Editor’s Note: In this essay, Brock Galvin discusses his experience making an award-winning short documentary on suicide loss. Callahan Calls delves into the profound grief experienced by Trever Facey, who lost his father to suicide. You can view the video here.
Brock Gavin writes: “After I met Trever, I cried all the way home from the game.”
We both played football at UC Davis, and we met face-to-face at a game this past fall. I initially reached out to him on Instagram. The way he articulated his raw emotions after his father’s suicide drew me in. He laid his heart and soul for his community to see, exposed and real.
Little did I know that just a few months later, he would fly back from Nashville to Northern California to revisit the place of his dad’s passing with me.
The word suicide had scarcely been spoken in my life for the last two decades. I couldn’t watch shows about it. I couldn’t read about it. I certainly couldn’t imagine making a film centered around it. It was too close, and too much a threat that lingered throughout my childhood and into adulthood. Because of that, the idea of making my first documentary about suicide was never even a consideration.
And yet, when I decided to enter the Art of Documentary’s One Day Doc Competition that fall, I knew it was Trever’s story that I was drawn to tell the most.
Part of it was our shared football background, sure. But more than that, it was his heart…and his hurt. I could feel the weight he was carrying, and I felt drawn not to explain it, but to honor it. To create space for his openness and bravery, if he was willing to share. He was.
Now, thousands of people have watched Callahan Calls, a short documentary that was recently awarded the Best Emerging Filmmaker prize.
The competition parameters were simple and challenging.
I had 24 continuous hours to film a documentary. I had roughly a month to prepare (storyboarding, gathering equipment, securing permissions) and another month to edit (color grading, audio engineering, shaping sequences, and choosing music). My first documentary experience was overwhelming in every way.
There was a night when my wife sat with me in my office late into the evening, not to help with the film itself (although she did), but so I could try and keep it together emotionally.
It made me reflect on how survivors of suicide loss cope with the weight and complexity of what they’ve endured. There is no single path toward healing, no universal definition of what it should look like.
Trever’s desire to honor his father by returning to “the property,” a place central to the film, felt deeply intentional. As he shares, he wasn’t seeking closure, something many justifiably do.
“I just want to be close to my dad, and that’s where he was last.”
Over the course of our time together, Trever revisited places that carried meaning. Their fishing spot. The mountain they used to race each other to the top of. And their favorite restaurant. Each location held memory, sadness, and joy.
Throughout it all, Trever was honest, full of grief, but also hope. Being with him in those moments reminded me how layered this kind of loss can be. The anguish, the disappointment, and the disillusionment that often follow, even as love and hope remain.
I cannot fully imagine what it is like to lose a loved one to suicide, though for much of my life I feared that I might. Spending these moments with Trever was the ultimate honor. To witness his process and their places.
This story is definitely not finished. Our friendship will live on. As will Trever, in continuing his father’s legacy.
Callahan Calls exists for those who know this specific kind of loss, and for those who have carried emotions they’ve never had language for.
