Hey. My name is Holden -- I'm the older brother of Benjamin Lamb. Last year on September 8th, my brother had passed away from suicide. He had been battling treatment resistant depression since he was 13 and doctors were unsuccessful in helping him with his troubles. It's now May 7th of 2025, about 7 months later, and we're still struggling with recovering from him passing away. Him leaving us has left a massive hole in our lives for all my family, but especially my mother and I -- Especially after my Nana, Mary Embree Creech, my mother's mother, passed away in March 2022, which is when things started to go in a bad direction for all of us.

Losing Nana was painful for all of us. Thanks to a lot of kind actions from folks here on Gofundme, we we able to help ease the financial burden of her passing away. https://www.gofundme.com/f/helping-my-family-get-by-a-bit-easier -- But now we're struggling harder with money than ever with all of recent political turmoil and just...We're not functioning mentally the best after Ben passed. We recovered from Nana's passing but it still lingers, but my brother's passing is going to probably stay with me and my mother for the rest of our lives.

I don't wish to share the pains that he went through in his life, and I really only want to share the positives. But We're still seven months later reeling from the costs to afford him appropriate measure at his gravesite -- his headstone costs primarily, to give him a longstanding memorial to how much he positively affected everyone.

At this time, we have managed to fully pay for his funeral costs that totaled in at around 11k for his open casket funeral. That was thanks to family and friends that knew how heavily this impacted us, making it hard for us to work or recover from the loss. But as of two days ago, we got the estimate to cover his Headstone and found out that it'd be $5,175 to afford getting the one my mother wants to be for both my brother and I (whenever I pass, I promise to live my life to the fullest as promised to him i'd do my best to get through life without him with us anymore). And we don't know how long it'll be until we can save up enough to afford his headstone.

Post his passing, this has resulted in a stress-cardiomyopathy for myself, which scared my mother to death nearly, but i'm alive. It has impacted my health negatively and i've been going through therapy provided by behavioral health for mourning and continuing on my medications to help bring me back out of the funk, but I can't lie and say this didn't impact our finances. And last month, we had to repair our AC in the backyard as it had a pipe-leak and basically drained all the freon from the system, so..We've had all our savings vacuumed away through this endeavor. We're struggling, but I don't think my mother's strong enough to openly admit that to the world, so i'm yet again here putting together a Gofundme to help my brother's headstone costs be met and maybe allow my mother to have some emotional peace, after losing her son and mother, she's been hurting and i've tried to help, but I feel like I've not been able to do enough since I've been struggling with my own health conditions and depression.

So I'm making this Gofundme today to help my mother and I along again -- hoping it can reach out to people and garner some attention so we can survive this tough time. I'm not doing the best writing this right now, i'm a mess of tears and exhaustion having to do this again, but I don't know what else to do. Our family has helped as much as they can and these recent costs have been out of reach for them to help with, so i'm hoping those in better positions may see this and help us out.

I'll try to provide all the photos we have from his funeral, and I think my aunt (to which I didn't know until recent!) recorded my words at his funeral, so..I guess i'll upload those too, maybe it'll help people understand how much he made us all better and maybe it'll help us reach closure on his passing sooner than later. Thank you all so much, I hope that my asking for help isn't a burden to others, we're doing our best to recover. I miss my brother -- I'm going to forever, I still regret having not done enough to keep him around with us longer, but I can't linger on my failures and I need to do better for us all. Thank you all again.

https://www.reppertfuneralhome.com/obituaries/Benjamin-Brady-Lamb?obId=33044365

For those who seek his obituary page, here it is. Thank you for your time, if you knew him, please leave a message or prayer (or however you could convey how he made life for us all better) anywhere you can.