so young to feel that hopeless about life...oh my god...i cant imagine what your friend is going thru. hugs to u and ur friends...i'll say a little prayer for everyone...

"Given the right reasons and the right two people, marriage is a wonderful way of experiencing your life."
~the late great George Carlin

Im so sorry to hear that. I will keep you and your friend in my prayers..

Back before I met DH I had a friend who wanted to set me up on a blind date. I had met him before and he was the most kind hearted person I had ever met and we quickly became close friends. I looked forward to our date.

One week before the date my friend called and said he was dead. That he had taken his 9 year old daughters life. then called his brother to get the police there, then took his own life.

He had been at the end of his rope. His ex wife divorced him two years earlier and took everything including his daughter. She beat her and would leave her at school until the police would call him. He paid 75% of his salary in child support and was never aloud to see his daughter with presenting yet another check that the BM would request.

Then BM's boyfriend molested his daughter. He called the police, went thru court and did everything he could to save his daughter. The courts turned it on him. They allowed him one last overnight visit to say goodbye to his daughter and then all his parental rights would be terminated b/c BM had lied and his daughter wasn't really his.

He knew if he left her, his daughter would die a slow painful death at her mother's hands. The only way he could see to keep her safe and out of pain was to kill her. He shot her in her sleep, point plank, she never felt a thing. Then he wrote a letter of goodbye to everyone including me. He thought the three of us would have made a wonderful family. He said no one would ever take he and his daughter apart again.

It's a horrible thing the lose of a child. No matter how it happened. I tried suicide when I was 17. I felt that the pain of living was worse than the fear of death. I can't begin to imagine his pain or the pain of my friend. I just wish someone had knowns his daughter's pain before it had been to late.

Please forgive my rambling. I've been depressed myself today and this brought back alot of feelings. I will pray for you and your friend. May he learn to forgive his daughter for what she did and not think it was his fault.

~Don't fear the thorns among the Roses, but be greatful for the Roses among the thorns~

i think you being there is so important sometimes words are
unneccesary- I lost a cousin to suicide, my aunt still is haunted by it even after 7 yrs.
my thoughts to you and your friend.

"Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without one."

I'm so sorry - that is terrible. I'll say a prayer for your friend.

Death is so hard to digest, even when it's expected. I'm so sorry for the family and friends.

Stepwitch
Thank you Disney for portraying a positive image on all stepmothers!!!!

I lost a good friend to suicide at 21. We had actually never met, but his mom and my mom were penpals since they were pregnant with us. When we were fifteen or so we were both troubled teens and started writing each other. We wrote til he killed himself at 21.

He had been in trouble with theft and had ended up in a minimum security prison. He stole cars. I don't think it's at all coincidental, that his father, who abandoned all four kids after divorcing their mum, collected antique cars.

He had not written in a while, and my letters went unanswered. We went through periods of writing and not, so I didn't think much of it. Especially in light of the fact that his mum would have written my mum if anything ever happened to him. That's how I found out he was incarcerated, and I sent a letter in care of her asap. He responded by writing for a week or so, during his last few weeks in prison. He was in very good spirits actually, and talked of how he would never break the law, or attempt to kill himself again. I realized while reading it though, that Nick was always at his best under someone else's care. Adolescent treatment centers, now prison. Someone telling him when to get up, what to eat, what to do, etc. He just couldn't regulate those things on his own. His last letter was so upbeat, almost too much so. I just felt a false sense of elation in things he wrote.

In our last two letters (the one he received that he answered) we told each other how we really felt about each other, more than friends, connected deeply, spiritually. He jubilantly told me he was released and couldn't wait to get a job, a "flat", a car....he talked of when we would meet one day, and his mum and he were planning a trip in two years to the US.
His last sentences was, "One day we will meet and be best of friends, till then I am as always, with you in spirit."

I started a letter back immediately with my concerns for him, how he might need to go slowly, stay with family, get back on his feet.

His mum wrote my mom several weeks later that he had succeeded in taking his own life. I never got to send my last letter. I felt so hopeless half a world away. What if I had done something more? Could I have helped him more? Those answers would wait a few years to come.

