THE WIND PHONE
The Fragile Thread of Being
The ripples of suicide
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The first time suicide entered into my life, it was only as an echo. He was the loose friend of a friend and a young man I’d never before met. I’m not sure our paths ever once crossed. He and I shared little more than a couple of mutual Facebook connections in common.
His name was Dalton and he killed himself at only fourteen years old. I use his real name because I reason that — if his loved ones should ever find my words — they might take some solace in knowing the echoes reached this far… that the ripples of his loss are still felt all these years later.
I can’t remember how I first heard the news of his passing. It might have been a whisper down the hall of my middle school. Maybe it was only conveyed in a text. But I remember what I did when I sat down again at a computer screen.
Unsure what could ever drive a person to take their own life, I visited his Facebook page. And there, draped across his digital wall were the agonized words of a hundred different mourners. Most seemed unsure of what could have driven this jovial teen to bring a swift end to his own existence. Some of the commenters were only his age; they speculated as children do. At young ages, we…
