The Thirteen Videos

A few weeks after the funeral, someone at the district attorney's office handed me a USB stick. That's how I received them. A small physical thing, pressed into my hand across a desk. Thirteen farewell videos, on an object you could lose between couch cushions.

I went home to my parents' house, where I was living at the time. A temporary shelter in the way only your childhood home can be: familiar and strange at the same time, not quite yours anymore, but still the safest place you know.

I went to my bedroom and closed the door. I knew what they were. They had told me that much. Farewell videos. Thirteen of them.

Thirteen.

I sat on the bed and tried to understand what that meant. Farewell videos. Farewell. A polite word for it.

I didn't know what to expect. I didn't know what format grief came in, what a person's last words looked like on a screen, whether I was supposed to watch them alone or with someone, whether there was a right way to do any of this.

There wasn't. I put the USB in. And I pressed play.

Video 1, The Draft

The first video isn't really a video. It feels like a test run. He's standing outside, plants behind him, an overcast sky. It could be a normal day. It looks like a normal day. And then he says it.

Today was supposed to be my last day.

Just like that. No pause. No weight.

What follows isn't emotion. It's logistics. Something about a plan that didn't work out. A detail he forgot. A delay. The tone of someone whose Amazon order was delayed.

I remember watching this and feeling something I couldn't immediately name. Not shock. Not sadness. Something closer to dissonance. Because there's no visible pain in him. No hesitation. No trace of the chaos he had left behind in real life. Just a man calmly explaining why his plan to die had to be postponed.

And then, mid-sentence, the video cuts.

It was a draft. A mistake, I think. He had always been a perfectionist, he would never have left something unfinished by accident. But he needed it to be thirteen.

Video 2, The Performance

The second video is where it becomes clear. This wasn't documentation. It was staging.

He calls it the diary of my last twenty-four hours. As if this is a story you follow. As if there's an audience.

He walks through it almost casually. Jokes about how he forgot something crucial again, "as usual." He had a Spotify playlist for it. Going Home. He had a favorite song queued up. He was choreographing it.

At one point he even comments on his shirt: we all know I like my pink. So I like going out in style.

I remember pausing there. Because what do you do with that. How do you process someone turning their own death into aesthetics.

Then it shifts again. He talks about his last meal. A specific year of wine, because that's when "everything started to go downhill." Wagyu steak. Truffle sauce. Spätzli. A cheese plate with two of his favorites.

He calls it the best of everything.

There is something almost surreal about it. Like he's curating an experience. Designing a moment.

But what's missing is impossible to ignore. There is no reflection on what he's done to others. No acknowledgement of the damage. Just I've had enough. And I gave into the pain.

A closed loop. Where he is the center. The narrator. The victim.

What unsettled me most wasn't even the content. It was the tone. The normality. The control. The way something so final was spoken about like a plan for tomorrow. And maybe that's the thread that runs through all of this. Not just what he chose to say. But everything he chose to leave out.

Video 3, The Test

By the third video, something changes again. It is no longer just explanation. Or performance. It becomes evaluation.

He's in the kitchen. Warm light. Everything looks calm. Controlled. He lays it out like a plan: the wine from his favorite region, the wagyu, the spätzli, the truffle sauce, the cheese.

The best of everything.

And then he says something that stayed with me. He wanted to see if it would be good enough to convince him to stay. Or if it was just goodbye.

I remember hearing that and thinking, stay for what. For a meal. For a taste. For thirty more minutes of experience.

Because that's what it felt like in that moment. Not someone questioning their life. Someone testing it.

He opens the wine. Swirls it. Smells it. Takes a sip. And then rates it.

A strong seven. Not great. Needs to open up more.

He talks about structure. Tannins. How the wine needs more time to open up. He talks about it like it has a future.

And that's what was hard to watch. He was talking about what the wine might become. Meanwhile he had already decided he wasn't going to become anything. He could give that much care to a glass of wine. He couldn't give any of it to himself, or to us for that matter.

I think this is where something in me started to break.

Video 4, The Dinner

The fourth video is only a few seconds long. No explanation. No reflection. Just a plate. The food. The wine on the side. He pulls the camera back slightly, looks at it, and says: bon appétit.

