Two Years Ago

Two years ago at about this time we were at Leif's apartment and found him dead on his kitchen floor. We knew when we drove up to the apartment building that something must be terribly wrong because he hadn't answered repeated phone calls, emails or text messages for a day, but when we saw both his vehicles there, our hearts sank and what little hope we had was gone.

If anyone reading this is contemplating suicide, think about this. Think about what it will be like for someone who loves you to find your body, to see you dead and what you have done to yourself. Such a death is not a simple closing of the eyes like you have seen in many movies, and if you use a violent means of death, it is a grisly and terrible scene.

Think about them having to call the police and then being required to leave while the police do their investigation, being required to stand by while they remove your body, how they will not be able to be with you. They cannot touch you. They cannot disturb the scene. They will be questioned, and depending upon the circumstances, they may even be suspected of causing your death. If not them, perhaps your friends. They are only doing their job, but it will be hurtful and horrifying. Luckily we were spared that, but many suicide survivors are not.

Think about the questions your family and friends will have, how they will always wonder what made you do it, whether they could have done anything to prevent it, the eternal whys, the sadness and grief they will feel, the future that will never be.

Think about the mess you will leave behind for them to try to clean up, not only the death scene itself, but your affairs, your belongings, your taxes, your finances, your vehicles, everything you own. Think about them having to clean out your dwelling, dispose of your possessions, and how heart wrenching all of that will be for for them.

Think about how it will never be over for them. It will be over for you, though you will have destroyed your future, but for them, it will be months if not years before they have completed all the tasks that must be done when someone dies, and it will be a lifetime of sadness, regret, questions and missing you.

Think about it and get help. Don't fall for the suicidal thinking that they will somehow be better off without you. They will not.

Two years ago we faced all this when we opened the door to Leif's apartment. What we saw is burned into our brains. What happened changed our lives forever. What we had to do was hard and sad.

My brother said that Leif didn't really want to be dead, "he just wanted all the shit to stop." How many people who kill themselves really want that, not death, but don't see any other way out? What a horrible price to pay, for everyone.

Life is precious but it doesn't feel precious to someone who is in misery and torment. Taking one's life ends that torment but it blocks any future and torments others for lifetimes. Some of them may never forgive you for it.

I've been confronted with people who think that there will always be warning signs of a possible suicide, that someone contemplating it will threaten to do it, and that those who do it always leave suicide notes. Not so. Many times there are no warning signs, except perhaps depression and withdrawal, but even those are often well hidden. Sometimes it's planned, but many times it is a quick decision in desperation. And most of the time there is no explanatory note, though even if there were, it would not bring much comfort.

Depression is dangerous. Depression with a gun in your hands is even more dangerous. Depression with a gun in your hand and getting drunk is lethal. Don't do it.

My family is broken. It will never again be complete. I will miss Leif all my life.

And I will always love him.

A Further Thought

But how could Leif have ever thought it would be understandable or acceptable to his family and friends, his decision to take his own life? He had resisted his desire to do it once before, because he said he knew what it would do to me. Why didn't he think about that this time? Why didn't he think about how he felt, how he felt like he had died when he lost the women he loved? The pain he felt. He left that to me.

Shocking Suicide Statistics

Tonight I heard of yet another family devastated by suicide, again a young man, again in the spring. I don't know this family, but my heart goes out to them. I know what they are going through.


It seems like an epidemic to me, and I read that the suicide rate is increasing in the USA for the first time in over a decade. The suicidology.org website cites this statistic:

Survivors (i.e., family members and friends of a loved one who died by suicide): 

       • Each suicide intimately affects at least 6 other people (estimate) 

       • Based on the 766,042 suicides from 1982 through 2006, estimated that the number of survivors of suicides in the U.S. is 4.6 million (1 of every 65 Americans in 2006); number grew by at least 199,800 in 2006 

       • If there is a suicide every 15.8 minutes, then there are 6 new survivors every 15.8 minutes as well 

That is a very conservative estimate, because they don't count all those who committed suicide prior to 1982 (like my dad in 1960) and after 2006, so I believe it is way more than double that number, meaning that it's more like one out of every 30 Americans who has been directly affected by the suicide of a family member or friend. 

