Mental Health is always a work in progress

​I was watching the Charles Schwab Challenge golf tournament Saturday. When the tournament came on the air they announced that 30 year old Grayson Murray had died that morning after withdrawing from the tournament the previous day with an illness.

I had followed Murray's story over the last few years, a story that included ongoing battles with depression and alcoholism. So when I heard the news I feared what his parents would reveal the next day, that Murray had taken his own life.

I was stunned. Heartbroken. Confused.

Murray had won a big golf tournament just a few months ago. At the time, he credited his sobriety and his work on his mental health as a big reason for the turn around in his life. He began using his social media platforms to encourage others in their battles.

He seemed to be in a great place.

He did. He seemed to be in a healthy place. And that is scary to me. Because if he was in the healthy place so many thought he was in, but he wasn't, how do we ever know when someone is truly in that healthy place.

How do we really know when we ourselves, who have battled our own mental health issues, are in the healthy place we feel like we're in.

It has been some time since I've had the feeling that I don't want to live. And even in my darkest moments, I always maintained a desire to want to want to live. I always knew I wanted to want to live bad enough that I would eventually once again find that want to.

But Murray's death has me wrestling with the fragility of all that. How quickly can one go from wanting to want to - to not wanting to - to not being here?

Murray had played a good round of golf on Thursday. He was in contention to win after round one. But on Friday his game started to struggle until he withdrew with two holes remaining.

Was his game struggling Friday because he was feeling mentally unwell? Or did the struggles with his game put him in an unhealthy place mentally? Was it both?

I don't know. I'm sure the people in his life don't know. And that's a scary thing.

All I know is that as we come to a close of Mental Health Awareness month, we cannot let our efforts around mental health awareness ever come to a close. Not at the end of this month and not at the end of the next.

No one is ever to blame when it comes to a tragedy like Grayson Murray taking his life at such a young age. Mental health has no room for blaming and shaming and guilting.

But it has plenty of room for awareness.

Awareness that like cancer, once it's been beaten there are no guarantees it will never come back.

Awareness that like cancer, never having had it is no guarantee it won't show up today.

Awareness that like cancer, the more we talk about it openly, the more we accept it as part of our whole health journey and not some unmentionable outlier, the better we'll get at protecting each other from it.

The better we will all get at protecting ourselves from it.

My heart breaks for the family of Grayson Murray. It's clear they didn't see this coming. My guess is Grayson didn't either.

His parents released a statement Sunday that in part read:

"Please respect our privacy as we work through this incredible tragedy, and please honor Grayson by being kind to one another. If that becomes his legacy, we could ask for nothing else."

Research has shown there are indeed a lot of health benefits to treating each other and ourselves with kindness. So maybe that's something we can all do as we continue to grow mental health awareness.

Be kind.