That's it. A man filming his last meal like a food review.

If you saw this without context, you wouldn't think anything of it. It looks like a normal evening. A good meal. A quiet moment. And maybe that's what makes it so difficult to process. Because by this point, there is no visible gap anymore between what's happening and what's about to happen.

Like this is simply the next step in a routine.

Eat. Drink. Sleep. And then whatever comes after.

I remember watching this and feeling a kind of stillness that didn't feel peaceful. More like something had gone flat. As if all the weight of the situation had been stripped away, leaving behind something that looked almost ordinary. But wasn't.

Video 5, The Meaning

The fifth video is the morning after. He's outside at first, walking slowly, speaking to the camera.

Then later, inside, in brighter light. Everything about it feels calm. He says the meal didn't change anything. That he woke up the same. That the decision is still there.

And then something shifts. He starts talking about meaning. Maybe something positive can come out of this. Maybe sharing his "why" will help others. Maybe it will help kids who went through what he went through. And then, maybe by sacrificing himself this way, he could rid people of the burden.

I remember hearing that and feeling something tighten. Because none of this is actually about helping anyone. It's about turning something destructive into something that sounds purposeful. A kind of narrative that makes it easier to go through with it.

He talks about people not feeling angry. Not feeling guilty. As if those are things you can decide for others. As if the aftermath can be managed the same way he managed his last meal.

And all the while, he keeps repeating how calm he is. How he's accepted it. How it feels like going home.

And that might be the most dangerous part of all. Not the pain. Not even the decision. But the way it had been reframed into something that felt resolved. Something clean. Something meaningful.

When in reality, it leaves behind the exact opposite.

Video 6, The Storm

By the sixth video, it seems like there's almost nothing left to explain. No more why. No more justification. Just atmosphere. He's outside again, walking. You can see trees, the building behind him, the sky starting to shift.

And then he says: a beautiful storm is brewing.

He looks up at it, almost appreciating it. He always preferred the rain to the sunshine. It couldn't be more perfect. This was exactly how he had wanted it.

I remember how strange that felt. Because suddenly, everything lined up. The weather. The mood. The timing.

As if the world itself was confirming the decision. As if this wasn't something happening, but something being staged. Like a scene in a movie.

I watched him walk and talk and I felt something new. Fear. Not grief, not yet. Fear. Because somewhere in the back of my mind I had been watching these videos like they were something that had already happened, something sealed and past. But this was the morning of. These were his last few hours.

He looked like someone preparing to go on holiday. Measured. Organized. Going through his itinerary.

And maybe that's what unsettled me the most. Not just that he was calm. But that he seemed satisfied. Like everything had come together the way it was supposed to.

When in reality, nothing about it was right.

Video 7, The Plan

The seventh video is the longest. And the hardest to watch. Not because of what he shows, but because of how he talks about it.

I won't describe what he showed. But he had assembled everything, methodically, carefully, the way he did everything. And then he explained it. All of it. Clinically. Step by step.

And then he made a joke.

I sat there with my hand over my mouth. Shaking my head slowly, the way you do when something is too large to process any other way. I felt sick. Not metaphorically. Physically, in my stomach. Because the jokes were somehow worse than the calm. The calm I could hold at a distance. The jokes collapsed that distance entirely.

He was real. This was actually happening.

By now, everything was set up. He walked and talked through it calmly. There was a moment where he said the test run had been a success. That it worked. And I remember how jarring and absurd that felt, hearing something like this described in the language of achievement.

He talked about how much research he had done. How complex it had been to figure everything out. How important it was to get it right. At one point he said he was proud of himself.

That's the part that stayed with me. Because there is something deeply unsettling about watching someone apply this level of care, precision, and problem-solving, not to their life, but to their exit from it.

He talked about making things easier for whoever found him. About minimizing the aftermath. About not wanting to "mess it up." Not because he might change his mind. But because imperfection, for him, would be worse than the outcome itself.

And then, toward the end, he said something I still don't fully know how to process. That he wasn't anxious. That he was actually excited. Like this was something he had been building toward. Something that now, finally, was ready.

