Andrea Gunning

Some of her friends, like Heather, tied the incident to her drinking or the way alcohol interacted with her meds.

I thought she probably got drunk and fell.

Whether it was the alcohol or her medications causing the change, Saskia was growing more difficult to be around.

She was increasingly erratic.

She was just so paranoid and accusing us of doing things behind her back, saying things behind her back.

And the only thing we were doing behind her back was talking about how worried we were about her and what was going on.

Saskia knew her friends were worried, but she also felt judged.

I was going crazy and I was an embarrassment.

I was isolating myself from my friends, thinking that they didn't have the best intentions for me.

And I worried that I would be that failure like my dad was believed to be.

her dad couldn't outrun his mental health struggles.

And maybe Saskia was destined for the same.

As Saskia pushed her friends away, they knew she'd always have Mike.

So as they became more and more concerned, they went to him.

They tried to get him to talk to Saskia about her drinking and her meds.

Every time he assured them he had everything under control.

As Heather recalls, he seemed like everything was fine.

Then came October 27th, 2018.

It had been two years since Saskia and Mike's wedding, three years since our health took a turn for the worse.

My friend Allison was having a Halloween party and my sister was nice enough to have the kids for a sleepover over her house.