43 years 7 months 14 days 10 hours 6 minutes

Up until I was 43 years 3 months and 11 days old, I had only known two people in my entire life who had committed suicide... Three if you count my friend Damon, but all of us who knew him are fairly positive that he was murdered.

Prior to that, I'd had a former classmate and a friend from church kill themselves. It had been pretty calm around here in terms of Suicides for the past 20 plus years, and then, in the past four months I've had the misfortune of knowing two additional people who have decided to end it all.

The first was my friend Scott's Mom. She had been very depressed since her Husband had passed away a few months earlier. They had been married for a very long time and I think the thought of living without him was just too much for her to deal with.

This past Thursday, my friend, Vicki, decided that she'd had enough and found the exit that she thought was best. She too, had lost her true love within the past year and this "attempt" was her second, or perhaps even her third since his death.

When I first heard the news, I was shocked...and then I wasn't. She had been on a downward spiral for awhile. When I last saw her she looked empty...for lack of a better word. Her closest friends were convinced it was only a matter of time before she took her life, but I wasn't so sure....maybe it was the optimist in me...I don't know... how can you ever read that in someones eyes? I knew she was lost, but I didn't know that she'd never find her way back.

One of her closest friends convinced me after her previous attempt that she was determined to succeed and he thought that she would eventually. I hoped that he was wrong.... and for a few months it seemed as if he might be.

All that changed on Thursday. So now I know four people who have killed themselves. Could I have done something to stop them? Is there anything I could have said or done? In Damon's case, I spent the day working with him on a Friday...he spent the day talking about his Daughter's birthday party that he was planning for that Sunday, and for how on Monday, her actual birthday, he would be taking her to Chuck E. Cheese...

I told this to the police on Tuesday of the next week, after they found his body in a parked car on Monday morning. I tried to convince the police that he wouldn't have killed himself on Sunday night if he'd been making plans for Monday....but still they ruled it a suicide.

Was there something that I missed? Mostly I think we all just miss the people when they're gone...

Part of me is sick at the news and of the feeling that they're gone. Part of me is angry at the way they chose to ignore God's will and take their lives in a direction that God abhors... and part of me is just sad for those they left behind.
Whoever said "Suicide is Painless" obviously never knew anyone who tried it.

David