"I have to believe the state of depression ... is so dark and gloomy and like a tunnel vision that they really don't think or see beyond that. They don't see the pain they'll be inflicting." Janine Harris, Sioux Falls, SD, lost her 20-year-old daughter, Nicole, to suicide in 2005.
"That's the terrible thing about suicide, is there's no closure." Marie Osmond, Provo, UT, lost her 18-year-old son, Michael, to suicide in 2010.
"All I remember of her is in a soft blue dress, sealed away in a stiff coffin. Her absence has marked my life ever since -- from the comforting of my cousin in the missingness of her mother to the haunting images of her death." Leslie Lamb, who blogs at lesliealamb.com, lost her aunt (who was pregnant when she died) to suicide when Leslie was four years old.
"There was nothing I wouldn't have done or given to see you happy and at peace ... Your presence is very, very missed. Every day something happens where you should be there, and you're not." Cherrie Cran, at a support group meeting in Brisbane, Australia, speaking as if to her son Bede, who died by suicide at age 19.
"You're left with so many questions, the whys and the hows, and why didn't he call me?" Danna McGill, Washington state, lost her best friend to suicide in 2008.
"I spent all of my teenage years and high school avoiding the topic of my dad ... [Now I'm] giving my ... grief the attention it deserved by spreading awareness and sharing this universal message of love." Carmen Diaz, a student at Ball State University in Muncie, IN, lost her father to suicide in 2002 when she was 10 -- and her uncle died by suicide seven years later.
"A lot of people were trying to find someone to blame, and that doesn't help." Jody Bledsoe, Lebanon, OR, lost her 13-year-old daughter, Jordyn, to suicide in 2012.
"Don't tell me everything happens for a reason. My son's death was the most senseless event in the universe ... I am not a better person because of it nor is the world a better place because his death led me to do the work I do." Maria Bradshaw, County Cork, Ireland, lost her son, Toran, to suicide in 2008.
"Joining the [support] group was life saving for me in many ways. I realize that without these wonderful people in my life when I lost my daughter ... to suicide, I would not be here now." Kaylene Donohue, Australia, lost three adult children to suicide, sons Terry in 1993 and Brad in 2000 and daughter Tracy in 2003. (See Kaylene's book about surviving suicide.)
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