Andrew KimmelVerified account

12/ At 70 years old, he was out of a job in a job market and country that provided him with no options. The money that was coming in from Medicare covered next to nothing. He could no longer afford treatment for his neuropathy nor visits to his shrink.

14/ Meanwhile, I started received packages from Amazon. One contained a notebook that had "Best Son Ever" on the cover. Another with the world's most inspiring speeches on a USB drive and a note saying how proud he was of me and that I should learn from & use these speeches.

15/ I finally made it out to visit. He sat me down & began having a conversation w/ me about not knowing what to do. He couldn't get a job, his now untreated condition was leaving him in constant pain, & he now couldn't afford the roof over his head. I had no answers for him.

16/ We laid next to each other on the couch that night and watched a few episodes of Ken Burns' "The Roosevelts". He said goodnight to me and I could hear him stand outside the bedroom door for a few extra beats before walking back to his room.

17/ My dad shot himself in the heart that next afternoon. I still don't know where or how he got the gun. His last words to paramedics were, "I failed my family."

18/ There is a mental health crisis in this country. The hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars my father spent from his savings to help pay for my sister's treatments should never have been spent in the first place.