At age five, Xavier doesn’t understand that 16-year-old Kai, the one who taught him to ride a bike and build Lego, has killed himself.

He doesn’t want to talk about it to his grieving parents Natasha and Corey Martin, but he does draw pictures of Kai and he makes tiny Lego cars to put on a special shelf in Kai’s room.

Sometimes Xavier just sits quietly on his brother’s bed, perhaps wanting to forget what happened on that otherwise ordinary evening, on June 25 this year, as the close-knit family sat down to dinner in their Springfield home in Ipswich.

Mrs Martin, 38, had not long returned from her job in the grocery section of Woolworths in Greenbank, and rustled up a quick tuna pasta bake.

Her husband, 36, a joiner with WoodworkersXS in Moorooka, was rounding up the troops as usual.

Kai was missing.

“Corey couldn’t find Kai and we thought maybe he was having a shower but Corey went back up into Kai’s room and then yelled out to me and I knew something was wrong, and all the boys were here, it was terrible,” Mrs Martin says.

“I jumped off my chair and ran down the hallway saying, ‘oh no’, and the boys were hysterical running after me.”

Son Kaleb, 14, quickly took the younger ones into his own room, to shield them, but nothing could block out their mother’s piercing screams and, shortly after, the wail of ambulance and police sirens and the ensuing cacophony.

“It was horrific,” Mrs Martin says.

“And when the paramedics said there was nothing they could do, that Kai was gone, I crawled up to him, laid by his side and placed my hand on his chest, never wanting to let him go. I touched his face, his lips, and held his hands, took in as much of him as I possibly could.”

Mrs Martin couldn’t bear it as her “beautiful, clever, once happy” son was taken away to the mortuary.

“I went into the back room of the house where Corey covered my ears with his hands, and just like that, Kai was gone, and our lives were tragically and dramatically altered.”

Since Kai’s passing, Mrs Martin has been racked with guilt, believing she failed one of her babies, and fearing for her others.

“How do you talk to kids about suicide when they don’t want to talk about it?” she says.

“Having gone through it, I am always going to be worried about losing a child again, and nothing compares.

“I relive what happened every single day. I live with pain and guilt, with the ‘what ifs’, and the missing only gets worse.

“I’ve realised that suicide, especially with young people, is at the forefront of consciousness, and it’s everywhere, but wow, I didn’t know the extreme intensity of it until I lost my own child.”

Suicide is the biggest killer of Australians aged 15-24, with males making up 75 per cent of all deaths, according to government figures.

Predictions by the Brain and Mind Centre, and backed by the Australian Medical Association, that youth suicide will increase by up to 30 per cent due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are terrifying for Mrs Martin.

“Boys generally don’t like to talk about their feelings,” she says.

“They see me and Corey hurting, and we don’t want them to think hiding your emotions is something you have to do.

“I make it known every day that they can always come to us; it might be annoying for them when I ask if they’re OK, but I don’t care.

“I won’t ever give up letting them know I’m here for them, and all you hope as a parent is that they trust you enough and are comfortable to share with you.”

The Martins have had disappointing experiences with mental health professionals and say they are “too raw” to attempt counselling again.

Kai, who’d been seeing a psychiatrist for six months after developing anxiety and depression around age 14, needed more help than his parents could give and his doctor provided.

“It was like one day he was going to school (at Pimpama State Secondary College) and hanging out with his friends doing normal kid things, happy and often talking about what he would be when he grew up, and then the next he was a very quiet teenager who kept to himself,” Mrs Martin says.

“Wanting to be alone and play computer games, he really worried us so we visited Headspace in Southport only to be told he was going through ‘normal’ teenage stuff.”

Shortly after, Kai started self-harming.

“We would find him sitting on the floor in his room in tears, often with very few words to explain,” Mrs Martin says.

“A GP referred us to a psychologist, and we managed to attend the initial consultation, but every appointment after that was a huge battle to even get Kai out the front door.

“In the end, the psychologist said he could no longer see Kai as we weren’t able to keep any appointments. So as parents we were lost, constantly discussing how we could help him ourselves and searching for support but never really knowing if it was there.”

In August last year, the Martins withdrew Kai, who was in Year 10, from school.

“He wasn’t bullied but he couldn’t deal with people being around him, the social aspect,” Mrs Martin says.

“He once said to me, ‘Mum, I just want to feel normal, I feel people are talking about me and thinking I’m weird’, and I said, ‘Why would they think that, mate, you’re ok’.

“We made the difficult decision to take him out of school because it was just destroying him, even though the school was in there working with him and we were working together to help him be as comfortable as he could.”

Around that time, they found evidence in his room of potential suicide and demanded to see a psychiatrist.

Monthly visits and medication were not enough, Mrs Martin says.

“We often felt left out of the loop with the psychiatrist visits, but this is something Kai had requested because he wanted to protect me from the intensity of it all, so as long as we were seeing improvements, we tried to respect his decision.”

In January this year the Martins moved to Springfield, to be closer to extended family.

Kai seemed happier.

He’d been helping at WoodworkersXS beside his dad, and his skill and dedication were rewarded with an apprenticeship, due to begin on July 26 this year.

“He was really excited,” Mrs Martin says. “He’d got his licence and was saving for a car, making effort to connect with his brothers and with us, helping around the house and making jokes.

“Saying that, there were rarely any open discussions about the depth of his struggles. No matter how much we sat and talked to him and offered him a safe and loving space, he didn’t say much, and as parents, we didn’t want to be trying to dig up the heavy stuff or make him feel like he wasn’t OK. It was hard.”

The week before Kai suicided, he told his parents he wanted to see his psychiatrist. “We were too late making the appointment,” Mrs Martin says, “and now all we are left with is grief.”

The door to Kai’s bedroom is never closed these days.

His brothers – Jaydan, 21, Kaleb, Riley, 12, Cohen, 9, Chase, 7, and Xavier – all spend time in his room, “talking to him in their own way”.

“The entire experience has been a shock and extremely upsetting for them, and there is still that lingering question, ‘why?’; I wish I had the answer,” Mrs Martin says.

“Riley has taught himself guitar and some of the songs from the playlist at Kaisy’s funeral, particularly Leave The Light On (by Tom Walker).

“The only one who doesn’t like the music is Xavier. He and Kai were the closest.

“While Kaisy wanted to be away in his room, Xavier would just get up in his face and say, ‘Kai, build Lego with me’.” Now Xavier builds Lego on his own, creating cars for Kai.

He draws pictures of Kai, often with his mum whose face is sad, and of the whole family in happier times.

Every night, the Martins gather in the living room where a cedar window frame – made by Kai – has been turned into a light box.

“We switch it on and tell him we love him and we miss him,” Mrs Martin says, “and that we will leave the light on for him.”

The Martin family is taking part in the Walk for Mental Awareness, October 11, and has already raised more than $10,000 for mental health organisations. To help:https://www.walkforawareness.org.au/fundraisers/kingkai