The most recent statistic I could find was for 2006, and that was 33,300 nationwide. That same year, the deaths from auto accidents were 38,648. I don't think most people (certainly not me) had any idea that the suicide rate was that high or that close to the number who died in auto accidents. The rate among our soldiers and veterans is frightening.

We can read that, but what can we do about it? We have suicide prevention programs, but do they work? Do those who commit suicide want to be prevented or are they so miserable they just want it all to be over? Sometimes their problems are acute and with time would heal but for others, the misery seems to go on for years and years, especially those with severe clinical depression, bipolar syndrome, or PTSD.

I know that our family is forever changed. We will go on. We will learn how to live with it, but how can we look at a photo like the one above, of my joyful-looking fourteen-year-old son and not forever wonder how it all went so wrong?

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The photo of Leif and Jerri was taken in the old stone house in Manhattan, Kansas in July 1989. At the time we were living at Fort Sheridan north of Chicago and Jerri's mother was living in the old stone house. We made a trip there that summer to visit. Leif was fourteen.

Eighteen Months

Yesterday it was been eighteen months since we discovered Leif's body. It's hard to comprehend, still, that we will never see him again. He still is a looming presence in our lives, both his life and his death. I'm sure he always will be.

Each passing month since April 10, 2008, I've marked the day on the blog, on his MySpace page, and on his Facebook page. Each month I've shed new tears. I am trying to look at this year-and-a-half as a time to get focused on all the other areas of my life, to move on, if just a little, from the grief and sadness. It's getting easier.

On Thursday evening we enjoyed the German-American Club's Oktoberfest dinner-dance and sat with a table of people we had never met before, congenial people who helped make our evening fun, though the best part was just being together, Peter W. and I, dancing, and smiling at each other.

Yet even there I was reminded once again how widespread the problem of suicide is, how many of us are suicide survivors, having experienced the suicide of a family member or friend. One of the men at the table lost his seventeen-year-old daughter to suicide years ago. His wife, who told me she had to break the news to him, said no matter how many years go by, you never really get over it. She echoed the same sentiments as my friend who said she will eternally ask why, always wonder whether she could have done something differently that would have mattered, but none of us will never know.

In thinking about this eighteen month marker, I wanted to use a photo of Leif that shows more of what his mood must have been like when he decided to end his life. This photo was one I found on his computer, taken with the computer's internal camera, on November 22, 2007, which was Thanksgiving. He was with us for Thanksgiving dinner, and seemed to enjoy being together, though Thanksgiving as a holiday never meant much to him. I don't know why he took this photo (and others he took at the same time), or whether he took it before or after coming to our house for dinner, but he looks so serious and solemn. Was that just a pose or was that how he really felt? It seems to look like the discouraged email he wrote to me a few days earlier, and other photos he took that month. He took a lot of photos of himself that month when he was so down, both with his computer and his phone. Why?

We have missed Leif now for a year-and-a-half. He lived less than half of a normal lifespan, but he had an enormous impact on our lives. We will always, always love him.

The Endless Questions

Yesterday I was talking to my friend who lost her son to suicide with a gun four-and-a-half years ago. She told me, tears sliding from her eyes, that she still can't bring herself to look at all the family videos, the photo albums, and boxes of mementos. She still doesn't feel like decorating for the holidays or celebrating them. She met a long-time friend who asked her whether she had stopped asking "why" and she said the would never stop until her eyes "closed for the last time." She said that it took her three years, but she got to the angry stage where she asked why her son thought it was all right to do this terrible thing to his family, to leave her anguished for the rest of her life . . . and then felt bad about her anger, because for him to take his life, he must have been so unhappy.

