My daughter Grace came home yesterday with some terrible news.  One of her friends had died. And not just died.  C* had committed suicide.

            I tried to take Grace in my arms, but she wanted to weep alone. I couldn’t blame her; she would be ready to talk later and she was.  And at that moment I was in shock myself.  All I could think about was beautiful, tiny, C, standing in my kitchen, a year ago this past December, eating latkes for her first time, laughing with my daughter and my son, Philip, who was visiting from university (“It’s not Hanukah without your latkes, Mom,”) the three of them eating the hot potato pancakes as fast as I could take them from the pan, as fast as they could slather them with applesauce and sour cream.  My husband could barely get some on a plate.

            My son Philip was trying not to flirt with C, even though she was closer to his age than Grace’s (“It’s weird, Mom, when you realize for the first time that your sister’s friends are really hot!”) while C was well aware that Philip, tall and handsome, was well aware of her.  C was a senior, a transfer student, a boarder, at the small private school where my daughter was a day student and a freshman,

 We had just moved to Staunton that summer and Grace was having a difficult time adjusting:  new town, new stepfather, new school. Freshman year.  C made it all easier.  She had befriended Grace in theater class, taken Grace under her wing, was Grace’s first real friend.  And even though she was older, she never condescended to Grace; she treated her as both an equal and with the protection of a benign older sister, as a compatriot and  a fellow new kid. C was beautiful, well-liked, lovely inside and out, and generous of spirit.  When Grace neglected to follow the dress code, C took Grace up to her room and lent my daughter clothes.  After school some days, the two girls would head up to C’s room and listen to music and talk.  They acted in plays together.

            Slowly, toward the end of freshman year, Grace began to meet other girls closer to her own age and C began to plan for college at a university a half hour away.  But the girls remained close.  And yet, C’s first year at college did not go well.  Grace told me that C had had some “trouble” and had to leave school.  I was worried but did not ask too many questions.  It turned out that C had tried suicide earlier this past year.  Her parents thought she was better.  Apparently, she was not.  She was determined.  And the second time she succeeded.  This weekend her parents took her off life support and C died.

            In high school, in the Seventies, I watched a classmate grow gravely ill with leukemia, her face swollen by steroids, her bald head covered by a terrible wig.  We went to her funeral mass at the only Catholic church in town and sat through a guitar mass that was nearly unbearable. In the next two years we attended three more funerals for other classmates who had died in completely avoidable automobile accidents—all of them had been driving while high on drugs.  Over the years I have lost my best friend after a ten-year battle with breast cancer, two former lovers, one to cancer, one to a tragic, violent death. I have seen the death of my grandparents.  But I have never lost a dear friend to suicide.

            And now I must prepare my daughter for a funeral this weekend, something a mother never wishes to have to prepare her child for:  the funeral of a friend.  In fact, there is not preparation for a funeral.  Just as there is no preparation for death.

            “Did you know she was that unhappy?” I asked Grace when we could finally talk.

            “I knew she was not happy, but I had no idea she was that unhappy.  Last year, actually, at school with us, was the happiest year of her life, she said.  I don’t know what happened when she went away to college.  I just don’t know.”

            As we drove to school this morning, I said to my daughter, “I know what she meant to you.  You may not think I do, but I well remember how much easier she made your life when you first moved here.”

            Tears rolled down Grace’s face as we pulled up to the entrance.  “She was my first friend here,” she said. 

            “I know,” I said.

            “Thank you,” she said.