My Friend’s Child Committed Suicide

This weekend I received the saddest email.  A friend I grew up with sent an email to tell his close friends and family that his daughter’s body had been found near the George Washington Bridge.  Although I didn’t know either of his kids, or he, mine because  we lived on opposite coasts as adults, this news has devastated me.  I can’t imagine losing a child that way.  (For those of you who own my memoir, “Little Nancy: The Journey Home”, there is picture of the two of us as kids on page 103.) What has arisen for me repeatedly over the weekend and this morning is how grateful I am for my daughters and the lives they are leading.  Of course they aren’t happy all of the time, but they tell me they are content with life, happy with their husbands, and enjoying living next door to one another, which I never would have imagined they would choose to do, even five years ago.  They fought a lot as teenagers, and well into their twenties.  They are very different from one another, as are most siblings, and yet it is obvious  they have come to like and respect each other.  They spend quite a bit of time together, both with their husbands, who fortunately get along well, and by themselves.  I think my relationship with each of them is strong enough that if they were in trouble, they would reach out.  Unfortunately the weekend suicide has shaken that belief.  We don’t live in the same city, and are seven and a half hours apart by car.  How would I know if either of them was in trouble?  Tone of voice over the phone?  Facial expression when we gmail chat?  I just heaved a huge sigh and feel close to tears. The only place I can go with this, I realize, is to trust them, what they tell me, their closeness to one another, and my perception of each of them.  If I thought anything was wrong, and asked, I do think they would tell me. And they know that the person I am would ask!   And if I asked either of them would more than likely begin to cry.  I have to trust that as well.  My children are more than OK, our relationships with one another on a pretty firm footing.  As for my poor, sad friend.  I invited him out here for a change of scenery, beach walks – the beach is a block away, the water visible from my dining room window – and a place far from home to begin healing.  He seemed grateful for the suggestion, though I doubt he’ll accept, since his support system of many years is in New York.  I was saying ‘I am here’ and perhaps that is enough for now. That may be all any of us can do in such a situation.