Almost five years ago I got the phone call that one of my clients had committed suicide and it still pains me to think about him and his life cut short. The odd thing was that I had been going through my daily notebook looking for something when I stumbled upon a page from a month earlier where he had called me and I wrote in all caps “SUNSHINE” because that was him. He had a keen sense of humor and a disarming way about his intelligence that always made my day when we spoke. Since his death, I’ve become friends with his father via the telephone. I had donated to a fund they set up for inner city kids in N’s honor and had relayed to the charity the story of stumbling across that page that had “SUNSHINE” written on it and they sent the note to N’s dad, J.
Of all the hard things in life, I could imagine none worse than to lose a son, one who was so treasured and enjoyed, as N. Today, on this beautiful sunshine day, I’m thinking of N and know that he is missed, so very missed as we near the fifth anniversary of his death.