I told her that I had thought a lot about that question of why, and I, too, will be asking it forever, but unlike her, I don't think that finding out the answer will bring any closure or make me feel any better, because no matter what the answer would be, it would just raise MORE questions, the whys behind that answer, and many others. I don't think we can ever really come to grips with the why of our sons' deaths, because I don't think there is any reason that will be truly comprehensible to us. The only thing that would be, would be to walk in their shoes and experience what they did, to feel what they felt, and I don't want to do that, even if I could. I don't want to experience a life that would make me want to end mine.

Four-and-a-half years, and we will be coming up on eighteen months in just a couple of days. Those months seem at once endless and so short, to have flown by. How can Leif have been gone from us that long already? It still seems as if he could come driving down the street any day.

I am sad for my friend that she can't look at all those videos and pictures and remember all the good times they had with their son, that it's so painful she would rather hide them away. It's the opposite for me. I want to see every one of them. I want to search them for signs of what his life was really like, what it meant, whether he had real moments of happiness, whether there were indications of his misery. I want to see his face, look at his eyes, remember that he LIVED, and how important he was and is to us. Yes, seeing them makes me cry sometimes, but I would rather see them and cry than avoid them. It's the only contact I have other than my memories, and I crave it. I have come to understand, though, why some people want to avoid all mention of or reminders of their deceased loved ones, because they can't bear the pain. For some people, it's easier to keep things out of sight. There is no pretending they will also be out of mind.

She has no outlet for her grief and her memories like I do with this blog. I am trying to preserve Leif's memory for the world, not that the world cares, but some people in it care, and care deeply. But even if others were not here reading what I write, looking at the photos of Leif and the things he loved, I would still want to do it.

Today I was driving down the street to our house and thinking as I often do that Leif drove there. When he lived here, he drove it at least twice a day. Later after he moved to Tampa, he would drive down for dinner or to come help us out with something, or to see his brother's family when they were visiting. All those places associated with him in some way. All those things we used to be able to ask him about, get his advice, like car repair. I had to have my mother's car fixed today and they were recommending a service I knew nothing about, didn't know whether it was a good idea or not. I would have asked Leif about it, and he would have given me good advice, just as he would about anything electronic or mechanical, and I miss having him there to ask.

Peter W. was going through a box of photos and papers and found the "coupon" I scanned above. Unfortunately, I don't remember when Leif made it or gave it to me, and no date was written on it. I think it must have been when we were in Japan, because he wrote his name in cursive and was still going by the name "Leif" instead of the nickname "Alex" he switched to when we moved to Hawaii in 1983. He probably was in second grade, although I don't remember them teaching cursive that soon, and I'll bet it was for Mother's Day.

You can see that Leif was not particularly careful about coloring it. Coloring pages was never one of his chosen activities. Drawing, yes, but just the drawing part, not coloring it in. He was more interested in line and function than color.

The coupon says,

"To Mom from Leif
This Free Coupon Good For One of Your Choice: (Circle One)
Hug
Chore
Breakfast in Bed
Be An Angel for a Day"

There's nothing circled, and that makes me wonder if I ever even got this coupon, because surely I would have used it.

It strikes me that these choices are hardly equal and certainly moving upward in difficulty for a child to fulfill. What would I have chose, from an earnest little boy? I'd give anything for a hug now.

Thoughts in the Wee Hours of Memorial Day 2009

Last night we watched the poignant, touching, and sad Memorial Day Concert on the Mall in Washington DC. It was a beautiful tribute to our fallen and wounded military men and women, and we all shed a lot of tears. I cried for all those who lost their lives in the service of our country, all those whose lives were changed forever by terrible injuries, and all of their families who have to bear the losses.

And, I realized that Leif was one of the wounded and fallen, too. In a very real sense, he never recovered from the damage his service in the army did to him, losing his health, his marriage and his career. He lost a lot, too, though it wasn't a flesh wound. He was and is not alone. There are so many who are wounded in their souls. So many, too many suicides.

