My step son committed suicide six months ago yesterday. I can't possibly explain it. His mom committed suicide 8 years ago this Wednesday, which was also Easter Sunday that year. He would have been 20 last week. We live lives punctuated by birth dates and death dates. He went missing 9 days before he was found. Nine days of agony knowing the outcome and feeling powerless to change it. The worst part wasn't the phone call that he had finally been found. It was telling his 9 and 12 year old sisters the next morning - the same children who lost their mom to suicide too. The screams are something I will never forget. I have a lump in my throat even typing it. The 12 year old screamed "this cannot be happening again" but other than that, the only sounds they made were wailing cries for what felt like an eternity. It's fucking horrible. I don't have the words to explain it adequately so you'll just have to trust me that it is absolutely fucking horrible. Edit: several people asked about counseling. The girls are in counseling for the second time. They were little when their mom died - just 2 and 4 - so they did play therapy. After Nathan died, they attended a special children's center for grief counseling for 90 days and were then referred to a local counselor (the grief center was a 90 minute drive each way, but we knew it was what they needed and did it). It has been helpful. The can of worms that was opened is astounding. They knew what their mom did but never understood the emotions of it because they were so little. Now they are experiencing the true emotion of both losses. Thank you for the gold. I was so late responding that I didn't imagine this would be read and was pretty surprised when I logged on this morning. Support helps, so thank you all for taking the time to comment. I did want to tell you all that Nathan was an amazing young man. At his service, the chaplain talked about how his death is just a page in a chapter of his book, that he is more than how he died. That is so true. Nathan loved cooking, science fiction, Star Wars, baseball, fishing and Metallica. He loved his family and he was so loved. He is so so terribly missed.