Liz Mills

emergency contact.

And I do that because I love him.

He's amazing and one of my favorite people.

So no surprise that I ended up in Switzerland two years ago when I got the call that he needed my help.

He and his best friend Nate were on this bucket list trip to the Swiss Alps to jump off this mountain called the Eiger as a way to celebrate their newfound sobriety and just beginning a new life chapter.

But things weren't going according to plan and enter Liz.

My task of the day was I was standing at a police station in some random town in the Swiss Alps and getting a list of to-dos.

I had to sign a mountain of paperwork, make a ton of calls, pick up his shattered sunglasses, cremate his body, bring him home.

My big brother William, at 32, had jumped off the Eiger, soared like Superman, seen the world from a vantage point very few ever will, and not made it out alive.

Grief defies words.

And as I sat there with the police officer, I was shaking.

I felt outside of my body, and I could barely process the fact that William, who got out of everything, some sort of magical part of him got out of everything, hadn't made it out alive.

Where was the magic?

As I was leaving the police station, the officer handed me one more thing, an SD card.

William was wearing a GoPro when he jumped off the mountain, because base jumpers do that.

And so he had the final minutes of his life recorded.

So I know what you're thinking.

I hope Liz threw that out and forgot it ever existed.

But of course I didn't, because I had some sick belief that sister loyalty meant I had to experience that too.

I threw it out of my head for a while, though, but a few months after he died, I broke.