Defining Moments

There are many defining moments in each of our lives. At every age and at any age you can experience one. This past weekend is exemplary of one and not for a good thing either.

My blog is supposed to be about marketing and life and how they come together and for those of you who read it, whether regularly or sporadically, you may be able to see that I just write what is on my mind or what I see, hear or experience. To me, it has to be what I live.

“Hat Girl’s Take on Marketing and Life.”  Interpret that the way you will.

Tonight, I have to write about Suicide prevention (and maybe for the next few days, I don’t know…) clearly, marketing awareness must continue because it still exists and it shouldn’t. I have been to many, many funerals. One too many as of today.

When someone passes on at an old age, they have lived a long and hopefully a good life. When someone loses a battle with cancer, has a fatal heart attack due to unknown heart disease, drugs or diabetes, when even at 70, they may have been too young…but when it is an accident, drugs or suicide that are the cause, they are perhaps even less able to be understood. All are terrible…

My roommate’s father died at the age of 40. We were in college. It was sudden and horrific. I remember, with vivid detail the way everyone reacted. My friend, her mother, her younger brothers (and every one the boys in his boyscout troop.) A co-worker whose younger sister lost her battle with cancer at the age of 16…all her friends reading their thoughts and memories of her at the church memorial service. The owner of the company where I worked whose husband died suddenly and forever changed their lives and their company. My friends’ daughters who have lost their own battle with heroine after fighting hard to break that terrible – one time is too many times, never should have been started – habit.

Suicide is just one more awful word on that list. Whatever brought my friend, my children’s friend’s mom, to this decision, it wasn’t the easy way out. It was hard. It was tragic. She couldn’t or wasn’t able to get help. I just don’t know. I didn’t know. So many say the same thing… how could this woman, who appeared to be so happy, smiling, caring, beautiful and amazing – make this decision. Her death is a defining moment for her children, her parents, her former husband and every single person around her…a moment that can not ever be reversed, changed or become better. But, it can not and should not be their only defining moment…for everyone around Denise Michelle Vass, who loved her and love her still. Make sure that this is not where it ends. Make a difference and change the future for someone else, all of their “someone elses”, however it is that you can.

~ Dawn aka Hat Girl

PS follow the link above or call 1 (800) 273-8255 National Suicide Prevention Lifeline

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