the face.

And my partner at the time, nothing fazed him.

So he walks around her bed and he's like, "Okay, ma'am.

What's going on?"

And he starts assessing her and she's telling him, "I have uncontrolled diarrhea.

I've been throwing up."

In the meantime, as he's trying to assess, I'm running back and forth to the kitchen sink because I'm thinking I'm gonna throw up.

And I'm like trying to gather myself.

You know how you get that wet saliva build up in your mouth and your eyes start watering?

TROY GENT: Yeah.

BRANDON: I'm like, "I'm gonna throw up.

So then I go back and start dry heaving in the sink and my eyes water and I try to come back.

Well, I get it all under control.

My partner at the time had done the whole assessment and we decided that she obviously needed to go to the hospital.

So we were prepping her to get ready to put her on the gurney and the ambulance was on scene, they were just wheeling the gurney into the room.

So he's like, "Well, ma'am.

We're going to have to cut your underwear."

Because it was like Chuck full.

I'm talking like a large dinner bowl, like a serving bowl full.

It was humongous.

It was disgusting.

So she has literally these granny panties full of diarrhea.

And my partner goes and cuts her panties because we've got to clean her up to get her on the gurney.

TROY GENT: Yeah.

BRANDON: Well, when he did that, the dam broke and it just wolfed out and where she was sitting in the bed, it just sunk to her.

And so she was sitting in this puddle.

TROY GENT: Was that because she was uncontrolled?

So basically the diaper was holding her bowels.

BRANDON: Yeah.

Well, the underwear.

It wasn't even a diaper.

It was just her underwear was so tight on her and where she had just defecated so much in her underwear, they cut it, and it released, and that set triggered me and I was over at the sink bullfrogging.

I thought I was gonna throw up again.

TROY GENT: You didn't throw up though.

BRANDON: No, I didn't.

Well, as I come in, the ambulance lady comes in and looks right at me because the sink is right next to the door.

She looked right at me and just started laughing.

Like, "Really?"

And just, just shame me for what I was doing.

And I was like, "Come on, man!"

That whole day, man.

I got shamed about not being able to help myself but it was pretty comical.

TROY GENT: Amazing.

BRANDON: Yeah.

TROY GENT: What about the guy and the dog?

BRANDON: So this is like five years later.

Same place.

I'm at a different station but this station had a truck and the truck always gets called to elevator calls.

This facility had three stories on it and an elevator for the elderly to go up and down.

We get a call.

It's probably like 11:30 at night or so.

We get to the elevator.

And on the first floor, there's a dog stuck at the top of the elevator, hanging there.

The dog is stuck there, dead as dead.

And we're like, "What the crap?"

So we go up to the second floor where he's at, we open up the door, and the guy was devastated.

He had just got in from walking his dog and got on the elevator.

Well, the elevator doors closed before the dog could get in.

And as it closed, it went up and the dog went up with it and caught it and ripped it and hung the dog from the second floor.

So the guy...

We walk in...

It's terrible but it's one of those things you're like...

TROY GENT: How does that happen?!

It stopped on the second floor?

BRANDON: Yeah, it stopped.

That's what he was trying to get out.

And it just stopped and then because of the jammed or whatever it tripped it and it wouldn't open up until we got there.

This poor old guy was just crying, "My dog!"

But we chuckled our butts off.

I need to really write it all down.

We always say that.

TROY GENT: You got anything else to share with us?

BRANDON: That's about it as far as positive stuff.

TROY GENT: Okay.

I mean, if you feel like sharing anything that someone could find value in, feel free.

BRANDON: I mean, you know, being in the military and active duty.

In our generation, especially how we were growing up, masculinity was really pushed on us.

"Don't cry."

"Don't share your feelings."

"Don't do this."

That's how I was brought up and in our field, we see a lot of stuff and you don't know and you don't realize how that affects you mentally.

We just bury it deep within us over the years and eventually, it creeps up and we wonder why we're acting out.

We wonder why we come home and little things are tipping us over.

You think, "This ain't normal.

What's wrong with me?"

I just want to pass on that it's normal to feel like that.

It's taken me a long time.

My wife finally just said, "Hey, you need to go get some help.

I went and saw somebody, talked to somebody, and he let me realize what was going on and it was just from the stuff we see, the trauma that we have to deal with.

I'm a big advocate for getting out and talking to people.

Like, "Hey, man.

If you need help, go get it.

If you're suffering, go get it.

I actually went to a doctor and I actually got put on some medication, which has helped immensely and I was a big anti medication guy.

Didn't want to.

So the first time I went to the psychiatrist, he helped me realize, “Hey, you've got some issues.”

I told him I didn't want any medication.

Well, this went on for about three, four, five more years, maybe.

And then, I had three people that I worked with really close, just out of the blue at work one day.

They were roped in for mobile time shifts or whatever.

We just started talking about their life and some of the things that they were going through at that time.

And I was like, "Man, that's just...

I'm the same way."

Come to find out these guys all said, "Hey, I finally went and got some medication and it's helping me."

Then my best buddy we're sitting there talking for a while.

I'd known him since we were thirteen.

I never knew that he was on medication or that he dealing with the same stuff.

I was like, "Well, maybe I need to do it."

I did it and I'm glad I did it.

I should have done it about ten years earlier.

Just talk to people and check in on our brothers and sisters and make sure we're doing okay and let everybody know that, "Hey, it's okay to open up a little bit and talk about it because if those three people hadn't opened up to me, I probably would still be fighting things and not dealing with issues and make it a lot tougher.

So that's my message, I guess.

If I wanted to leave with one thing tonight is, "Hey man, just open up.

Be there to listen for people and then if you feel the same things, go from there," because it does help and it is normal to feel the way we feel sometimes because of the things we see and do.

TROY GENT: I've found that the more I start talking about it, the more I attract those people who need to talk about it or have gone through the same thing that are on the other end of it or something.

There's always someone at the beginning, always someone in the middle, and always someone at the end.

So there's always someone that you can reach out to.

You just have to start looking for it.

BRANDON: Appreciate you.

TROY GENT: Awesome.

Thanks, Brandon.

BRANDON: Yeah, I appreciate it.

TROY GENT: Great to have you.

BRANDON: Yeah, it's awesome.

Thanks for this opportunity.

TROY GENT: Yeah, you bet.

PODCAST OUTROO: Thank you for listening.

Please tell your friends and family so that we can bring more joy and awareness to those struggling with suicide ideation and the families who desperately need help after the loss of someone they love to suicide.