It breaks my heart

Suicide always breaks my heart! 

I don’t know who this girl was but it breaks my heart to hear about someone ending their life. I hurt for her, for her friends, for her family. Suicide doesn't just end a person's life. It leaves a tear in the fabric of the relationships left behind, in society, and in everyone it touches. It leaves us all questioning what we could have done differently, but there is nothing we can do now. It's over. She is gone.

I love BYU. The school is like no other around the world.  Our children who went there report that it was like Harry Potter’s Hogwarts, a place where you start to explore the world, find your interests, make friends, and grow out of childhood and into the real world. Today, I hear that BYU saw the suicide of a student, falling from the fourth floor of the Tanner Building. She has died at the hospital. 

And maybe there was no way around it. Maybe there was nothing that could be done. I don't know. I only feel the pain that is the loss of the potential that this person could have had. I want to believe we could do something, though. That we could save someone. That we DO save someone and that every connection we make, every smile we give, every gesture of gratitude and friendship we freely offer strengthens the bonds that hold us each back from the edge. You never really know what burdens someone carries, never really, even when they tell you. 

I wish someone like my niece Paola who is attending BYU could have helped this girl. I hope that I am helping someone, metaphorically speaking, when she comes into my life, when I bump into her at Church, Christmas shopping, walking around Manila or waiting in line at the grocery store. I hope that I am making her load lighter, giving her a reason to live, to carry on, to find the potential that God put her on this earth to find. Heaven knows there have been so many that have lifted my load and helped me, including people I hardly even knew. 

If you're a Christian, as I am, you try to turn to the Savior. "For my yoke is easy, and my burden light" and "I will also ease the burdens which are put upon your shoulders, that even you cannot feel them upon your backs." But I also know that he does not operate without help--he expects us to help lift the burdens of those around us, to bind up the wounds of the injured, to feed the poor, to visit the widowed and orphaned, and to heal the sick. It's the second commandment. 

But this does not replace the pain of loss. It doesn't prevent me from wondering what else we can do. It doesn't save this student, this child of God, from the decision to try to end the pain and leave the burden that she carries. 

I am always available so call me. If you're in pain. Let me try to help. I'm imperfect. Flawed and impatient. But I will try. I want you to live. We need you here. We need your contribution. The world needs you. We need your life.

Con amor,

Vero