I'm really late to this so this will probably be ignored but whatever, I can answer this.

When I was 16 it was just me and my dad. My mum had passed away a few years before so my dad was raising a teenage daughter alone while trying to run a business that his heart wasn't in.

One night my dad tells me that he needs to go meet a friend and that he'd he home late. This was fairly normal so I didn't really think much of it. Off he went. That night I was woken at 4am to two police officers at the door. They sit me down and tell me that my dad's car had been found parked beside a bridge, and a male body was on the road below the bridge. They told me that my dad had ended his life.

He left a note solely addressed to me, that essentially vaguely said he had got involved in something dodgy and the other people had threatened to hurt me to get back at him. The only way he felt he could protect me was to take himself out of the picture. This was 8 years ago now and I still have no idea what he was involved in or what went down.

The last line the the note really stuck with me. It said "please make something of your life, I haven't". I've done my absolute best since that day and have managed to graduate uni and get myself a good job with well above average pay for my age. I've met an amazing guy and am truly happy. I obviously miss my dad every day, but he did push me to become who I am now, and I really owe him for that.

My father’s best friend growing up passed away before I was born, but in an absolutely heroic manner. My parents and godfather (Glenn) were rafting along the Colorado river in the early 90’s. Following a large section of rapids, they decided to take a break along the shore.

Shortly after, they heard screams for help from upstream, closer to the rapids. A young boy had fallen out of a raft without a life jacket on. Glenn rushed up the shore with his life jacket and jumped in the white water, swimming towards the boy. He was able to take his own life jacket off, attach it to the boy, and fasten it before he was pulled down by the current.

My parents were quite distraught for some time after. They hold Glenn in a different light in their minds, and decided to give me, their first son, a part of him (my middle name is Glenn).

I’m very proud to have had someone like that as a direct influence on my life.

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Had a moment in Iraq where two helicopters worth of soldiers and I were dropped off and got immediately fixed behind a mud wall. Every time we tried to move the enemy would pin us back. On either end of the wall we had soldiers rotating out to provide suppression before reloading.

Our situation was precarious at best, we were a 45 minute helicopter ride from any reinforcement. I was one man in from the end of the wall controlling the attack aircraft when a squad leader wiggled in giving me more cover and allowing him better control of the soldiers providing fire. This went on, we couldn't gain an advantage over the enemy, and eventually a piece of shrapnel from an RPG hit the squad leader in the head, killing him nearly instantly.

The fact that he basically died in my place was not lost in the moment and won't be for the rest of my life. I barely knew him but I think about him every day. The randomness of combat gives me some solace though I often second guess my decisions and whether or not something could have been done to better afford him protection.

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I was involved with some pretty sketchy people as a teenager and was part of a skinhead crew for several years (I'm no longer a part of that lifestyle and I regret that I ever was).

When I was 14, I leaving a show with a friend and walking to the bus stop because neither of us had our driver's license yet. A few guys came and started hassling us because our clothes and look made it obvious what we were. When he got swung at, he fought back and they all piled up on him.

I tried to pull one off and they turned on me, and got me down on the ground. He ended up pretty much wrapping himself around me to protect me. I don't remember much, but I had some had injuries and a collapsed lung from several broken ribs, and had trouble shielding myself.

I lost consciousness and woke up in the hospital, where I find out he'd died because we were both on the ground being kicked with steel toed boots for a long time before anybody intervened.

Only a few people know the story, because I don't like sharing that part of my life and most of our friends who knew turned on me when I left that lifestyle. His parents blamed me and I don't even know where he's buried because I was in the hospital during the funeral.

The insane part was starting my freshman year of high school a couple months later like nothing had happened.

In case any of this resonates with anyone and you'd like to leave a hate group but need support or help planning, these are some good people: Life After Hate / Exit USA.

During a strong earthquake my grandmother used her body to protect a four year old girl. A wall collapsed and fell on them. I’m told she broke her hip, an arm and her skull was open. She bled to death and passed from a heart attack. When they dug them out all she kept asking about was the little girl and saying she’s fine. The little girl thankfully survived with a broken arm but couldn’t understand what happened to my grandmother.

My father. I was assaulted when I was nine, he confronted the man that did it. Man came back and shot him in the head. My mother has hated me ever since so I lost two parents in one day. It has affected me in the sense that I’m hyper-vigilant in protecting my son.

I would like to make something clear: I don’t blame my mother because I understand some things about trauma.

