Evening (for me) @galenkp.

Thanks for sharing with us. I hope it's helped. It's a burden that doesn't need to be carried alone by keeping it all inside.

I suppose all suicides are tragic, but I also suppose they're not all equal, like death in general. If someone dies of natural causes in their 80s, 90s or beyond, we feel their loss, but we know it's going to happen to all of us, as you said, at some point. If it happens after a long, often painful illness where quality of life is reduced over and over, we often find death to be a relief—for them, for those taking care of them, and maybe even for us.

With suicide, though, it always feels like a life ended too soon. Largely, because it is. With those where it's more obvious that there are problems or depression, etc., it's not so much expected to happen as it is a little less of a surprise or out of the blue—something. The signs are there, maybe help is even given and preventable actions taken, but in the end it all just proves too overwhelming. Or whatever the case may be. I don't pretend to know everything or have all the answers.

I know for me, the ones where you have described, where the people seem happy, go out of their way to help others, etc., are the ones that affect me the most. It's the ones you can't possibly know about because there's never an indication, not in public, anyway.

I wish I had words of consolation. I wish I had answers. I wish, better said, that they were still around. I'm not going to get any of those wishes to come true, I guess.

I do hope and believe you will find closure. There are too many things in this life that we just have no or very little control over, and I'm going to put this one firmly in that category. If you're taking the blame, it's not yours. If you're thinking you could have done something—I don't know. That's a what if scenario that could end many different ways, and not all of them the way you might want.

I know you know all of that. It doesn't stop the heart from aching. I think that's okay, though. What would be the point of relationships if we didn't feel sadness, anger or guilt, along with the happiness, joy and satisfaction? We kind of need it all to understand it all, to appreciate it all, and to prove we're human.

I'm sorry. I truly am.