In his last letter to his beloved, First Descents’ Ryan O’Donoghue told his wife he felt “too sick to recover.”
A year after the 46-year-old took his life, researchers at Boston University this spring have diagnosed his brain with stage 3 chronic traumatic encephalopathy, an incurable degenerative disease. He was at the doorstep of dementia and was losing everything that made him Ryan.
“And he knew it,” says Tara O’Donoghue, mother of their nearly 4-year-old daughter, Marley Joy. “He knew that there was a demon lurking that he couldn’t shake and that the dream we had been building was crashing with confusion around us.”
Suicide sows a special kind of trauma. It spreads sorrow, confusion and anger as loved ones grasp for answers that never come.
How to ask for help
988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. Call or text. Chat online. Colorado Crisis Line. 1-844-493-8255. Text TALK to 38255. National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. 1-800-273-8255. // Nacional de Prevención del Suicidio. 1-888-628-9454. Crisis Text Line. Text 741-741 to reach a counselor. The Trevor Project. An organization for LGBTQ young people. Call 1-866-488-7386. Text START to 678-678. Chat online.“But we have an answer,” O’Donoghue says, bouncing the energetic Marley Joy on her hip. “This has helped me soften into such compassion. It’s made me miss him even more. And I did not think that was possible.”
Ryan spent the last decade taking care of his mother as she navigated an ever-deepening early-onset dementia. In the final months of his life he would tell friends and doctors he felt he was developing symptoms similar to his mom.
He was struggling to find words when he spoke. The lifelong athlete — he was a gifted skier and mountain biker — was showing uncharacteristic moments of clumsiness. A nimble leader, he was laboring over decisions. Ryan was always doing and creating. Suddenly he felt debilitated.
Doctors told him he was depressed. He was working through it, but the darkness seemed to be growing. He was not sleeping. He saw nearly a dozen doctors in his final months, begging for help — help that never came because there is no help for people suffering through chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE. (The only way to definitely test for CTE is by examining brain tissue after death.)
Ryan O’Donoghue at Silverton Mountain ski area on Feb. 9, 2022. (Ian Fohrman, Special to The Colorado Sun)345 of 376 NFL player brains with CTE
The fatal disease is caused by cumulative trauma to the head. Ryan started playing tackle football when he was 9 and played into his early 20s, when he was the Academic All-American captain and a safety for the Georgetown University football team. He also wrestled. Like everyone, he had some serious crashes as he honed his ski and bike skills.
Ryan O’Donoghue played safety and was the Academic All-American captain of the Georgetown University Hoyas football team in 2000 and 2001. (Handout)There are four stages of CTE and the final stages include a loss of executive function and cognition. Sufferers often endure depression that defies treatment. Researchers at Boston University CTE Center in 2023 said they had found evidence of the disease in 345 of 376 NFL players whose brains were donated by loved ones, like O’Donoghue, who knew something was not right.
Another CTE study by researchers at Boston University, also published in 2023, found CTE in more than 40% of 152 brains of young athletes involved in sports that involve repetitive head impacts. (Studies show that fewer than 1% of the brains studied in the general population — people who don’t play impact sports — have CTE.) The Boston University study, the largest of its kind, noted symptoms in a majority of the young athletes before they died that included depression and problems with decision-making.
When people reach the final, fourth stage of CTE, they have dementia and are often incapacitated. Self-harm and suicidal thoughts are common symptoms of the fourth stage of the disease as well. Harvard University researchers earlier this year found that, since 2010, NFL players were 2.6 times more likely to die by suicide than professional baseball and basketball athletes.
A servant’s heart to the end
Ryan was 27 when his brother and best friend, Colin, died of cancer. He dove into a life of service, dedicating himself to helping young adults with cancer.
For nearly two decades he served in that cancer realm, including 10 years leading First Descents, a group that shepherds young people with life-altering illnesses into epic outdoor adventures.
Everyone called Ryan “Wolf.” He often shared a Native American parable about dueling wolves inside every person, one representing darkness and the other light. Those wolves are the internal conflict that shapes a person’s character, he would say, making sure to note that the dark and light must be balanced.
“Feeding both wolves means they will serve you and everything you do will be part of something greater, something good, something that makes lives richer,” Ryan told a friend several years ago in a still often-read text thread.
Ryan was tenacious at his job, working hard to weave connections among a growing demographic of young adults grappling with life-altering illnesses.
Ryan O’Donoghue celebrates with Mark Morris and the band Rapidgrass at a First Descents fundraiser in Silverton in February 2022. (Jason Blevins, The Colorado Sun)O’Donoghue has begun to see Ryan’s suicide as his ultimate act of service to his family.
“The CTE diagnosis confirms what my intuition felt,” says O’Donoghue, who connects with her husband through hummingbirds, rainbows and musical messages that engulf her when she needs them most. “I believe he left us to protect us, as strange as that may sound.”
O’Donoghue, who hopes to raise more awareness around CTE, has written an intimate, poignant essay about her life with Ryan and her journey through what first appeared to be his mental illness and the spiritual signposts that mark the transition of a traumatic death toward beauty and light. Read it here.
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