My friend’s shaking voice reached me through my phone, delivering news I didn’t know how to handle. It made me numb.

I was just informed that a classmate of mine had committed suicide a few days earlier. It was only three months before high school graduation.

People are rarely stable and predictable. Before you know it, something changes and those you took for granted are lost forever. Blame and guilt are obvious feelings involved when incidents like this occur. Our class was no longer unknown in the school, because rumors travel fast.

What caused this incident is unknown, and what went on in his mind one can only speculate about. All I know is that we felt completely powerless as soon as we learned what had happened. The only thought in our minds was what we could have done. Where did things go wrong?

People are like icebergs; we can often only see the top part. At times we have no clue as to what’s going on under the surface. But taking the time to get to know someone in depth requires time and effort, and while dealing with our own concerns it is not easy to be constantly there for others.

As I sat on the bench at the funeral, looking at the unworn graduation cap lying in front of the coffin, the word “unfair” echoed in my head.

I wondered how could this have been foreseen? Hadn’t the rest of us paid enough attention? Hadn’t his family been supportive enough? Somewhere and somehow a lack of attentiveness had occurred. As human beings we are dependent on recognition from others.

The fact is that he did receive help. He went to a psychiatrist and was prescribed medicine for depression, which he didn’t take. So the society had seen him and provided help, but clearly it was insufficient.

In situations like this people tend to become almost egocentric, like thinking they could’ve prevented it if they had acted in time. Nonetheless, I can’t help thinking about the phrase “If only I’d thought of the right words” from the song “Pictures of you” by The Cure.

Maybe I could’ve made an impact the last time I saw him. I’ll never know.

If you have a chance to act today on whatever you feel obliged to do, take it and deal with it, because tomorrow the opportunity might be gone.

People travel in and out of our lives all the time and sometimes this is unexpected. Regretting a missed opportunity is unnecessary, if avoidable.

You can’t be everything to everyone. But if something does happen and you’ve tried to be all you can, at least you don’t have to spend every single day afterward thinking about what you didn’t do.