A Dear Friend Took Her Life: I Only Found Out Recently and Am Still Haunted By It

 

Warning: This article contains some references to suicide. If you or someone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please tell someone who can help right away!

Call 911 for emergency services

Go to the nearest hospital emergency room.

Call or text 988 to connect with the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. The Lifeline provides 24-hour, confidential support to anyone in suicidal crisis or emotional distress. Support is also available via live chat. Para ayuda en espanol, llame al 988.

It's three or four in the morning. I wake and sit up, rubbing my head as if I could rub my thoughts away, too. My friend, who had seemed so happy and strong--but you know what I'm going to say here because it's the month for such posts; National Suicide Prevention Month.

Could I have prevented it? I didn’t know about it, and never discovered what happened until years later. My friend and I had drifted apart. It wasn’t intentional, and I doubt either one of us had given it much thought. I had moved to a different state, and we both followed other paths.

We had started on the same path, in a small Indiana town in the middle of winter. I had recently moved there when my (now former) husband Greg accepted a job.

Greg introduced me to Billie, who owned a popular hair salon in the town. She herself was extremely popular: a beautiful, thirty-something, talented stylist. Billie and Greg were both members of the Jewish Sacred Burial Society, a group of people who observe a centuries-old tradition of washing and preparing the dead for burial.

The Burial Society was only part of our conversation on the day we met. Billie promised me she was a “long hair cutter” and I could see she was, with her own hair being long and “stupid thick,” as another friend would say. Because I had long hair too, I knew she would be good at her job. Later, I told her I was just learning to drive,and she told me about her friend Diane, whose rule was, “When in doubt, turn right.”

Before the end of my first hair cut, Billie and I had made a date to go to Chicago. It didn’t take long at all for us to start feeling like old friends.

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Photo by Drew Coffman on Unsplash