I got permission to tell this story: my cousin was swimming in a seemingly calm part of a river with a large group of people near his college. At some point he went under the water and wasn't coming back up. Under the surface was a whirlpool that had caught him and wasn't letting go. His best friend dove in to save him and managed to get my cousin out of the whirlpool but sadly got stuck himself.

My cousin wasn't breathing when they pulled him out and they spent several minutes before they could revive him. He's ok now. Sadly, his friend didn't make it. I never knew the kid but I think of the sacrifice he made to save my cousin all the time and will be forever grateful for it.

My mom died giving birth to me.

I didn't find out about the circumstances of her death until I was 7 and my aunt said something about it to me. It messed me up for awhile.

I often wonder what my life would have been like if she was around. I had very little female influence in my life. I was raised by my dad and 5 brothers. Dad just treated me like one of the boys so I grew up working on cars and motorcycles.

My dad has never dated anyone since. That sometimes makes me sad too. I look at all the joy my husband brings into my life and want that for him, but I think he is just done with that part of his life.

My brothers will sometimes tell stories about her. It's really the only way I know anything about her. There are some pictures around too. People tell me I look just like her, and have the same attitude. I just have to take their word for it.

I'm older now than she ever was. I look at all the things going on in my life and I feel incredibly guilty for taking that away from her. It makes me want to live my life in a way that I think would make her proud.

My English may be weird, I am sorry.

I don’t know if this counts and I don’t want to go into detail but my mother took me when I was 8 years old from Sinuiju, North Korea with a refugee group to the north of the border of China and North Korea and fled to Thailand and then to South Korea.

The important thing is that my family (my father and my extended family  did not want to leave due to fear of capture) so my mother took it in her own hands. Most likely my family has perished for my mother and my actions.

My mother towards the end told me “the longer we stay alive the more the bad memories that we have will slowly be replaced by new good memories. We just have to stay alive.”

My mother has since passed away; she became deranged and stressed and that lead to her death at a early age. I have since moved to the United States after graduating at Seoul National University in English and business.

Because of my family's sacrifice I can have a somewhat normal life. But I can never forgive myself for my mother and my actions and I have never told anyone. I don’t deserve this life but I have to live with it.

He was a stranger. His death saved me and 3 others. The circumstance surrounding his death will never be completely known as mistakes were made during his medical care.

At the time of his death, I had already been on a artificial heart for 11 months and was probably about 2 weeks from death myself. It had been a 3 year journey for me and my family. Getting listed for transplant and then sitting on that list was grueling. I was simply done.

I received his heart on 11/1/14. Although the recovery still goes on, I'm alive and enjoying my life. His name was for Tim, and I now know his family.

My mother essentially died for me.

I was 3 months old, my mother was giving me a bath in the kitchen sink, my 3yr old brother was in a high chair having dinner, my father had just come home from performing an home inspection and was finishing his paperwork downstairs before coming up to dinner.

He heard my mother cry out his name, in a tone that was 'off' is how he put it. He sprung from his chair, ran up the stairs to the kitchen to find my mother holding me in the sink with her head down. He snatched me from her hands, she immediately collapsed on the floor unconscious.

She died 3 days later in the hospital of a cerebral hemorrhage. Her last act was to keep me from drowning in the kitchen sink.

My brother witnessed it all and was scarred for a long long time.

I never knew my mother, but that is the personification of a mother's love.

Not the typical altruistic life-saving event but I'll go on. I'm an identical triplet. We started out as quadruplets but the 4th little homie took one for the team as he stopped developing sometime during my mother's pregnancy. This allowed the remaining clones to develop healthy and well - utilizing the nutrients that would have been split by 4 down to 3. Pouring one out for you, Max!

My grandfather at the time was 94 years old. My 4 year old daughter got the flu, which she then gave to me. I was home sick with my daughter and I couldn’t even take care of myself let alone my daughter. My grandfather took care of the both of us. I remember waking up to him covering me with a blanket like when I was a child. He ended up getting the flu from us and his respiratory system couldn’t take it. He passed because he took care of me and my daughter and it makes me cry every time I remember that.

We used to deal together on the street. Let’s call him J. I got into it to help him out, but it was my choice all the way. We were just kids, I was 15. On our days off, we posted up outside a store and just hung out, talked about whatever came to mind, maybe we had some customers pass by, put some work in but that wasn’t why we hung out there. It was quiet, nobody bothered us much, and we got to just chill.

Apparently J had a reputation I wasn’t aware of with some other crew, because one day I saw a car round the corner after sunset with no lights on. They didn’t stop, but slowed down around the store and I thought 'alright, sketchy customer, get the bags ready.' Then the window came down and I saw the barrel stick out.

