Well let's go back in time Tom. When Michael killed himself 21 yrs ago this coming January, he was 31 years old..was a juvenile probation officer, was engaged to a lovely young woman..she would have been his second wife and he left behind not only three sisters and his dad and myself, he also left an 8 yr old son.

Mr.Alffe, thinking he was protecting me, told everyone (our friends, dentist, doctor, minister etc) NOT to talk to me about Michael...that I was too distrought and couldn't handle it. So no one did...therefore I spent 8 years NOT talking about him...if you can't talk about his death...you can't talk about his life. It was like he didn't exist at all.

After 8 years of this not talking I stumbled upon BrainTalk forums..it was out of Mass.General Hospital and the man who ran them, John Lester, was kind enough to start a new forum when I asked him to...Survivors of Suicide. It was there, with a handful of people that I finally talked about him and what he had done and how angry I was and how I missed him.

Once I started talking, I couldn't "shut up".. Those people, one in particular..Pter whose words are stickied at the top of this forum, picked me up off the floor and gave me back my life.

Michael wasn't angry, he was depressed. His fiancee had gone to Florida with her parents for a month, he was poor, wanted to buy her the ring she had picked out, couldn't afford it, he missed his son who lived hundreds of miles away with his mother, the Bears lost that night (football..he was a huge fan) he had a bad cold and that damn hand gun with right there. I think he just said "F*** it" and impulsively put it in his mouth.

Angry? You bet I was angry!! Spent years talking about it and finally, finally accepting it. I frequent suicide events, forums and support groups to try to give meaning to his senseless act. And I'll never, for sure, know WHY but I can live with that. And he is somewhere, shaking his head at me for continuing to talk about it.

You would have liked Michael....he had a huge laugh, and a wonderful mind, he loved to read..used to read aloud to his fiancee...and he had a wonderful sense of humor. Such a waste!

Live Tom...life is short enough without shortening it even more.