When His Brother Died By Suicide, Jay Laughrey Learned What Rebuilding Really Means

Jay Laughrey has run Proteus Pools, his family's pool maintenance business, for two decades. He's the fourth generation in his family to work in the area he grew up in, married with a daughter, and active in two organizations built around service and accountability: IPSSA (the Independent Pool & Spa Service Association) and a men's group called the Iron Council. None of that, he says, tells the whole story.

In 2009, Jay's older brother Jeff, the man who built the pool business, mentored him into the trade, and served as what Jay calls his “lighthouse,” died by suicide. The years since have shaped nearly everything about who Jay is now: how he runs his business, how he talks about mental health, and why he now speaks openly about a loss that, statistically, disproportionately touches men exactly like him.

Watching Jeff Change

Jeff wasn't someone who struggled visibly, at least not at first. He was, in Jay's words, mellow, funny, patient, and endlessly generous with his time. He was also Jay's first boss and his closest advisor. “I ran every decision through him,” Jay says, “because I knew that I would probably get the best advice.”

That changed around 2008. Amid a national recession, Jeff grew anxious, then withdrawn, then physically unwell, developing lower back pain doctors couldn't explain. When he finally saw a psychiatrist, he was told he'd likely be on antidepressants for the rest of his life, which devastated him. Jay, like most people at the time, didn't have the language or the framework to understand what was happening. “I remember telling him, ‘snap out of it,’” he says now. “Very ignorant days back then for me.”

Jay describes the disconnect between what Jeff showed the world and what he was actually experiencing with an image that's stayed with him for over 15 years: you could be sitting with Jeff on a beach in Cabo, warm sand, ice-cold beer, seventy-five degrees, and he'd be right there next to you experiencing something entirely different. “Cold, dark, and lonely,” Jay says.

September 9, 2009

Jeff died by suicide on September 9, 2009. Jay got the news walking out of a gym class, and his first reaction wasn't grief, it was anger. “You bastard,” he remembers thinking. “I can't believe you did that.”

At the house that day, in the middle of the chaos, a police officer sat down next to Jay with a simple, unsentimental observation: Jay was going to have to be the leader of the family now. Jay was furious in the moment. In hindsight, he says it probably saved his life, by giving him something concrete to do with his grief.

He built a phrase around the choice in front of him, one he still repeats: it's easier to do the wrong thing, but it takes real effort to do the right thing. He chose to rebuild his brother's business so his sister-in-law and her family would have something worth deciding what to do with.

Finding a Way to Not Stay Angry

The harder work was internal. Jay says the turning point in his own healing was choosing to think of Jeff's death as a symptom of disease, not a decision made against him personally. “I'm not gonna get pissed off at somebody because they have cancer,” he says. That reframe, along with therapy, yoga, and a memorial golf tournament he and his family started to benefit Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services' suicide prevention programs, became his path forward.

One moment in particular stuck with him: attending Didi Hirsch's “Alive Together” 5K and seeing a wall of photos memorializing people lost to suicide, men and women, young and old. “I am not alone,” he remembers thinking. “We're part of a larger tribe now.”

Why He Keeps Telling This Story

Jay has been open about Jeff's death for over a decade, first on a pool industry podcast, and increasingly within the Iron Council, a men's accountability group affiliated with the Order of Man community. He says sharing his story has repeatedly connected him with men quietly carrying the same weight he once did.

One encounter he shared has stayed with me since the interview. At the Western Pool and Spa Show, a man approached him with his son and told him that the Pool Nation episode Jay had recorded had helped him through a period when he'd once considered taking his own life, and that he wanted his son to hear it too. “I'm just blind to some of how powerful my testimony can be to men,” Jay says. “Men are suffering out there. They really are.”

His message to men specifically is direct: stop trying to carry everything alone. “You need a tribe,” he says. Since joining the Iron Council, he's used that structure of accountability to work on his health and to quit drinking, something he says he doesn't think he could have done without the men around him.

If You or someone you know is Struggling

Jay's closing message is aimed at anyone in the middle of depression or suicidal ideation right now: “There's a lot of people out there that love you, so that's not an option. Just go get help. Don't let fear control you.”

If you or someone you know is struggling, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.