Dear A.

I don't understand. I didn't believe the news when I heard it on Monday morning and when I heard about the circumstances last night I was incredulous. Why? Why do it? What made you take your own life on Friday night?

I know that it hasn't been the best of years. I know that you'd been helping people at work whose personal lives had blown up in their faces. I know that the owners of the company you worked for were penny-pinching and belt-tightening and still raking in the money, because that's what venture capitalists do when they're squeezing their investment to death. When I left the company four years ago I warned people about what was going to happen. Perhaps I should have warned you more that the company that we both loved, the company that you showed me around when I first started there because you were always that wonderfully kind and generous person, would be in trouble the instant that the economy went bad.

I know that your old, much-trusted, boss was moving on to a different position. Did that contribute to it, the knowledge that the man that you trusted to support you through thick and thin was going, to be replaced with an unknown quantity, someone that you didn't know, or didn't trust?

I know that you seemed to be dealing with lots of small things. Did that all add up to one huge thing that you found unsolvable?

I know that you blew off a drink with our mutual friend M a week last Friday, not giving a very good reason. Was that a sign that the shadows were closing in around you? Would M have seen something in your face?

I know that you'd come back from a week's holiday with your husband and that he'd mentioned that you seemed to be someplace else mentally half the time. What were you thinking  about? Was that when the shadows first manifested themselves, those tendrils of doubt and despair. When did the darkness start? Why didn't you tell anyone?

I know all these things - but I still don't understand. I'm angry and sad and confused. You left your family behind, depriving your husband of a happily ever after  and you started off alone down a dark path with only one destination.

Why?