I was asking yet again, for perhaps the ten thousandth time, why? Why, why, why? And although I will never stop asking it, I know there will never be an answer. Even if there were one, it wouldn't be satisfactory. It wouldn't bring him back, wouldn't lay all the questions to rest.

How could he have been carrying on a lively email and text conversation with several of us, then go out with friends and have a good time, seeming to be making plans for future events, seeming normal, and then, in the wee hours of the morning when he was alone, use his new gun to take his own life?

I know there is no logic in it. I know that suicidal people come to believe that their family and friends will be "better off without them." They believe it is a solution. In some cases, like in terminal illnesses, it is, and perhaps in others that we can't fathom, the pain of living is too great to bear, but if they knew what heartache and loss they left behind, the years of misery and longing they create, would they do it? Would they go through with it? Do they think they are expendable, that their families and friends will just get over it and go on? They are wrong. The pain, the loss, the questions, permeate our lives. They don't go away. Missing them doesn't go away.

Later today I will go to the cemetery. My Leif is not there, just the last of his earthly remains. His dad tells me that, and I know it is true. I tell him I go there because it is symbolic, a way to honor him, even if he doesn't know it. I do it for me.

Leif was loved. He will always be loved. I hope he knew that.
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This photo was on one of those strips of four photos taken in a photo booth. I don't remember taking them. Luckily, I had written on the back of the photo that it was taken in Ansbach, Germany in the fall of 1979. Leif would have been four-and-a-half years old. I loved the expression on his face. He was so expressive.

What Was He Thinking on April 9, 2008?

One of the hardest things about being a family member or friend of someone who commits suicide is the endless question, "Why?" No matter how well I can outline all the misery Leif went through, the previous suicidal feelings, and the current problems he had, I still can't really fathom it. I keep feeling there is something missing, something we don't know.

When his brother read the philosophy paper, he said he didn't understand what Leif could feel so guilty about that he would take his life, since the passage he had open on his laptop dealt with guilt. That is a particularly hard question to answer because Leif claimed he never felt guilty and that guilt did not motivate him. However, perhaps he meant that to cover guilt that others tried to induce, not something he felt from inside himself. And perhaps there was something at the end that we didn't know about that he did feel guilty about, whether it was the debts or something else.

Leif also insisted he had no regrets about decisions he had made and the way he led his life. That was hard for me to accept, too. I think he probably convinced himself that was true, but it's unimaginable to me that he wouldn't regret some of the things he chose that turned out badly, even if they were the simple ones like eating and drinking too much. More likely, he chose to define regret differently than I do.

We saw him 17 days before he died and he was animated and happy, seemed full of hope and enthusiasm, and in love. What happened in those short days to bring him to suicide? Was it just the final collapse of his finances caused by the loan rejections after he lost his GI Bill stipend? Was he so ashamed that he had messed up his finances and credit rating again that he didn't want to come to us? Was his pride so high that he couldn't face a lesser lifestyle? He could have sold his cycle to help with his debts, though it would not have covered them, but that would have meant giving up something he truly loved. Was it easier for him to give up his life than it was to face the problems and give up things he didn't want to live without?

Or was there something more?

Was the trigger pulled because he had "rationally" made up his mind to put an end to his problems and his life? Or was it pulled because he was in a depressive funk that he might have pulled out of? Or, did he have a good evening with Michael and decide to end it while he was happy, not wanting to face the problems again?

Or, was he so drunk that he was careless and stupid with a new gun, played a dangerous game of "what if" with the gun against his forehead, lurched or had a momentary blackout from alcohol and lack of sleep and more or less accidentally pulled the trigger?