I froze, but J was quick, got in front of me and brought me down while I just heard two shots, and then the car speeding away. I got grazed, but he got hit in his midsection, and in the head. He was a lot taller than me so the head shot missed me completely. He didn’t die immediately, I held him and called 911. I don’t remember talking to the operator. I just remember looking at him and being able to tell the second he died. It really is a lights out moment where they just aren’t there anymore. I’ve recently learned that the name for what I did after that was called ‘keening’. Moaning or screaming in response to someone’s death. I just yelled and yelled, cried and screamed.

It’s been 12 years and I’m fine now, but I keep his memory with me and realize that we put ourselves in that danger, so I take more responsibility for the situations I put myself and my loved ones in.

Rwandan Genocide survivor here. I lost my dad during the Rwandan Genocide when I was four years old. He died protecting my sister, my mother, and me. The genocide was basically between two tribes, Hutus and Tutsis, my parents were each from different tribes. To make a long story short, both tribes were willing to take all of us in, but the non-verbal agreement was that the parent that wasn't from the appropriate tribe would be dealt with. Not wanting my mom to die, my dad chose to bring us to her tribe's side of the conflict, thus sealing his own death in the process. He was taken to some woods somewhere and decapitated. What always gets to me is my mom telling me how he silently cried as he was taken away.

October 13, 2011. My aunt and uncle invited me to come down with them for a wedding party they were having at their house in Logan for one of their friends. I accepted, packed my stuff to stay for a weekend, and got into their car.

We were just chatting while driving through Logan canyon from my house to theirs. It was nice because I hadn’t really talked to then since I moved up there. Well all of a sudden I hear my aunt say, “Steve, Steve!” I look up and see a red truck right in front of us. It hits us and I black out.

I wake up in a lot of pain and everything smelt weird and I couldn’t talk, my aunt gets out of the car and is panicking and asking if my uncle and I are okay, which I’m still surprised that she could to this day because she had a broken disk in her back.

My uncle had died on impact, I learned later that he turned the car just in time to take the full brunt of everything. Something that still makes me very uncomfortable is recalling this event. I can still clearly remember him breathing, but it was gurgling and like he was trying to breathe. Apparently his brain had split in two or something? I don know if that’s a thing that can happen, I just remember being told that. I get upset thinking about it, I feel like I heard him dying.

Everyone thought I walked out of there okay until a few days later my intestines burst, though I walked out of the car with broken glasses and a bruised arm, somehow no broken bones.

I had been thinking about ending my life for a couple of months when I was 21, I guess it's always been there but some things in my life triggered it.

I knew I didn't want to die, but something inside me was telling me it's the right choice and that no one really wanted me in their life. So I started to plan my suicide, without anyone knowing.

Around that time, my sister-in-law got sick and passed away right on new years eve, and suddenly I got two small children to care for. At first, I didn't know what to do. My plans were basically changed super fast, I didn't have time to think on what just happened. But these children changed me. I started to see that yes, I am worth something and needed and nothing makes me cry so much than thinking of dying and leaving these kids with more death in their life.

I don't know if it counts or not, but I was basically saved by these kids and their mom.

My brother jumped in front of his wife when a maniac was trying to run them over.

My brother was killed on 11/15/2015 in Eugene, Oregon while on a weekend getaway. He and his wife had just finished breakfast and were walking back to their car to go back to the place they were staying.

As they were crossing the road a man in a Toyota Highlander who had just beat his parents with a baseball bat (killing the father and permanently injuring his mother) decided to drive into my brother and his wife at full speed. According to the police reconstruction and witnesses, my brother put his body in front of his wife's and took the brunt of the impact. He was killed instantly and my brother's body slammed into his wife, breaking nearly all her bones on the left side of her body. She lived.

RIP Marc Jay Sanford. A truly amazing man, brother, friend, son, stepfather and husband.

My father was an extremely hard worker. Worked 6am-5 pm 6 days a week. Then one day he had a heart attack and was dead for a few minutes. He was never the same after that. He changed. It's hard to describe but he wasn't the same. I was 13 at the time.

One night he came into my room and he said to me he didn't want to come back after he died, that it wasn't his decision but the doctors. Then he told me how if he were to die our family would be fine because he had hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of tools that he told me the company would buy back. He also talked about other things but this stuck out the most.

