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This evening, my teenage neighbor shot himself. The house across the street is roped off by police tape, and the police are still working the crime scene. They believe it was suicide, however. The kid apparently had a lot of problems, but I never thought he was in that bad of shape. He seemed like a normal brooding teenager to me, with parents who don't understand him and don't approve of his choices. The interactions I'd witnessed between him and his father, a rather religious man, were tense, but not extreme or even out of the ordinary. The kid would say things to piss off his father, like telling him he was going to a strip club when asked where he was going. He had friends over frequently, he wasn't a loner. I'm just shocked, and sad, for that family, and for a young man who died so needlessly.

I remember thinking when Cora was having surgery, if that was all the time we got to have with her, at least we'd made the most of it. We'd loved her, spent quality time with her, and had been thankful for every moment. But I can only imagine what the boy's parents are going through now. Going over the last few conversations, remembering what was the last thing they'd said to him. Thinking of all the fights and unkind words exchanged.

It's hard to look at my little bunny, now staring wide-eyed at her friends the rotating yellow ducks above her swing, and know that someday she'll be a young woman and we probably won't like each other very much. We won't understand one another, and we'll probably say mean things to one another. But I can only hope that, unlike that poor young man, Cora will never get to such a bad place that living no longer feels like an option. She may not want to talk to me, but I hope she'll always have someone to talk to. I just wish my young neighbor would've had someone to talk to.

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