My best friend from high school killed himself. 1 was the one who found him. I know how I felt and even though it happened over 15 years ago, it still affects me. I have always wanted to write the experience down on paper. Perhaps now is the time.

The smell that Sunday should have told me something was wrong--very wrong. I had never smelled anything so sickeningly sweet. The odor hung in the hot, humid air like the clouds of a late-afternoon summer storm. It assaulted my senses through the closed bedroom door.

It should have slowed me down, made me stop and wonder what it was. I did question what it was, but I guess I was more focused on saying goodbye to Greg, my best friend from high school. Greg was living with me, but I hadn't seen him for a couple of days since he worked nights and I worked days. I wanted to tell him that I'd be home early and, if he didn't have to work, we should get together and watch TV or something.

I should never have opened that bedroom door.

Death--Up Close

Greg was there, but he wasn't in any condition to talk about TV. He wasn't in any condition to talk about anything. He was lying on the bed with the right side of his head blown off, surrounded by a sticky-looking, red-and-gray mess of blood, brain tissue and other body fluids. That's what caused the smell.

Directly beyond his head was a hole in the wall, the final resting place of the bullet that went from the barrel of the .38, now resting against his left temple, through his brain, snuffing out his life.

What happened next is a blur of memories: frantic phone calls, police officers, emergency medical technicians wasting their time. What was left of Greg was carried routinely down the stairs inside a body bag that leaked blood all over the carpet while curious neighbors stood silent watch on their lawns and a tangle of emotions raced through me.

The newspaper described it kindly, "died of self-inflicted gunshot wound." The minister tried to ease everyone's pain, too, talking with vague references about the "one who passed on." But none of it changed the fact: Greg had killed himself.

While I felt as though I had been faced with a nightmare unique in all the world, I came to learn that my friend's suicide was a horrible experience that other people in our town, in cities and towns all over, must face. People kill themselves, even when they are teenagers, especially when they are teenagers. Automobile accidents are the number one way to go, but suicide is a close second as the greatest cause of teenage deaths. (And no one knows how many auto accidents are suicides in disguise.)

But I never thought anyone I knew would commit suicide-certainly not my best friend.

No Stranger to Tragedy

Greg and I had met in fifth grade and been best buddies ever since. Sure, we had our times when we hated each other's guts, usually over something really stupid, but most of the time we were inseparable. We spent lots of lazy summer afternoons drinking lemonade and playing "Risk" on his front porch. We walked to school together every day for almost seven years. We even arranged to have our lunch periods together at school.

Greg was a really smart kid, lots smarter than I was. He studied hard and had never missed a day of school until the last week of our senior year. Then he skipped on purpose. He was good looking and funny. He had been given an appointment to the Air Force Academy in Colorado. It seemed like he had it all going for him.

But Greg was no stranger to tragedy. The reason we met in fifth grade was his parents had both died and he was sent to live with his grandmother. She didn't much care for this turn of events and seemed to do most anything to make his life miserable. She wouldn't even let him take driver's education, so he never drove a car until he went to the Academy. He was often lonely and moody and it was awfully hard to convince him that he was worth loving. Looking back, I guess he never was convinced.

He met a girl and fell in love with her. It's hard to even remember her name now, it's been so long. I think it was Judy. I do remember she introduced him to big-time drinking and smoking marijuana. I wondered why he hung around her. He had so much and she seemed to offer so little. He was convinced she loved him. She made him feel he was special. That's something we all want.

Then one night, after a few drinks, they went for a ride. Something went wrong. Greg could never remember what. He figured his reaction time was slow while his speed was fast. He remembers the car going into a skid. Greg couldn't control the car and it left the road, roared down the ditch, taking out fencing and fence posts, came to rest wrapped around a tree. Greg woke up in the hospital. Judy never woke up.

That's when he came to live with me.

And now he had died-shot through the head.

If Only I Had Known

I learned a lot of things later I wished I had known before Greg killed himself. First, I wished I had known that suicide was going to force its way into my nice, neat life. Second, I would like to have known what to look for, so that I might have prevented it. If I had only known, Greg might be alive today!

