I pretty much agree with Azizi, to the extent that I have any firm ideas. I used to be convinced, have convictions -- "ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now."

The only thing I would add is that people who have children, of any age, and who go on to commit suicide, have a uniquely terrible impact on their offspring. The scar of having had a parent commit suicide seems deeper, darker, harsher, less forgiveable to me than having had a friend, lover, sibling, even a child do so. Suicide casts a great long shadow over following generations that never really goes away. Even if someone says, "My grandfather committed suicide -- of course that was before I was born", the statement itself is somehw ghastly, it speaks of enormous and somehow contagious, incurable, inheritable pain.

I didn't fully realize when my own children were small that I had a duty to shield them from my own pain, folly and vulnerability. They seem to have come out amazingly well, all things considered.