Reflections on the Loss of a Friend from Two Fellow Veterans in Advance of Memorial Day
Memorial Day is a day marked by remembrance, reverence, and gratitude for those who made the ultimate sacrifice to protect the freedoms we hold dear. But as we pay tribute to the brave men and women who gave their lives in service to our country, it is also important to recognize another form of sacrifice. For many veterans and service members, the lingering impact of trauma, grief, and moral injury can become a lifelong battle with mental health that, for some, tragically ends in suicide.
For A-G’s Mackenzie Witt and Kayleigh Bealer, who lost a dear friend and fellow veteran to this battle, the cost of this sacrifice feels especially high. Mackenzie, a Research Analyst, and Kayleigh, the Associate Vice President of Research, Data and Evaluation, share deeply personal tributes to their friend Ethan and share how this Memorial Day they will remember peers lost in combat, but also those who have lost their own personal battle.
More importantly, they remind us that remembrance is as much about mourning loss as cherishing a life lived.
Five Simple Words
By Mackenzie Witt
I’ve always been in awe of the power of words. It’s one of the most humbling things I’ve learned as a writer. They can hurt and they can heal. We use them to start wars and we use them to write lullabies. Words are powerful things, shaping every part of our existence.
On August 21st, 2024, five words broke my heart. One of my closest and oldest friends — my brother in every way but blood — died by suicide.
I can’t describe what happened in the immediate aftermath of hearing these words. I know I begged. I know I bargained. I know I tried to reason that I must’ve read the message wrong and there had to be some misunderstanding. There wasn’t. Ethan was really gone. In the months that followed, I held this new reality in my hands, trying to understand it but unable to name it. I asked myself a million ‘what if?’ questions, knowing I was only hurting myself. I would be perfectly fine one moment. The next, doubled over, unable to breathe, feeling the permanence of loss as if the wind had been knocked out of me.
The pain that came following Ethan’s death goes beyond the boundaries of language. It can’t be contained within words. There is no way to measure the hole his absence has left. There are no more cold calls or random pictures of him carrying piglets in an ammo belt or toasting marshmallows with bayonets and NCO swords. There are no more bright outfits to match his personality. He’s not photoshopping my face onto ridiculous memes. The infinite moments and memories that should have been now turned to dust.
I don’t know a single veteran who hasn’t been touched by suicide. A friend, someone you served with, yourself. It’s impossible to escape it. Working in the field of suicide prevention for veterans, I see the statistics daily. While they’ve never been just numbers to me, now, every time I’m reading a new report or sitting in a meeting where veteran suicide is the topic, I see Ethan.
As the sharp edges of grief become a persistent ache, what was once unbearable now becomes my purpose. I was privileged to have Ethan as my friend – there for me through every high and low - for 18 years. Now, it’s my privilege (albeit a heartbreaking one) to work towards a future in which fewer veterans die this way – and fewer friends and family hurt as I do from loss. Today, the loved ones of approximately 17 more veterans will hear five words that break their hearts. And tomorrow there will be 17 more.
This Memorial Day hits differently now that Ethan is gone. It’s both more painful and more meaningful. I want to honor him how he honored his own fallen friends. I know there will be tears, but I will try to smile at the life he lived. I will honor my friend in the way I know he would have wanted: by honoring the dash— that special time between his beginning and his end.
Fallen, But Not on the Battlefield
By Kayleigh Bealer
A tight hug and an excited proclamation of “you’re going to fall in love with Spain. I’m so excited for you, and I’m glad you’re finally taking this trip” marked my last interaction with one of my closest friends. I was finally taking a trip I had been postponing for years, and Ethan’s wife was the one who encouraged me to go, with his support, no doubt. They literally booked the flights for August 2024 and informed me later. Cherish the friends who push you for the better that way.
Six days later, I held his wife on the floor of an Airbnb as we tried to process what felt like a brutally cruel joke. Ethan was gone. The following 48 hours are somehow both a blur and among my most vivid memories. I packed our bags faster than I’ve packed anything in my life, and we wandered through the cobblestone streets of Lisbon to our rental car to drive over six hours overnight to the airport in Madrid to figure out how to get home as quickly as possible. We oscillated between sobbing and numbing out through the rest of the awful journey home, reaching out to as many loved ones as possible along the way.
I am still trying to figure out how to navigate a world without Ethan, a world without us debating worldviews until we’re blue in the face and without someone to send Wu-Tang Clan paraphernalia to randomly. I still can’t fathom never hearing him say “love you, man” or pushing me to venture outside of my comfort zone, and teaching me so much about life, love, and weaponry. My favorite Marine is just gone forever. The worst part is that I think those closest to him knew he was struggling; we’d all intervened at different times and worked together to ensure he knew we loved and supported him. You can never know just how deep some wounds are, though. The platitudes about his loss and the importance of his service and sacrifice felt achingly hollow while navigating a mindset of “I should have done more”.
As we approach Memorial Day 2025, the first without Ethan and his traditional social media posts surrounding the meaning of the holiday, it feels like a betrayal to celebrate an occasion that, in my grieving mind, seems to overlook the complexities of what it truly means to serve and the costs involved. I feel compelled to help reshape the narrative around how we perceive “sacrifice.” Ethan’s death didn’t occur on foreign soil in combat, as Memorial Day typically honors, but his sacrifice was very real. His death serves as a stark reminder that the casualties of war are not always immediate or visible.
This Memorial Day, I carry Ethan with me. I’ll remember his laugh, voracious appetite, loyalty, and courage—both the courage it took to serve and the heartbreaking, flawed courage it took to make the choice he did. I’ll sit with the discomfort, and I’ll try to extend compassion, not just to his memory but to all those who serve and all those who struggle in the silence afterwards.
It’s a different kind of Memorial Day now, one tinged with a deeper, more personal sorrow, but also, I hope, a growing understanding and commitment to remember all of what our veterans carry. The reality of life and death is impossibly complicated, but there is catharsis in honoring the dash – celebrating the remarkable life lived between birth and death.