The next is a mother who has lost her son, Matthew, three months ago. He was thirty-six. She had never known him to struggle with mental illness, it doesn’t run in their family, as far as she knows, so she can’t say whether or not he was depressed. All she can think of is he was stressed at work. He had moved out to Calgary about a year ago for a new job and his boss had turned out to be a real piece of work. During their last conversation, he mentioned being worried about getting fired, and not being able to pay his mortgage. She downplayed it, as a way of calming him down, told him he was fretting over nothing. Over nothing. Those words still haunt her. A week later, he leapt from an overpass. He was her only child. And he didn’t have any children. And she lives alone; she divorced his father when her son was still a boy. He was always a happy child, and an easy-going adult, her rock. No, he wasn’t depressed. He wasn’t sick. She hates it when people paint him with that brush. She misses him so much. Lately she’s been wondering what she’s living for. Brenda asks the woman to stay behind once the session has ended.

Another mother follows. Her son, Gabriel, was about to finish university. She knew him to be sensitive, but she didn’t know he was depressed, if he was, it went undiagnosed. The only reason she can think of is that his long-time girlfriend broke up with him recently, and he took it hard. But even that doesn’t seem like a good enough reason to do something so drastic. There must have been more to it, but she’ll never really know. His roommate found him. He hung himself. She has a daughter too, a couple of years older than her son, but she’s been hard to reach, she lives out east. Her husband won’t talk about what’s happened. Lately, he’s been spending his evenings either at work, or at the Legion. They used to be a close family, but everything feels like it’s coming apart. If things don’t change, she thinks she’s headed for a divorce. And she’s worried about her daughter. What if it happens again? She never used to think like that, but the impossible happened, and now it’s like a door’s been opened, and she’s worried about who else might walk through it. She can’t sleep at night without the handful of pills her doctor prescribed. Does anyone else have nightmares? His twenty-third birthday is in two weeks. She doesn’t know how she’s going to face it. Later, the mothers exchange numbers.