This weekend, Joel Rhodes, whom everyone calls "Dusty," will speak for five minutes, and they will demand everything from him. He will stand on a sports field and thank so many for coming. And then talk about his 13-year-old daughter, Ciarra Joi Rhodes, about what happened that day in December 2013. It was a Tuesday, and Dusty was about to leave for work. Then he heard his wife screaming.

Kim Maurus

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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Dusty's wife had found Ciarra in her wardrobe, hanged with a scarf. The night before, Dusty had stumbled across a box of scarves in Ciarra's room, wondering why she was standing in the middle of the room. "I repeated the scene a thousand times in my head," he says in English. "That I should have asked her why she was standing there." There was no suicide note, nothing. "Guilt and failure, that's what dominates me the most, still. But I don't feel any shame. That's a difference." Talking about pain dominates his life because he forces himself to do so.

Dusty still lives in the house where his daughter saw no way out but death, in a quiet street in Groß-Gerau. He is American, comes from Cleveland, Ohio, a sturdy man in his mid-fifties with tattooed arms and gel in his hair. "The worst thing is when people say how strong I am," he says. "I had no choice."

It started with a headache

Dusty has served in the American army for a long time, was also stationed in Iraq, knows what it feels like when people die who were just there, in perfect health. But nothing compares to what happened in silence in his own home. "I'll never understand why," he says. "That's why I stopped asking myself this question."

Dusty's eyes turn red when he pronounces Ciarra's name, but he doesn't stop talking. Silence, he knows, can be deadly. On the wall in the living room hangs a wooden emblem with Ciarra's initials "CJR – In loving memory" on it, underneath a photo of her. The art on his arms also commemorates his daughter – and his wife, who died three years after the child's death.

It started with a headache, says Dusty, then her condition worsened for months in the hospital. The doctors were never able to identify a biological reason why she died. Dusty thinks she just couldn't stand life without her daughter.

So he will have to talk again at the weekend, in Darmstadt. A softball tournament will commemorate Ciarra there for three days. The idea came from friends, it has been held annually since 2014. And Dusty has to bring tension into the relaxed atmosphere, at least for a moment. "I'd literally rather run a marathon. I love-hate this weekend," he says. He doesn't want the attention for his person, but suicide and its prevention must get exactly this attention.