This weekend my husband and I spent a lot of time riding our motorcycle together.  We rode to some small towns, had dinner and took many back roads to enjoy the scenery.  As we drove and I watched the birds fly, the clouds change shapes and the many wonders of this world; my mind turned to Josh...my son.

My thoughts were wondering why he would choose to leave a world so full of beauty and wonder, and if where he is now is even more beautiful.  There isn't a day I don't think of him and I always wonder what would take him away from us.  What was it that he was dealing with that he felt was more than he could take, or to ask for help with it? We were close, we talked daily or almost daily.  And, with all those conversations he never mentioned that he was hurting.

During the last 21 months we have sought answers to many questions surrounding his suicide.  WHY? is the biggest question, and the one question that any family who faces our circumstances will ask.  And, sadly it is the one question we may never really find an answer to.

Josh had the world going for him or so we thought.  He took his life on June 2, 2009.  A few months before his 30th birthday.  He was an outgoing, fun and energetic person that EVERYONE loved to be around.  We always heard how funny he is (was) and how he made it so fun to go to work.  Josh was good looking, he had a quirky personality, he loved to play practical jokes, and impersonate celebrities IE; Jim Carey. Josh had many friends, a great job...a family.  He had just finished the basement in the home they lived in.  He was a tropical aquarium enthusiast, and had just built a 6ft aquarium into the wall to house his many exotic fish he had accumulated.  It was amazing! He adored his baby girl who was only 8months old at the time of his death; he seemed to have the world ahead of him....and not something he would leave behind.

After doing some research on the subject of suicide we found some eye opening statistics.  Those statistics are what also drive us to be such advocates to prevent suicide.  Some of my thoughts and findings are:

• How often do you read the obituaries and see a young persons picture, and you are automatically drawn to that person to see what happened?  You read the obituary to find out why they passed away so young, yet often there is not a cause of death listed.  That is because many of those deaths are by suicide, and the taboo of listing such a cause is not only embarrassing but makes the family vulnerable to questions and assumptions that the deceased person was either crazy or had issues.  On the contrary, if everyone was required to list the cause of death in an obituary, those that took their life would then be made public, and the realization would be made that suicide is a growing problem and needs to be addressed.  Wouldn’t there then be a new awareness of the hidden problem called depression? 
• For every suicide there are about 10 people that are directly affected by the death (family, friends, co-workers etc.).  That means for the 33, 500 suicides that occur every year in the United States, there are at least 335, 000 people that are left behind dealing with the tragedy.
• Women actually attempt suicide more than men.  Statistically, females attempting suicide is a three to one ratio over men.  However, more males die from their suicide attempts than females; at a four to one ratio because they typically use a firearm, while females generally use drugs.  Of both men and women, there are approximately 750,000 attempted suicides per year that didn’t end fatally. This only proves that there is a growing problem in our society; not only with suicide; but more importantly depression, since untreated depression is the number one cause of suicide and attempts of suicide.
• Some of the best sources on suicide information are:

      1.     http://www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org

2.     http://suicide.org

3.     http://www.psycom.net/depression.central.suicide.html

4.     Suicide: Survivors. A guide for those left behind - Adina Wrableski