It¹s cold this morning in the mountains, really cold. While I was preparing
to post my blog for the week something was gnawing at me, a sad incident
that wouldn¹t leave me alone.

Yesterday a local boy was found in the snow after 2 days of searching. The
first of these nights was 17 below zero when he decided to leave a note on
facebook, ³I love you all.² And walked out of the house taking a gun.

Suicide leaves us with so many ³what ifs², and a weight of failure and blame
on some level, that is added to the death itself.

There will be no finger pointing; as this incident was too close to the bone
for our small town. But, there will be the usual rehashing of the story at
the local coffee shops. The talk is a verbal touchstone to feel our family
safe. We try to understand this tragedy, and as a parent on some level
believe that by verbalizing the story and milling it around our heads as we
lay in bed at night, some sense of it will come to us.

There is no good ³why² for a child to die; and the fact that he probably
took his own life makes no difference. This was his decision on a spiritual
level and no one else¹s. There should be no guilt or questioning of what we
could have done, the fact was he was ready to leave. He completed what he
needed to do here, and touched the family and friends he was placed with on
this earth. He was only twenty-one but he loved and was loved.

³And did you get what you wanted from life, even so?

I did.

And what did you want?

To call myself beloved,

To feel myself

Beloved on this earth.²

Raymond Carver poet