>I've now personally known five individuals who have done this, and it's horrible beyond words.
>
>Tell me about it - my father committed suicide. The worst part of it is wondering if there were something that you could have done to prevent it. In the case of my father, I knew that this was going to happen and warned my mother. Her response was that he was just looking for attention.

I am so sorry - I don't recall if you've mentioned that before, but I'm very sorry.

The entire topic is something I can't possibly wrap my mind around.

Two years ago, a student of mine wrote me a letter right around Christmas, thanking me for al the extra tutoring I gave him. He got a SQL job and then got a promotion. In his letter, he told me that a year prior, he was so down on his prospects that he would have wound up dead. To this day, I don't know if I'm more happy I was able to help him, or more disturbed that he would have done it had things not turned out well for him. Sometimes people are just plain incomprehensible.