Something happened in my life this week that has haunted the background of my thoughts ever since I heard the news. A very good friend of mine quietly told me that her best friend's seventeen-year-old daughter ... killed herself on Saturday, exactly one week before her 18th birthday.

It's the kind of moment that stops the world ... because your mind simply will not fit around the monstrousness of this thought.

I have known this child since she was a pre-schooler, watched her grow through the lankiness of adolescence into the lovely figure that fit the Prom Dress she wore to her first formal dance last year. She was a Pisces. Quiet, reserved, unassuming, even shy ... in the true qualities of that sign. But nothing in her character hinted at conflicts serious enough to bring about an ending such as this.

I know when something this enormous happens there are supposed to be warning signs all over the place, but those of us who knew her are stunned speechless ... simply paralyzed by the knowledge of what took place and unable to reconcile it with the gentle spirit we thought we knew.

There seems no way for those of us left with her memory to make sense of what she did. She wasn't in trouble at school. She wasn't in awful conflict with her parents. She wasn't into drugs ... or a fascination with the self-destructive elements of "entertainment" in our culture. The best we seem able to determine is that this choice was triggered by a break-up with her boyfriend.

But even that explanation leaves so much unanswered. The ghastly starkness of the "facts" remain. On the leading edge of her entire adult life, this beautiful young woman decided one night to never again see tomorrow. And all of us who knew her now live with that decision.

Writing my content for the website this week I have tried to put myself in sympathy alongside her parents as they cope with the concussion of this shock, but I cannot imagine how any mother and father go from planning their eldest daughter's 18th birthday party to attending her funeral ... in the space of three days ... and still stay sane. Of course, they may not. The worst of grief is still in the future when the numbness of surprise, trauma, and denial wears off.

Those of us who have been through serious loss and mourning know what this is like ... and the enormous amount of time it will take to process this to any sort of peace, closure, or acceptance. It's a load whose weight cannot be divided ... no matter how many loving friends would gladly help carry the pieces. This, too, is a fact of life. One of the most cruel.

Naturally, I've thought this week of the other moments in my life when I've seen someone for the last time ... not knowing it as it happened. I've heard other people lost in similar memories say they wished they'd had a chance to say this, or do that, or tidy up some loose end that now dangles forever.

It's something to consider ... from time to time. What if ... suddenly, there is no tomorrow, but only yesterday?