Member Reflection

On Monday, November 20, 2023—two years ago today—my brother walked outside his home in Georgia, lit a cigarette, took one long final drag, pressed a gun to his right temple, and pulled the trigger.

With that, he became yet another addition to the staggering number of men in America and across the world who are dying what we call “deaths of despair”—lives ended by weapons, drugs, alcohol, or the quiet, crushing weight of sadness.

I did not come to the City Club because of my brother’s death, or at least I didn’t believe so at the time. I came here after surviving a cancer battle that was supposed to end my life. Instead, I became what doctors call a medical miracle—someone now studied by the NIH and several of the country’s top cancer centers for having somehow placed a blood cancer with a single-digit four-year survival rate into hibernation. My physical recovery is unexplainable, and yet my mind and soul lagged behind my body. I needed a place to exist safely, and I found myself here.

What I found at City Club came to light perfectly in an impromptu conversation a few weeks ago in the music room. Four of us—four men, all fathers—were talking about life with kids. Somehow, the conversation shifted to miscarriages, how devastating they are to mothers, and how heavy they are on us, too. How rarely men speak openly about them. And how that particular loss had touched 75% of the people in that room. We spoke quietly and honestly about how those experiences shaped us and our partners.

That conversation embodied, for me, the three levels of Securus Locus, and how often we default to the intellectual here. We debate Socrates, the challenges of the Middle East, and whether any political institution can truly be good. What we do less often is bare our souls—share the emotional weight, the private fractures, the unspoken moments of pain we all carry. In small groups, we may do this; with trusted friends, we share hopes and fears, successes and curiosities. But how often do we share our losses?

And yet, that’s what this place is for. A Securus Locus. A place for loss, too. The expected and the unexpected. The losses that ache for only a few weeks, and the ones that carve a permanent hollow in the soul—those we never truly “get over.”

A few weeks ago, I told someone here that we need more campfires. More moments to sit together without distraction—sharing stories, going deeper, truly seeing one another. The thing about a campfire is that someone has to light it. Someone has to invite others in, and we all have to be willing to sit around it together.

So this is a reminder: this place, this Club, this sacred space is what we make it. Come light your campfire. Sit with me. Let’s tell our stories.

— Aaron Romigh