Suicidal? Or just outraged?

"Only the good die young," was a lyric that Bon Jovi used in one of his songs in the mid- 1980s. That was all that the phrase was to me until now.

Now it seems a little more like a euphemism for suicide.

The phrase didn't seem relevant to my dear 16-year-old-friend, whose coffin I saw put into a hearse three weeks ago.

I don't think that people usually say that someone who commits suicide was "good." This raises many unanswered questions in many lives, many times you hear the question: "Why?"

My experience with this suicide showed that people like to say that suicidal people have problems and need help. They still say that at the funeral.

Only now they say that he needed help. And aren't there a few people out there that would do this kind of thing in a moment's thought?

This is why I am so confused. You think you know someone. You take for granted the things that you have until they are taken from you. Then you get to sit at the funeral and listen to people say that this person was suicidal and had problems.

Only, who knows if this person really had problems anyway? No one can answer that question, leading me to believe that no one knows that he did.

Something that I have learned from this situation is that anything can happen in a second, in a millisecond.

I used to think that suicidal people had problems as well, only now I have a different outlook on the situation.

Everyone is suicidal and they don't know it. It can only take a split-second decision for a person to decide that this is the best solution. Then they have given themselves a permanent solution for those temporary problems.

It seems sometimes that you can guess that someone may think about suicide from time to time, only usually those people that say they will do it are too chicken in the end.

Because they have thought it through all the way. They know the consequences.

But we must watch out for those who may not have problems that show when they are around you.

Watch out instead for those people, like my dear friend, who think that suicide is a good way to fix their temporary problems. Those people don't think about the consequences.

Jamie McCue

Undeclared freshman