My Good Friend

I recently had a friend committ suicide this week, Wednesday to be exact. He and I were best friends growing up, from the age of 8 to 13 we literally did everything together. Then he moved to Texas and we grew apart, but the last few months I've seen him tons. His family moved back, just a few miles south of our house in Surprise. We had several moments where we reminised the good ol' days and had long talks. But not once did he ever say a thing about what was going on in his head. After having talked with several people they had similar experiences with him, they laughed, joked, made inside jokes and not a single person was ever told by him what he was feeling. His family even knew nothing about it, and he had an excellent home life. I was really troubled by it after I had heard he died, so I went in to researching it, looked up talks on lds.org and read up on studies that were published of common suicide cases. After researching, I came to a conclusion that ULTIMATELY, there was nothing that me or anybody else could have possibly done to keep him from taking his life. It was entirely his decision. No one knew about it and he told no one about it, so what preventative action could someone have taken? I'm grateful I got to know this person, because he taught me a very real lesson. It's impossible...no matter how charismatic, psychic, or telepathic we think we are, there are many things that can be hidden from you. If you are reading this, and you have had similar issues PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE find help, contact me, your church leaders, ANYONE, I can't tell you how detramental this has been to his family and friends. In the aftermath of this tragedy, I've realized how important it is to be open with your friends, and how just being a nicer person can help someone to open up to people. So from here on out I'm going to try really hard to be a nicer person to everyone, because like my good friend, you never know what they are going through.