To the Editor:

Re “What Lies in Suicide’s Wake,” by Peggy Wehmeyer (Op-Ed, Sept. 13):

July 25, 2008, was a perfect summer morning at my East Hampton beach cottage, a day that should have been full of swimming and friends and a lazy afternoon of reading books on the back deck — but it wasn’t.

My beautiful 22-year-old daughter, Olivia, a sensitive, intuitive child, had graduated two months earlier from Skidmore College with honors in poetry. When I knocked softly on her bedroom door that morning and pushed it open, a howl came out of my soul. Eleven years later, I am still struggling with my daughter’s suicide.

I have made my world as small and tight as possible. Meeting new people makes me cringe, and I tense for the inevitable casual question, “How many children do you have?” If I answer, “One, a son,” I silently scream, No, that’s not true! I have two children! If I say I have two children, the next question inevitably is: “How old are they and what do they do?” I sweat and lie each time, telling an imaginary story about Olivia.

I often think that if she had been physically sick, if she had had cancer, my heart would have been smashed in a different way. There would have been a beginning, a middle and an end that were clear despite the unthinkable helpless pain of watching my child die. Whereas her suicide will always make me feel that it was preventable, despite the fact that every professional I have consulted has told me otherwise.