‘Make a difference’

I couldn’t help but think, this could be a conversation with my own son. He was the same age as Jordan when he attempted and succeeded at suicide, and he would be Jordan’s age now if he would have survived. As I watched at this event as the Putnam County bus unloaded a group of students who lost one of their own, I couldn’t help but think “where was the PHS bus?”

My son was a PHS student in 2007, and since his death, Princeton has lost three students to suicide, three people in their late teens/early 20s out of high school and several adults (30-plus). That’s just the ones I personally know about.

I know people have busy schedules; it was a school night after all, and life goes on … but would you know what to do if someone approached you about having suicidal thoughts. Would you know they just want someone to listen to them and not ply them with your own opinions or judge them or dismiss their feelings because you don’t want to deal with the subject? Would you realize their “little failures” are magnified times 100 in their minds and are a big deal? But only if the suicide subject becomes as easy to talk about as the weather are we going to make any head way with this disease.

As long as stigma and shoving it under a rug exists, so will suicide because for thousands of years that has been the remedy, and obviously it doesn’t work. So let’s change it. I hope I don’t ever read another letter to the editor asking what good a walk will do, when people don’t bother to go to the programs the walk pays for and educate themselves on the subject or join a group to combat the problem.