In very early 2000, after Dh completed Basic Training and Battle School and all the rest, he was posted to the base in Edmonton to join his Regiment. And being an 18 year old single man, he moved into the Shacks.  Military single quarters that look a little like dorm rooms.  Teeny tiny rooms with cement walls and a bed, shared bathroom and no kitchen because they eat at the mess.  They fill a need, but warm and friendly, they are not. But that was OK, because most weekend I would either go up to stay with him (obviously, for those reading who are in charge, I wouldn’t stay there because you aren’t allowed.  I would stay….somewhere else…. that’s not there…. moving on) or once he bought his own truck he would come back to Calgary where he had both his family and my family who loved him, close enough to drive to see. Thanksgiving that year, if my memory serves but I could have the wrong year, when he returned from his big turkey dinners surrounded by those loved ones, he found out that over the holidays a soldier in those Shacks had been there alone.  And he had taken his own life.   I was stunned. In my bubble, I didn’t know. There were people who stayed there alone. There were people who had no one to spend the weekends with, the holidays with. There were people who were too far from family to travel to see, those who couldn’t afford the plane ticket or maybe even the gas money. And some of those people, they had felt so alone for so long, they saw no other options…