Video 8, The Why

The eighth video is the one he calls his last.

He opens the wine again. The same one from the night before. Almost like he's returning to something unfinished.

And then he says it. The big question. Why.

He'd been planning it for close to a year. Waiting for certain events to confirm the decision. He called it easy. An easy decision.

I sat with that word. Easy.

Because I had stayed, longer than I should have, through things I shouldn't have accepted, partly out of fear that if I left, this would happen. That my leaving would be the event that confirmed the decision.

We had broken up the summer before. He died on the 4th of May. He started planning almost immediately after I left.

He knows what people will think. That he had everything. That this doesn't make sense. That it's a mistake. And he answers it in a way that sounds certain. That it's actually an easy decision. That he's been thinking about it for a long time. That he planned it for close to a year. That he waited for signs. Events that would confirm it. There's something very final in the way he says it. Like this is the conclusion. The explanation that's supposed to make everything fall into place. He even says he wanted to fight until the end.

And I remember hearing that and thinking, fight what.

Because nothing in these videos looks like a fight. It looks like preparation. Like control. Like a decision that was already made long before this moment.

And then, just as he's about to explain what actually happened, the video cuts. Mid-sentence. Because he hears something. And suddenly, the person who had spent all these months planning every detail, controlling every step, framing every word, lost control of the one thing he was trying to leave behind. The explanation.

There is no full why. Just a fragment.

Video 9, The Story

The ninth video is different. Longer. Slower. More composed.

He was sitting down. White dress shirt. Bookshelves behind him, a rack of suits, a floor lamp. He looked like he was about to give a presentation.

He told his whole life. From the beginning. The childhood. The violence. The instability. The things no child should be exposed to. The juvenile home. The people who believed in him. The diagnosis. The dream he had built everything around. Helping troubled kids. Turning pain into something useful. The years of trying to build something around that. The setbacks. The rejections. The businesses that didn't work. The friends who disappeared.

And then he said my name.

Claudia.

He said I had accompanied him throughout his plan. That I had contributed tremendously. That I had supported him. Driven him. And then I left.

Until that moment I had been watching from somewhere just outside of myself. Numb. Scared. Sick. In disbelief. But my name pulled me back into the room. Into my body. Into what this actually was.

It made everything real.

He kept going. About our relationship. About me leaving. About his best friend disappearing. About people stepping away over time. He told it like a story. A beginning, a middle, an end. Everything connecting, every detail in its place. The kind of explanation that's supposed to make you nod, understand, accept.

But I had lived alongside him for almost a decade. I knew the real version. And the real version had never been this clean.

He speaks about trying. About failing. About losing his drive. He says this isn't selfish. That it's just the result of everything that came before. He apologizes. Thanks people. Says goodbye.

And for a moment, if you're not careful, it almost feels like closure. But this isn't the full picture. It's his version of it. A version where everything connects. Where everything leads to this one conclusion. But real life didn't feel like that. It wasn't one continuous story. It was contradictions. Moments that didn't fit. Things that hurt that aren't mentioned here.

For a long time, I tried to understand him through this story. But eventually, I realized something harder.

A story can explain a person without telling the truth about them.

Video 10, My Video

This one was different. Because this time, it wasn't for an audience. It was for me.

I didn't know. I pressed play expecting another general one. And then he looked directly at the camera, straight into my eyes, and said my name.

Claudia.

He starts with logistics. Money. Accounts. Instructions on what I should do, how I should do it, even how to avoid being seen.

Very precise. Very controlled. Transactional in a way that felt jarring. He had assigned monetary values to people, to gestures, to relationships. Like he was settling accounts on a spreadsheet rather than saying goodbye to a woman he claimed to love. I had expected, somewhere underneath all the planning, an apology. What I received were instructions.

Then he shifts. He says that by doing this, he is doing something good. Helping me. Helping someone else. And then he asks something that stayed with me.

That maybe I could find someone to tell his story. To continue what he started.

And somewhere in that moment, I realized: this wasn't just goodbye. It was a handover.

Then it changes again. He starts crying. He says he's hurt. Angry. That I became a different person. That I ghosted him. That I made him feel like a monster.

