ryyan’s story

Ryyan Chacra was a remarkably cheerful person who delighted in life’s everyday pleasures — in long walks, sparkling water, strong coffee, picnics in the park, audiobooks, sour beers, snowy mornings, Chipotle burritos, playing video games with his friends, discovering new music, British slang, watching movies with his parents, exploring mountain towns, big plates of food, grapefruit Izzes, watching the Broncos on Sunday afternoons, the way the sunlight shone through the glass bottles he kept by his window.

From a young age, Ryyan had an astonishingly developed sense of who he was. No matter where he found himself or who he was talking to, he was always authentically himself — someone who challenged convention, stood up for what he believed in, and pursued his many passions and curiosities with heartfelt enthusiasm. He was the sort of kid who went door-to-door campaigning before he was old enough to vote, and a brilliant thinker and skilled debater whom his teachers remembered long after he graduated.

Ryyan was a hard worker who held himself to an incredibly high standard both at school and as a Product Management Director at Gartner Inc. He was accepted to the MBA program at Oxford University and planned to attend in the fall of 2024 — something he’d dreamed about for years.

Though he was in many ways an old soul, Ryyan approached life with an earnest, childlike wonder. He was deeply curious about the world — always going down some new rabbit hole or picking up a new passion, whether it was The Beatles, space, airplane design, Colorado mining history, architecture, international politics, or the history of gangs in Denver.

Ryyan was proud of his mixed American and Lebanese heritage and loved digging into his family history. He also had a gift for language. Not only did he speak French, Spanish, and conversational Arabic, but he delighted in discovering new words in English to add to his distinct and ever-evolving vocabulary — or even inventing his own.

Ryyan had a remarkable eye for beauty and could find it as much in the quotidian — in ducks, legos, and cars — as he did in sunsets, snow, wildflowers, and the mountains of Colorado. He loved music and dabbled in a variety of art forms, though he had a particular talent for photography. He had recently begun to print his work on brushed aluminum panels and to publish it on his website, Clementine and Sphynx, with hopes of expanding it into a larger business. His photos offer a glimpse into the way Ryyan viewed the world — finding beauty in overlooked objects, and looking at the familiar from an unexpected angle.

Above all, Ryyan valued community and had a gift for bringing people together and lifting them up. A kind and empathetic listener, Ryyan was easy to like and easy to talk to. For Ryyan, friends were family. He accepted his friends for who they were while always seeing the best in them. In doing so, he unwittingly challenged them to be better versions of themselves — to become the people he believed them to be. He was the first to visit a friend who moved to a new city, the one to text the group and suggest a get together, the friend who would call you just to check in. Ryyan cared deeply and wholeheartedly for the people he loved and made sure they knew how important they were to him.

An only child, Ryyan had a special bond with his parents. They were the first people he called for life advice, to share a funny story, or just to chat during a long commute. He was the rare adult child who relished the chance to spend more time with his parents when he moved back home for a period during COVID, whether it was watching Ted Lasso or Seinfeld together, having family bake-offs, or discussing the details of his day over dinner.

For the past several years, Ryyan battled OCD and, recently, depression. For how loving and supportive he was of the people he cared about, he could be very hard on himself. It was difficult for him to open up about his mental health struggles, and for a long time, he resisted help, choosing instead to grapple with these challenges in silence.

When it became clear that he could no longer manage on his own, he finally sought professional help and was diagnosed with OCD in January 2024. But from there, he was met with a fragmented mental health system — one which was difficult to navigate even with the love, support, and efforts of Ryyan’s family and friends. OCD is an under-researched, under-detected, and widely misunderstood condition, and it seemed that at various turns, Ryyan himself was misunderstood by mental health professionals and struggled to find the right care.

In May 2024, the diseases took over, and Ryyan tragically took his own life. He was just 28 years old.

To those who knew him, Ryyan’s death seemed antithetical to everything he had been.

Ryyan was warm, funny, goofy, energetic, sincere. Ryyan loved life, and he wanted to be here. He was successful academically and professionally and had plans to augment those achievements. He was surrounded by people who loved him, and he wanted to be there for the people he loved. He had promised his parents that he would not harm himself, that he did not want to die. But the Ryyan that we knew, the Ryyan who spoke those words, was overcome by hopelessness.