One Is Too Many

Today my sister received the news from a childhood classmate that another one of their classmates had passed away and tragically he had taken his own life. She texted me the news and I sat in stunned silence. I used the word 'another' because between the two of us we know ten people that we went to school with who have taken their lives and to us, that number is mind numbing. These were good people who we spent most of our formative years with. The joke tellers, the homework helpers, the laughter sharers and yet in the end none of it seemed to matter or help. Each one of these individuals felt like they didn't have any other options left.
I remember when a high school classmate took his life in the spring of our senior year, it was a jarring wake up call amid the seemingly neverending backpatting and good times that pepper the final year of school. The message that some students feel their life is already set in an ominous stone had broken the Iron Curtain of sheltered suburbia and I remember the message that I took away from it was that nothing last forever and there are always options if you are willing to ask for help. Five years later I lost a friend to suicide, one of the most intellgient and funniest guys I have ever known. In the years since my sister and I have grieved the loss of several more friends and classmates. Lives cut short sometimes without rhyme or reason. Experts claim that there are signs as if there is some kind of formula that needs to be in place before something like this can happen but I can say that without reading someone's mind, it seems to catch us all sleeping and totally unaware. And that is at the base of me and my sister's frustration. There is nothing more we would like to do than help people we know who believe they've run out of answers but how are we to really know? How are we to know who is at risk? There's a common saying that goes you never know what is really going on in someone's home or head and the truth in that statement makes preventing suicide and recognizing when loved ones need people (and professionals) to reach out to them, all the more difficult.