My wife’s closest friend committed suicide a couple of days ago. I disliked the woman when she was alive. I’d say now, I hate her for what she has done to my wife and others that loved her. She claimed to be a medium but couldn’t ‘see’ how abrasive she was to others. Every so often, she would be mean and say awful things to my wife but my wife would always forgive her and chalk it up to her mental illness and her upbringing. She lost job after job but my wife always had her back even though she would admit to me that her problems with work were always of her own doing. When my wife lost her job due to refusal of the jab mandate, her ‘friend’ didn’t have her back. She told her she deserved it. People commit suicide when they lose their careers but this ‘medium’ couldn’t even see the hurt that it caused my wife, her closest friend. Things came to a head when my wife got her job back and her ‘friend’ didn’t even congratulate her or tell her she had been right to stand by her convictions. My wife went off on her and said some mean things to this woman. The woman showed up at a gathering my wife was at the same day and sat alone in a booth crying. My wife was still ticked off and wanted to enjoy the gathering so she ignored the obvious ‘poor me’ activity of her friend. The next day, the woman disappeared. She turned off her phone and left her home and stayed incognito for days and days. My wife was devastated since she thought she may have committed suicide and that her last interactions with her ‘friend’ were nasty. My reaction was to be really angry with her ‘friend’. I felt she was trying to punish my wife for returning the poor treatment that she had periodically received from her ‘friend’. My wife, a very kind and forgiving person, blamed herself and sent text after text apologizing and asking her to call in the hopes that she would turn her phone on. She worked with the local police and the woman’s other friends and family to try to locate her. Nothing. Radio silence. A week after the woman disappeared, her phone was turned back on and the police located her but too late. She had committed suicide a few hours earlier in a parking lot outside of town. She did not reach out to friends or family. She just ended it. Now my wife is really devastated and feels responsible no matter how I try to convince her otherwise. I am seething with hatred but can’t say that to my wife as I need to be strong and help her grieve. My public service announcement is this: if you are ever depressed, think about the people you will hurt forever by the selfish act of committing suicide. It will be a final act that can never be made right with the people who love you. It is permanent. It is evil.