On Dec. 12, Cpl. Nevin Moreira spoke by phone to his mother, Joanne Phillips. He was struggling with depression after two Iraq deployments, but his outlook was positive that day.

He had seen a counselor and told her, “If I had known I’d feel this good going and talking to someone, I would have done it a long time ago,” she recalled during an interview.

Another counseling session was scheduled after Christmas.

Within days of the conversation with his mother, Moreira was dead.

Moreira, 23, was a member of the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division. He shot himself as a police officer pulled him over for speeding after Moreira left the Red Wind Casino near Yelm, according to a police report. He died after paramedics took him to Providence St. Peter Hospital in Olympia.

The suicide stunned his family.

“I don’t know what happened,” Phillips said. “I know what happened, but I don’t know what he was thinking.”

His brother, Jason, a sergeant assigned to a different Stryker brigade based at Fort Lewis, told a police officer that his brother had been struggling with anxiety and depression after two tours of Iraq in three years, according to a police report.

Nevin Moreira also had been arrested on suspicion of drunken driving two months earlier, shortly after he returned from his second deployment. He was living with his brother and his sister-in-law at Fort Lewis until his enlistment was up.

At the casino, gaming agents told an investigator that Moreira had consumed three beers and two mixed drinks while playing blackjack for more than seven hours, according to the police report.

Phillips has tried to reconcile the suicide with her son’s optimistic words about the future. Moreira had told her he wanted to become a nurse after leaving the Army.

She recalled his telling her about being in the midst of combat and noticing a flower– a “little symbol of hope and happiness,” as she put it – in the midst of the chaos.

As the first anniversary of his death approaches, Phillips dearly misses the son who saw such beauty in all things.

Christian Hill, The Olympian