A few months later he took his own life. It's left a tragic hole in my family. Now it's 13 years later and my siblings are still messed up. We would trade anything in the world for him but... I try to remember that it was his choice.

My mom was sick and we had the option to get her dialysis everything that costs thousands and would bury our whole family in debt but wouldn't heal her or ensure that she will live long or she gives up and dies. She gave up and died. She saved us lots of stress and money and in turn I lost my mother at 16.

I was in Afghanistan in 2011, working in Humanitarian Assistance/Human Terrain Analysis. I was working in the southern part of a city in the southeast of the country, working in various villages/communities over the course of a few weeks.

I have middle eastern/southwest asian features, so the Afghans took a liking to me. I got to know one village community particularly well, to the point that one of the younger boys (about 13) would always walk with me holding my hand (a sign of friendship in their culture). We'd talk about life in America, what his life was like in his Afghanistan, what he wanted to be when he grew up...basic stuff, nothing serious.

I left that community to work in other parts of the region for a little while with the intention of coming back for one more visit before I went back to HQ to write reports. So I go back for that one visit to find the community cold to me, which is very unusual in Pashtunwali (Pashtuns is the ethnicity of the people in the area, Pashtunwali is like their ethnic "code of conduct").

As we're leaving the area, we found the body of the kid that was hanging out with me. He was executed by gunshot and left to rot in a ditch. He didn't die for me in the sense that he sacrificed himself for my sake. Rather, he died for being my friend. The people of that community refused to speak to any NATO forces after that.

It might not count since it wasn't a person, but I think it keeps with the spirit of the question so here goes.

When I was about ten or so we lived on a farm. We had an Australian Blue Heeler named Smokey. He was an amazing dog, full of love for anyone he met. Smokey lived in a huge pen behind the barn, and it was my job to feed him and get his water when I got out of school.

So one day I go out to the pen and start to open the gate. Smokey was acting very strange...he was pacing back and forth, the ridge of fur on his neck raised, and when I made a move to step over into the pen, he growled at me.

This was new. Smokey had never even growled at me when we were roughhousing, so something was up. I kinda stepped back as he bared his teeth at me. I was scared, and the first thing that crossed my mind was that he had been bitten by something rabid. So I close the gate and start walking around the pen. As I moved away from the gate, he trotted along the fence, tongue lolling, happy grin on his face...just like always. At this point I was super confused, but decided just to push the dog out of the way and feed him whether he liked it or not.

So I go back to the gate. Smokey follows, and once again as I made to step in, he starts growling. I was only around 10 at the time, but he wasn't a huge dog, so I kinda pushed him with my foot to get him out of the way.

And Smokey bit me. He lunged up and bit me right below the knee. I was wearing jeans so it didn't break the skin, but I was scared witless of my old friend. I fell backwards out of the pen and then ran for the house.

I told my grandma something was wrong with Smokey and that he had tried to bite me. She too was afraid of rabies, but since there weren't puncture wounds on me, she decided to wait until my Dad got home to figure out what to do. He got off work about two hours after this happened, and immediately went out to the pen.

He found Smokey dead, lying pushed up against the gate like he had been blocking it. In the lean-to where I would have gone to get Smoke's food, he found not one but two huge rattlesnakes. When he looked over the dog's body, Smokey's face had swollen around the cheek...he had been bitten.

I know it doesn't carry the same weight as if a human had consciously decided to die for me, but I know my good boy was keeping me out of that pen for a reason.

I had a border collie named Rascal growing up. He was walking with us while we walked a couple of our friends home. Our neighborhood was super safe, but there were these two really mean Rottweilers that were barely contained by a decrepit fence along the road back to our friends’ house. Every time we passed by them they would lunge at us, hitting the fence, snarling.

Well, we were walking past them and that particular day, when those dogs lunged, the fence didn’t hold. Our sweet pupper jumped between us and the Rottweilers before they could tear us apart. Each of those Rottweilers weighed nearly double than any of us kids and quite a bit more than that compared to Rascal. But Rascal kept them at bay until a neighbor came running to our rescue.

At first the neighbor tried to beat the dogs away with a 9 iron. That didn’t work so he resorted to a taser before they backed off. Turns out those poor dogs had been trained to be fighters. Their owner wound up in jail over the entire thing.

Rascal didn’t make it. It was tragic, but I am so grateful to that beautiful, wonderful dog for saving our lives (as well as our neighbor). I know I’ll see him again some day. I don’t blame the dogs who killed him, and I know some wonderful Rottweilers, pit bulls, etc., but collies will always have a special place in my heart.