On @Facebook, I was following my daughter's trip to the Detroit Zoo, a school fieldtrip; the last post wracks me. Why did this friend kill himself?

I am still allowed to follow my daughter's Facebook. All of her Aunts,
Uncles and Grandmothers follow her too. I saw she was going to the
Detroit Zoo, and I begged her to make use of her 5 Mexapixel Android
phone and unlimited data and post some pictures. She did. I enjoyed it
with deep relish. There's an clear tunnel through the swimming water
of polar bears, and she took some wonderful shots of swimming polar
bears, passing lightly overhead. I remember sitting in that tunnel,
not getting reception on my cell phone, and showing my daughter the
absence of bars on the primitive screen. It was ten years ago and she
was five. I also found myself remembering that my father had placed me
on the back of a Galapagos Turtle when I was barely old enough to
remember anything, but this isn't my story today. Despite wanting to
remember a day at the Detroit Zoo with my father in the middle 1960s,
it isn't my story today. It's my daughters. And I will not mention any
names nor will she read this story right away.

The month has taken a toll in my daughter's world. Two weeks ago, one
of her friends succumbed to Leukemia, a girl of sixteen. That was
incredibly sad. Just Monday night, this young man known for his
singing took his life. It really doesn't make sense as I browse his
Twitter and his Facebook. He had a pretty girlfriend and they talked
all the time on Skype when the two couldn't be together. The two had
dyed their hair fluorescent pink, two rebels together. There's
pictures of the attempts to reach him Monday night, all of them
unanswered. I'm upset because I never met him face to face and shook
his hand, but he was always a member of my daughter's theater pack.
You would see his name on the programs. I liked the spelling of his
name. I even found myself wracking my brains for the name of my
daughter's past boyfriend, and remembered it was different. I Googled
his name, and he shows up in programs for youth at the Detroit Opera
House. I have studied his cover photo in Facebook, and it shows a
school building under renovation, with a long hallway filled with
rubble and scaffolding. I understand he just got back from a trip to
Greece. There's a lot of YouTube videos of him singing in talent
shows, talent shows reaching all the way back to middle school.

I have an inclination to call the school and find out what is being
done for the survivors. Was the trip to the Zoo a response of the
school to the tragedy? In the end, I will begin by bringing up the
subject with her mother. Mom and daughter were featured in a special
article in last year's Yearbook. The two look really, really good
together. I have wrapped up a gift to send to her. I have a Herman's
Hermits Greatest Hits signed by Peter Noone. I have a copy of The
Cranes Wives first album. These will go in the mail tonight. It is a
pathetic something to do. My daughter transfers songs from the CDs I
send her to her iPod. Our projects have the power to keep us alive and
to indicate when we have lost the will to carry out projects and live.
Goodness, the young man even had an iPhone.

Don't ask for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee. Personally, I
hate having lost two of the children who were my daughter's friends. I
hate thinking that children who were babies when my child was a baby
have gone to the afterlife. Don't ask for the date of judgement day.
It is every day. There's a position one can take that all outcomes are
my responsibility. I have not been as involved with the lives of the
children in my daughter's circle. Could I have done something or
intuited the risk. Timor mortis conturbat me. The fear of death
disturbs me. My death is inevitable, and I have grown to accept this.
It drives me more today than ever that I will die. However, it is the
fear of death of those I love and those they love that disturbs me
more. Suicides tend to occur in clusters.