And then, almost in the same breath, he says: either he is a monster, or I will feel terribly guilty.

I remember sitting with that. Because those weren't really two options. They were a trap. A way of deciding, in advance, how I would carry this.

And then he tells me not to feel guilty. That he doesn't hate me. That I'm a good person. That I tried my best. And that's what made it so confusing. Because how do you hold both at the same time. Being blamed and absolved. Being the reason and being told you're not.

He thanks me. Says he loves me. Says goodbye.

And for a long time, I thought this video was something I had to understand. Something I had to untangle.

But eventually, I realized something else. This wasn't clarity. It was everything, all at once. Years of our relationship dynamics summarized in a few minutes.

Control. Anger. Care. Manipulation. Blame. Love.

And none of it was mine to carry.

I don't know how long I sat there on my bed after the video ended.

Video 11, The One I Won't Tell

There is another video. A message he recorded for a friend.

I'm not including it here. Not because it doesn't matter, but because it does. And some things don't belong to me to tell.

Video 12, The Part That Hurt

This video is for someone he met after me. I won't go into detail. That's her story, if she ever chooses to tell it.

But I will say this. It was one of the hardest to watch. Not because of what he said. But because of what it meant.

He speaks to her gently. Tenderly. Thanks her. Encourages her. Tells her to move forward with her life.

And I remember sitting there thinking: he is gentle with her, and I am the one left to clean up the mess. I am the one who went looking for him when no one else did. I am the one who walked into that police station. I am the one who waited at the entrance of the building for the locksmith. I am the one who organized his funeral. I am the one watching these videos. And he is being tender with someone he had known for five or six months.

He knew so many people. The friends who had stood at our wedding. The ones who had carried him through periods he couldn't have survived alone. People who had given him time, money, belief, years of their lives.

None of them got a video. He chose her.

And that did something I didn't expect. It wasn't jealousy. It wasn't even anger. It was something quieter. A kind of disorientation. Like the weight of everything we had been through, the years, the complexity, the intensity, suddenly existed on the same level as something brief. Something new.

And I didn't know where to place that.

I think that's the part no one really talks about. How, in the end, these moments don't follow the logic you expect. They don't reflect time. Or depth. Or history.

They just happen.

And you're left trying to make sense of something that doesn't fit into anything you understand.

Video 13, The Silence

The last video has no words.

I won't describe what I saw. What I will say is that I knew what I was looking at, and I knew what was about to happen, and I sat there frozen, hand over my mouth, the way a body holds itself when something is too much. It was over quickly.

After everything that came before, all the talking, the explaining, the staging, there was nothing left to say.

For a long time I thought I was supposed to do something with them. Understand them. Find the thing he had really been trying to say.

I never did.

What I felt instead, when I closed the USB on my parents' bed that afternoon in May, wasn't grief. It wasn't even sadness. It was the first small flicker of anger.

It didn't arrive all at once. It was more like something had been lit. A small, quiet flame I almost didn't notice that day, that grew slowly in the weeks and months that followed.

Because somewhere between the first video and the last, I had understood what he had done. He had made thirteen videos for me to carry. He had assigned me roles, settled accounts, given me instructions, asked me to keep telling his story for him. He had made his death my job and called it love. He had taken almost ten years of my life. Now he was trying to take what was supposed to come next.

And something in me said no. Not loudly. Not yet. Just enough.

A few weeks later I moved into my own apartment and lived on my own for the first time in my life. I started rebuilding my life in small, ordinary actions that no one else would have recognized as defiance, but to me they were huge and meaningful.

That flame is still lit. It has fed everything I have done since. It wasn't only the anger. Therapy held me. My family and friends held me. But the anger was the motor that kept the engine running.

He took ten years of my past. He did not get to take anything of my future.

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If you're struggling with thoughts of suicide or just need to talk to someone, you're not alone. You can find a helpline for your country at findahelpline.com or befrienders.org. In Switzerland, Die Dargebotene Hand is available 24/7 at 143 (143.ch). In the US, call or text 988. In the UK and Ireland, call Samaritans at 116 123.

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