We will never know. What makes more sense to me, though I cannot know if it is the "truth," is that after Michael and Jaime left at 3:00 a.m., he went out to the kitchen and got those carrots and the dip, taking the gun and bullets with him. He loaded the gun and was sighting with it, checking it out, as he did with all his guns, and probably still drinking either a beer or rum and Coke. A beer bottle was on the floor near him and a bottle of spiced rum was on the counter. Standing there, drunk, exhausted, thinking about how he had to be at work at 8:00 a.m. and how crappy that was, thinking about how he worked and worked and all his money at this point was going to pay for his car loan, car insurance, credit cards, and apartment, with precious little left for anything else including gasoline and food, and he'd just blown nearly $500 on another gun. I could see him thinking that life wasn't worth it, that he had no love, no companionship, and worked just to support his debts at that point, and he didn't want to ask anyone else for money. I could see him thinking that since he hadn't heard from D. in several days, that his new love wasn't going to work out for him either. I could see him in a dark mood just making a snap decision to just get it over with and end the pain, a decision he might not have made it he weren't drunk, discouraged and exhausted. I can see him setting out the loan rejection letters, his tax return, and setting up the photo and philosophy paper on his laptop, and going out to the kitchen for another drink. I can almost hear him saying, "Oh, what the shit," and pulling the trigger.

However it happened, the result is the same. Leif is gone from us and we are left with endless questions and grief, and I don't think they will ever completely go away. We are changed and our lives are changed. We will recover. We are recovering, but life will never be the same.

But that is not all we are left with. We are left with memories of his sense of humor, his intelligence, his smile, his rascally brown eyes, his towering presence, thirty-three years of a boy and a man we loved. I am grateful for those years. We were changed by them, too.
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The photo of Leif was another one of his PhotoBooth self portraits made on November 22, 2007. He used a feature of the program to produce the striated effect called Colored Pencil.gu

The Silent Sisterhood Grows

Not long ago I wrote about what I called the Silent Sisterhood of women who have experienced the death of one of their children. That sisterhood circles many heartaches brought by death. Those of us who have dealt with and grieved over the suicide of a family member have yet another sisterhood, yet another thing we keep silent about until we find another of our own.

Today I met two more women who are suicide survivors, which seems like an odd term to me. It sounds as though the person tried to commit suicide and survived, rather than a person who is left surviving after the suicide death of a family member.

Meeting these women brought home to me yet again that we can never know how many of the people around us every day have suffered some terrible emotional blow. Most of them cope, "soldier on," and don't show us their private grief.

The women I met today are dealing with not only the aftermath of suicide in their families, but the continuing depression of other family members and the family ignorance about it, fear of "being crazy" or having a "mental illness" that prevents them from recognizing or learning about depression. It's sad that in our day there are still people who hide in shame, whose loved ones may make matters worse by misunderstanding both depression and suicide, who are ashamed to talk about it.

There are so many awful things that can happen to us. I have been most fortunate in my life in many ways, yet I have experienced the tragedy of the suicides of both my father and my son. Both hid their depression well. Both men probably thought that, like the carefully cultivated public persona they presented, they could (and should) handle it themselves. Isn't that what "real" men do?

But they did not handle it, in the end, just as those I heard about today are not handling depression well, or understanding the suicide of their family members. In the end, their pride or their lack of recognition of depression kept them from getting medical help. And we are left to live our lives without them now, missing them, wishing we could have done something to help . . . when we didn't even really know help was needed at the time. Feeling somehow guilty that we didn't know, even though they hid their need.

Speak out. Don't hide. Don't hide either your need for help, or lie about how a loved one died. If we don't begin to acknowledge the truth, if we don't start to educate, if we don't let the world around us know how many suicides there really are, how destructive depression is, many more will die without help, thinking they have to keep their misery secret.

I am thankful for every photo I see with a real, happy smile on Leif's face, not a false smile he obligingly "put on" for a camera. I am thankful there were happy moments and happy times.

But I will always lament the deep, deep sadness we never fully knew or understood.

