Did Glenn and Patricia Scarpelli prepare their children to deal with their suicide before their tragic death? Their son said his parents warned him everyone he loved could be taken away in a blink of an eye.

After saying they could not live in a hopeless “financial reality,” Patricia Scarpelli, 50, and her husband, Glenn Scarpelli, 53, leapt to their deaths on July 28. Though their suicide note asked that people “please take care of [our kids,]” it seems that the Scarpellis had already prepared their children for such a day like that. “I am going to share with you some advice given to me by my own parents when I was younger. My parents repeatedly told me that I could wake up one day and lose every material possession and everyone I love,” their 19-year-old son Joseph Scarpelli wrote in a March 2016 essay, according to the New York Post. “[B]ut no one will ever be able to take away my faith.”

Joseph read the essay, written for the school magazine, out loud to his classmates at the Loyola High School on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. The essay also talked about coming from a “proud Italian-American family,” who attended their local Catholic church weekly. If only he knew that such dark words would come true one day. Joseph now attends the University of Miami School of Business Administration, while his 20-year-old sister, Isabella Scarpelli, is at St. Edwards University in Texas.

Both Joseph and Isabella were on the minds of Glenn and Patricia before they committed suicide by jumping from the 9th floor of a 17-story office building. The note they left behind said that despite having a “wonderful life,” the couple had fallen into a “financial spiral.” Public records show that Glenn, a chiropractor, owed about $213,000 to the federal government in unpaid taxes, as well as $42,000 to the state. With more than a quarter-of-a-million dollars in debt, the Scarpellis saw no light at the end of the tunnel.

“I just don’t understand why this would happen,” Adam Lamb, a fellow chiropractor who was a friend of the Scarpellis for 16 years, told the New York Post. “Why they would do this to their kids? I feel like there’s something else going on. Even with all that debt, it still doesn’t make sense.”

Our thoughts continue to go out to Glenn and Patricia’s family and friends during this heartbreaking time of loss.