Fifteen days before her 19th birthday, one of my students --- whom I had been helping with academic and creative work --- committed suicide. It happened very far from UVM, at her college on the other side of the country. They found her yesterday.

She had been born in New Jersey and had grown up in Israel from the age of three, near the West Bank, and returned to the USA last Fall to start college here.

She was doing some brilliant writing, far beyond what I've ever seen from a first-year student, and was being praised for it by her faculty. But she was also carrying a massive amount of pyschological pain, which was growing and had been for the past ten years at least. This finally grew great enough to kill all her hope of ever healing it in this life.

Along the way, many people tried to intervene to help her, including me: but the help proved to be temporary and the damage was unstoppable.

Only a handful of her LJ friends ever got to meet her in real life. I was one of them. That is as unforgettable as her death is. Her light will be remembered much much longer.