People considering suicide will often send out signals. Greg had. I just didn't know how to read the signals at the time.

The weeks and months following Greg's death dragged by in my life. I spent a lot of time looking back, wondering what I had missed, what signs he had given that I should have been aware of. Slowly some of them came to me.

One was his appetite had changed. Greg had always eaten like a horse. In fact, he had a little sign that said, "I'm so hungry I could eat a horse-lucky me, guess what we're having for dinner tonight!" One of our friends had given him that because of his big appetite. Suddenly, it seemed, he stopped eating and started losing weight. He had to buy a lot of new clothes, because he kept getting thinner. He passed up Pepsi, pizza and burgers, generally avoiding all the foods he had liked before.

Another thing he had done was withdraw from everything. I could hardly get him to go anywhere or do anything. He avoided all our old friends. He stopped going to the movies. If people were around, he wouldn't talk. He was just uncommunicative. He sat and watched life go by instead of making things happen. He also quit doing the things he loved with people he liked.

Greg used to worship his motorcycle. He had a Honda 750, a really good-sized bike, and he and Brian Finley used to go riding all the time. Then, Greg parked the Honda in the garage to gather dust and Brian finally quit calling about going for a ride. It became obvious Greg wasn't going anywhere.

Greg also talked a lot along the lines of "I wonder what it would be like to be dead," and "Everyone would be better off without me." He didn't do this just once or twice, like we all do sometimes when we're down, but all the time.

He got mad a lot, too. I don't mean just upset; I mean mad. He would have outbursts of rage. He would pound on the wall in anger, lashing out at the world. And then he would immediately calm down and be O.K. Sometimes, he suffered with bouts of fearfulness. If the phone rang or someone came to the door, he was sure it would be the police, coming to arrest him for Judy's death.

He even talked about suicide and how he'd do it. No pills for him, he said. He'd take a gun and blow his brains out. He'd make sure he was dead. I dismissed it as crazy talk. After all, a person had to have a gun to be able to do what he said. I didn't realize that Greg had a gun-a shiny, new .38 revolver with lots of bullets.

I had never seen anybody so deep in despair. There was an air of hopelessness surrounding him constantly. "Life will never be any good again," he told me one day. I told him he was wrong and to cheer up. "Let's go to the movies," I said. So we did and I chose a comedy. Greg never laughed, not once.

Occasionally, Greg did things to hurt himself. His most popular form of self-abuse was drinking wine until he puked or passed out. I'd often find him coming down the stairs in the morning looking like he'd been hit by a truck. Then I'd spy an empty wine bottle in the trash. He sometimes had bruise marks on his forehead from banging his head against the wall.

There were times he just plain acted crazy. He behaved in all kinds of irrational and bizarre ways. On the few times he would get the Honda out he'd come home after zooming down unlit, gravel country roads at over 100 miles per hour without a helmet or jacket. Sometimes he told me he even played Russian roulette.

That's how I found out about the gun.

In spite of all the signs, even in spite of the gun, I never thought he'd really kill himself. I thought I would have the power to save him by just being there. I didn't.

I should have gotten him some help. I should have made him go see a counselor, even if I would have had to drag him there myself. I should have hunted for and hidden the gun. I should have taken the risk of making him mad and let his sister know how he was talking and the things that he was doing. I should have broken the confidence and mended the life.

But I didn't see it coming-probably because I didn't want to. A person committing suicide was something that happened somewhere else. Certainly, suicide couldn't happen at my house, not to my best friend.

Besides, right before Greg killed himself, he seemed to snap out of it. He quit drinking. He talked about enrolling at Ohio State to finish his degree. He looked to the future. At least that's what I thought. I found out later that it was a play in two acts. One part of it was to get me off his back and out of the house so he could be alone. The other part was he had made up his mind to kill himself. His burden of sadness was lifted because he was going to eliminate that burden. All he had to do was get me to go away for awhile. He needed to shake me just long enough to be sure that I wouldn't come home to interrupt his loading the gun, pulling the trigger and passing over to wherever he was going.

