My Turn: Looking for Answers to My Nephew's Death

So I return to the question: what went wrong? I've tried to find answers. I've learned about depression. I've read the sad statistics about tens of thousands of suicides—especially among young adults. Now when I thumb through my family album and see Adam's face mugging for the camera among his cousins, I think of my own children, who are at about the same stage of life as Adam would be if he were still alive. My son graduated from Berkeley last year and lives in a cheap apartment, taking odd jobs to pay the rent while he writes music I don't understand and indulges a passion for baking. My daughter left a comfortable job in her late 20s to take out a huge loan and return to school. Should I encourage their enthusiasms or be alarmed at their aimlessness? Do they have moments when life seems to be going nowhere? Do they ever think that what Adam did makes sense?

And then I look at myself. Like most people, I have dark moments when the ups and downs of life or brain chemistry overwhelm me with disappointment and anger because I am not all I want to be. So I think I have some understanding of what happened to Adam. But his mom tells me that we can never understand with our heads; we can only try to understand with our hearts. She says, "We all see suicide with our healthy brains and call it a choice. It's not so. It's not a choice. Suicides don't want to die. They just want the suffering to end."

On the day of Adam's funeral, my then 21-year-old son was very quiet, perhaps resigned. I asked him how he felt about Adam's death.

"Adam was sick, Dad," he said, "and he died of the disease." That's as good an explanation as I'm ever going to have.

Dalmas lives in Berkeley, Calif.

© 2007