Seven Months Since Leif Died

The months continue to pass. Today (Sunday, November 9th) it has been seven months since Leif died. Tomorrow it will be seven months since we found him. He wasn't supposed to die that way, my proud, brilliant son. I always believed in him, always believed that something good would come into his life, that he would find a goal, find his way. Why couldn't my faith have been rewarded? For him, not for me, though I would have rejoiced for both of us.

Not a day goes by that we don't talk about him, try to fathom why he did it, why he made such a terrible decision. We know all the factors. Or at least we think we do, but perhaps there's more we can't discover. And yet we still can't truly fathom it, why he felt there was no other way out, at least for him.

We spent a lovely weekend in Inverness, Homosassa and Crystal River, walking in the state parks, seeing two dolphins and a manatee in the river, an armadillo walking right by us on the path in the park. We enjoyed an arts and crafts fair, a seafood festival, all in the lovely "fall" air. Walked beside a lake, beside the river. We enjoyed being together, and visiting Leif's friend Michael and seeing his screen printing equipment, meeting Karen, and all the while, Leif was there with us, in our minds.

Peter and I were having dinner at the Outback on Saturday night and he took my hands and felt the ring that Peter A. designed for me and had made in Thailand. I always wear it. Peter Anthony designed it with the birthstones for him and Leif pointing toward the center, which he envisioned as pointing toward the ring that symbolized our love for each other. There are three diamonds set in the middle and to the two sides, symbolizing Peter Anthony's children, our three grandchildren. The ring is a treasure.

When Peter W. took my hand, he said, "here are your two sons, and now one of them is gone." How quickly the mood changed. How fast my eyes teared up.

And as we drove home, past Tampa, Peter W. said, "If Leif were still alive, we'd be driving by, close to him now. It doesn't seem right that he isn't there. He wasn't supposed to die like that. No way would have been good, but this way, how could he?"

That's the never-ending question of the suicide survivor, the why?

That's the never-ending obsession that we must somehow get past, but perhaps never will.

We love him. We miss him. Always.

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The birthstones are the garnet, for Leif's birthday on January 28th (red) and the blue topaz for Peter Anthony's birthday on December 25th.

The Reality of Grief

Honesty about grief is hard. I want to remember the good times of our life with Leif. I want to focus on the handsome young man, the brilliant mind, the power and presence he projected, the beautiful child he was, the talents he had, but no matter how we try to do this, for now, at least, it is overshadowed by the terrible reality of his death.

The death of someone we love is always hard, harder when the death is by the loved one's own hand and choice. Leif left us no explanation, though he did leave us clues. Those of us who loved him have figured out in our own minds what went wrong and why he did what he did, but to us, there is no reason great enough to warrant his death. We can never feel what he felt.

Although I can explain it, it's like explaining why a flower grows. We can describe it, in botanical detail, but we still can't really explain the why of it. What makes it happen? The growth of a flower is something beautiful. Choosing death is not.

People ask how we are doing. They are concerned, and rightly so. This is a terrible process to go through, and it will be a long time before it is any easier and life becomes at all normal or happy. Others seem to think we should be over it. It's been over five weeks now. How long can we mourn? I pray they never have to deal with such a loss and find out.

There are so many reasons for such grief. Everyone understands the obvious, that we are grieving because we have lost our son and miss him. But there is so much more. We grieve because it is hard to know how unhappy he must have been. Hard to know we could not help him, though we tried. Hard to know he did not come to us with his misery and problems so that we could help him more. Hard to know he never found the love he needed. Hard to know he will never have children.

Hard to know he will never see the sun, the moon, the stars. Will never ride his beloved motorcycle or drive his car. Hard to know he never found a career that provided satisfaction. Hard to know he felt he had not lived up to his potential. Hard to know he was so alone, despite the friends and family who cared deeply for him. Hard to know how much misery he dealt with in the past few years, whether disappointment in love or accidents with car and motorcycle, whether robberies or not getting promotions or new jobs he applied for, whether financial difficulties or health problems. He had too much for his broad shoulders to bear.