A Hole in My Soul

Greg's play in two acts was a prize winner. He cheered up. So, I cheered up. I felt secure enough to leave the house. He loaded every chamber on the gun and closed all the windows in his room. He didn't want the neighbors to hear anything that might cause them to come investigate and save his life by mistake. He wrote a nice little goodbye note, laid down on the bed and blew himself all over the room.

The next period of my life was a ragged mix of feelings. I cried a lot. I yelled a lot. Strong, opposing emotions ripped through me all at once. I was hurt, mad, confused, always second-guessing and sad.

At first I was hurt. "Why," I thought, "why did you do this to me? Didn't you know I loved you?" It was the worst thing that anyone had ever done to me. And that's how I felt, that he had done it to me. Later, after I thought about it, I realized that he didn't do it to me. He hadn't killed himself to hurt me. I wasn't even a consideration. Of course, that hurt, too.

Gradually I came to realize that his life was so filled with pain that all he was thinking of was endirlg it. If it consumed him to the point that it killed him, there is no way to expect that he would consider what it would do to me.

I was mad, too. Outraged is more like it. "How could he do such a stupid thing?" I hated him for what he did to himself, to me, to my family, to his family, to our friends-for everything. "Friends don't do this, you moron," I'd scream at his memory, only to feel guilty for having such bad thoughts. But I was mad. I still am.

I also was confused. "What was so bad that he had to kill himself?" I knew about Judy and what she meant to him, but it was still confusing. I thought about everything I said and wondered if I was the reason for the suicide. I spent hours trying to figure out what had been going on. None of it made any sense to me. Some of it still doesn't.

I did lots of secondguessing-not a little but a lot. What could I have done so that he would be alive today? ...Why didn't I see it coming? ...I should never have gone away ... If I had only seen it coming, I could have tried to prevent the suicide, and maybe even succeeded ... that time. But since I hadn't noticed any of the danger signs, how could I have done anything?

Finally, I was sad, terribly sad. I exhibited some signs of a potential suicide myself. I didn't want to eat-and didn't. I was extremely depressed. Life seemed awfully blank. I missed Greg. His death tore a big, ragged hole in my soul that no one else could fill. I've been sad for years. I mourn him and the person he migh' have become. I wonder what he'd be doing today if he were still alive. A life cut short is always sad.

Where Was My Loving God?

I had to learn to accept my feelings. I finally understood that it was O.K., even necessary, to be mad, sad, confused and all those churning emotions. The feelings were a natural part of my life. I had to let them out. I had to deal with them.

That bloody Sunday suicide tested my faith. I wondered how God could allow such a terrible thing. After all, wasn't God a God of love and beauty and gracefulness? Why then was this beautiful summer Sunday shattered by a bloody disaster that once had been one of God's children? I spent a lot of time talking to my pastor about this. I talked to others, too--people who I felt knew God and could help me make some sense of it. That helped.

I talked to God a lot, too. God was always there and I didn't need an appointment to get in. I continue to be grateful for that. God had shared my joys-now I needed to share my sorrows. Crying and laughing are both a part of the relationship God wants to have with me. We had laughed a lot together, God and I. After Greg killed himself, we had a lot of good cries together, too. I felt God's support as I worked through my feelings of anger, sorrow and confusion.

That summer Sunday that I smelled the foul smell and found Greg's body splattered around the room will probably always be the worst day of my life. I wish it had never happened. I still wonder why it did. I think God understands my feelings. At least that's what God tells me when we talk about it.

J. Brent Bill is Executive Director of the Henry County United Way in New Castle. Indiana. He is an ordained Friends pastor and author of seven books for teenagers published by Fleming H. Revell Company.

Youth Update advisers who previewed this issue and asked important questions of the author are Robert Beattey. Melissa Byers, Marcy Cherry, Danita Clemens, Sherry Sims and Tonda Upchurch, This group, representing three churches in New Castle. Indiana, met at First Friends Church where Kevin Niles is youth pastor.