Several years later his mum came to the US to meet mine. It was a trip she and Nick had planned to take together, and his absence was heavy. She brought me part of a journal he kept, describing the last letter he received from me, and how much he loved and cared for me. Things he said to me, but more in depth because he wasn't planning on me ever reading them.

It was a beautiful gift. She also brought me several pics of him.

One night, around my mother's kitchen table, we talked of Nicholas. Of his inability to feel love, no matter how much all of us attempted to show him. At his memorial service 10 or more girls showed up, sobbing, lamenting over his loss, that his mum didn't even know.

No matter how many of us there were, how much love we gave, we showed, we told him...

he couldn't feel it in those darkest moments.

I am so very sorry for your friend, for you, your family. It's such a horrible loss.

I will say though that in time, Nick's mum, his sibs, his friends, including me, came to accept that he never could have been happy.

That night around my mother's table, Dorothy (Nick's mum) shared a story that gave me incredible peace. She said she was somewhere, an airport, somewhere busy and loud, when a woman approached her. She told her "I don't want to frighten you, but I have a message from someone for you...he's blond, very young, very handsome. He says you will believe me if I tell you where you can find something you've been looking for, something he wants you to have. It's in a box underneath his old bed.... he wants me to tell you that he is so happy now. He is at peace. And not to worry about him anymore."

When Dorothy got home she looked under Nick's bed. There was a box, as described by the woman. She opened it, and there was Nick's Teddy Bear she had been looking for ever since he died.

That story gives me peace.

And all these years later, as we read more and more headlines about kids losing it and taking others with them, like Columbine and VA Tech, I have come to view Nick as a hero. I wish there was something we could have done to help him, but he was not strong enough to help himself. But even in his darkest moments, he knew he had to go alone, and not take another life with him.

I cannot imagine the grief your friend is going through. I just can't. There are days I look at Anna and a little voice inside says,

"Pay attention. Memorize every dimple, every kiss, every laugh, every tear. You never know when you will see her for the last time."

I think that comes from losing Nick, from my brother's wreck/paralysis, losing my friend Lita, two classmates and best friends at 33. And though I appreciate that little voice, all the while I curse it. I hate to go there, anywhere near there, toward any thoughts of my own children's mortality.

I understand your conversation with your son CG. I so do. I'm so glad you can have that with him. I intend to do the same with mine this evening.

My heart goes out to you.

"Om Tare Tutare Ture Mama Ayurpunye Jnana Putin Kuru Svaha"
~Sita Tara Mantra

I know there are not words to help you. Sending prayers and HUGS your way......

I just don't know what else to say. ((((((((((CG))))))))))

♥ ANNE 8102 ♥

your DH, and your friend and his family during this terrible time. As a parent, there is no other pain worse than losing a child, especially to suicide.

My son went through a very tough depression a few years ago, which led to childhood bi-polar. During this horrible time, he spoke of killing himself on a fairly regular basis (he was 11). For months, while he was under a psychiatrist's care and on medication, I would hold my breath each morning before walking into his bedroom just thinking, "Is this the day he's finally done it?"
It was one of the darkest periods in my life.

God be praised, he made it through, but not a day goes by that I don't think about the "what if's"...

You're right CG, hug your children tight and give thanks to God for every precious day your have them.

"If you have never been hated by a child, you have never been a parent."
-Bette Davis

CG, I am so sorry. My heart goes out to you, your family and your friends. That has to be the most horrible thing ever for a parent to go through.

I'm so sorry CG.

~Evil

If you want children to keep their feet on the ground, put some responsibility on their shoulders. ~Abigail Van Buren

and what's even sadder, is to think of all the ways her father will torture himself for years wondering if he could have prevented this. my prayers and thoughts are with you...

Just trying to be a Stepmom without getting Stepped On.

bless her little heart! Hugs to you all and I will pray for her family too

"A lie told often enough becomes the truth." - Vladimir Lenin

I am so terribly sorry to hear of this loss of this young girl...such a terriby tragedy. My heart goes out to you all.

Hugs.