After my mother died, my father walked into my room, sat down on my bed and asked whether I ever felt life wasn't worth living. I told him yes. I'd felt it after my daughter Maddie died. What followed was the most open conversation we'd ever had, and it taught me something about why almost nobody asks that question, and what happens when somebody finally does.

In the spring of 2018, three years after we lost Maddie, I picked a day and told nobody. Not my therapist, not my closest friends, not the people who had already carried me through the worst thing that can happen to a family. Nothing was missing from my life. I had every person I needed. What I didn't have was any willingness to be a burden to them, and that was the dangerous part.