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Kheriaty also spoke at Gabriel's funeral. His (recorded) homily produced a framework for my grief and provides rest for my mind amid ongoing battles with self-doubt.

We survivors replay final conversations with the deceased in our minds—like the one Gabriel had with a friend days before he died in which he made passing reference to the means he would employ. Or the one I had with him before he walked out the door that evening: "Gabe, honey," I had said. "What's going on? Your eyes look dead." He had simply shrugged, and I let him go.

It's possible that Gabriel was suffering from bipolar disorder. In An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness, Kay Redfield Jamison, Johns Hopkins University professor of psychiatry, describes her experience:

A floridly psychotic mania was followed, inevitably, by a long and lacerating, black, suicidal depression; it lasted more than a year and a half. From the time I woke up in the morning until the time I went to bed at night, I was unbearably miserable and seemingly incapable of any kind of joy or enthusiasm. Everything—every thought, word, movement—was an effort. Everything that once was sparkling was now flat. … The wretched, convoluted, and pathetically confused mass of gray worked only well enough to torment me with a dreary litany of my inadequacies and shortcomings in character, and to taunt me with the total, desperate hopelessness of it all … . Death and its kin were constant companions.

Gabe's written descriptions of himself and his depression are markedly similar to Jamison's, yet this inner reality was largely invisible to others.

Kheriaty explained, "For reasons that are quite beyond our comprehension, God allowed Gabriel to suffer a terrible illness [three, in fact: asthma, neurofibromatosis, and depression] … . Depression affects not just a person's moods and emotions; it also constricts a person's thinking, often to the point where the person feels entirely trapped and cannot see any way out of his mental suffering." Depression can "destroy a person's capacity to reason clearly" and "severely impair his sound judgment, such that someone suffering in this way is liable to do things that, when they are not depressed, they would never consider." He concluded: "Gabriel's death issued from an unsound mind that was afflicted by a devastating disorder."

Gabe, like nearly half of all college students, became depressed when he left home. Intermittently I had urged him to take advantage of the school's counseling services. In hindsight, I wish we had issued an ultimatum: "Get help or come home."

Only in the final weeks did his symptoms become increasingly pronounced. He became uncharacteristically withdrawn, jumpy, and irritable, such that his emotions seemed out of proportion to events. Overdraft and delinquency notices arrived in the mail almost daily. He wore dirty clothes to work, slept erratically, and displayed little appetite.

However, days before his death, Gabriel performed at a stand-up comedy club. On the day he died, he joked with coworkers and publicly professed his love for Jesus. Experts describe this contradiction as the "suicide calm" that sets in once someone has decided, finally, to end the mental torment. The vacant look I had noted in his eyes had been a function of both suicidal depression and detachment. In mind and spirit, he had already left us.

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April 2009, Vol. 53, No. 4