My Story - The Story of Suicide. Part 1

The first of two. My seventh grade year there were two suicides, and I’ll always remember them like they happened yesterday…

The first is the one that hurt the most. I can remember it like yesterday. Even though he was just my best friend’s soon-to-be step-dad I loved to be around him. Just so you get to know some of him, and his happy memories that I have of him I’ll give you a few memories that stick out to me…

The first of which would be at lunch one day. It was in sixth grade, but the following year we lost him so it’s a memory I’m holding. It was the same as usual day. We were all having fun and goofing off in classes. It was just us, Me, Erin, Crystal, Bailey, Ashley, and anyone else we hung out with back then. Goofing around in the lunch room when he showed up. As usual all smiles and laughs. We sat at a table together and at our lunch. When we had all finished our lunches he pulled a butt load of skittles bags out of the pockets of his coat. Yeah Erin’s step-dad-to-be was a pretty awesome guy. He did this quite a bit with us. So for dessert we all enjoyed skittles, and lunch. We always remember him happy.

Another memory would be Halloween seventh grade year. Erin had a party, and the usual group was there, along with our newest girl. Elizabeth. She had moved to the school that year, and was someone we hung out with a lot. Zach had some friends over as well. Him and Wendy told us stories to creep us out a bit. That the house had been a crazy hospital years before. Being the naive seventh graders we were we believed them. We went outside and they told us that they had found the headstones that were sitting there down in the valley. Coincidentally they had the names of everyone in the family on them… it spooked us quite a bit. We made our way down the hill and into the shed where they held the haunted house. It was a great night full of fun and scares. After the creepy hospital haunted house we went to the one at the high school. It was a fun night that we all remember too.

Another memory that we’ll never forget of him. Though the end of the year came, and Erin and Zach both weren’t in school one day. Naturally we were all worried. It came to be that he had committed suicide by shooting himself in the head and driving off a cliff in Ledges State Park. He had left everyone who loved him. Erin, Zach, Wendy, and all of their siblings. Why? It was a question a lot of us asked, and the answer was in a note he left… He was tired of his ex’s rants and raves about how bad of a man he was, and how it was all his fault that she was the way she was. He couldn’t take it, and the man we always saw as happy and fun to be around had a nasty hidden secret. When I heard about it naturally I was heartbroken he was like an uncle to me, and in an instant he was gone. Though I wasn’t as devastated as his kids. He had six or seven, I can’t remember for sure, and they all were hurt deeply.