For us, there is more. There is a loss of identity. It is as though a limb were cut off and a piece of us is missing. It hurts not just emotionally, but physically. There is the loss of his future, the loss of the time we would spend with him. He died just days before his father's 65th birthday, and he was always there for birthdays. He will never be there for birthdays, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Christmas, Thanksgiving. None of those days will ever be the same.

There is the sadness of taking his life apart piece by piece. Two of the hardest days for us were this past week. Simple things that surprised us with their emotional impact. On Monday, we turned in his military ID card at MacDill AFB. On Friday, we finally picked up a box of his belongings from his workplace. So simple, but so hard. It feels as though we are erasing his identity piece by piece.

In our hearts, we know that his identity from now on will be our memories, the photos, the few personal possessions we have of his, but all the rest will be gone from us. Although his military identity will be preserved in his resting place, and in photos, and in the beautiful flag case given to us by his friend Melissa, there was still something expressibly sad about turning in his ID card. It's the finality of it.

I was surprised how hard it was to get his belongings from work. He worked in a secure environment and we never saw the phone center cubicle where he worked. His supervisor brought his belongings out to our car in a box. I had a hard time opening it to see what was there. Nothing really surprising, not much at all, but again, it was like erasing one more piece of his life. Apparently, he had a puzzle on his desk that he was working on, and it is still there. His team members didn't want it disturbed.

Yesterday was also hard because we were talking to his bank about the loan on his Mazda RX-8 sports car, a gorgeous car he loved. It's hard to see it in our garage because it reminds me so of him, and how happy I always was to see him drive up in that car, but it will probably be even harder to see it taken away, and yet another important piece of the identity he built for himself gone.

For the gathering at our house the evening of his memorial services, I made a slide show of over 400 photos of his life from birth to his 33rd birthday. Seeing all of them at once made me realize that because Leif was always so big for his age, and a big man, and because he had always kept his emotions inside, even as a child, none of us had really seen his vulnerability. He carefully cultivated his code of "never show weakness," and he was very successful at it. Only by seeing all of these photos together did we see the vulnerability in the child and the man.

We knew that the problems and disappointments in his adult life had led to some very bad times for him, times when he was deeply depressed and fought with suicidal thoughts, but until this time, he had gotten past them and gone on with his life. It's hard to know that this time, he let no one in. I was worried about him, very worried, beginning last fall. He first denied depression, but at the end of November, he admitted to me in an email message that life was "very dark" and he was searching for a reason to exist. I was so alarmed that I tried to keep in close contact, tried to suggest he get help, but he brushed me off.

I felt better when he showed a keen interest in the Obama campaign, politics, a new computer, the game Mass Effect, and most of all, a new love interest. But apparently, his hopes came crashing down when he was unable to solve his financial problems and didn't want to turn to anyone else and admit he was in trouble. It's hard for his family and friends to forgive him for that. For me, I think it was the last straw in a chain of unbearable experiences that made him feel life would never be better for him. And that's the hardest thing of all, to know he had no hope.

We bring our children into the world with such hope for them, and Leif came into the world with so much good fortune, a family who loved him and could provide not only a good material life, but experiences around the world, good looks, a soaring, intelligent mind. We had such hopes for him. But he lacked a sense of purpose, and he needed someone to love. He never was able to handle finances and the paperwork details of life, and he had no direction for a real career. We will never know why. He may have inherited depressive tendencies. He certainly cultivated the identity he chose, the cool guy with the cool "toys," computers, fancy cell phones, motorcycle, guns, the infantry soldier, the gamer, and much more.

But in the end, none of that could bring him happiness or a purpose in life. We mourn for all that could have been, all we have lost, our own loss of identity as his parents, the hole in our lives where Leif always lived large. Most of all, we mourn for his unhappiness, for the sadness of his adult life and the end he felt he must make of it.