A Sad Notice

Tonight I've decided to use my journal as a bit of public service announcement.

       I know a family with a one degree of separation from me that something tragic has happened too. Every Mother's day, I take my girls and join one of my friends on what is now our annual Mother's day camping trip, the kick off to the season of getting outdoors. Last year this family joined our tradition, so I've only spent just 4 days in their lives. We are two weeks away from our annual camping trip and I've been told by my personal friend they intend to come, they need to come.  This may be the hardest Mothers day I'll ever witness.

       I won't use specific names, no need to, but here's the situation that I feel all parents should be aware of and thats why I am using my journal for such a thing. This family consisted of, husband, wife, two 13 year old twins a boy and girl and a young daughter of 5.
      
       A week ago the twin boy went into his sisters room to wake her up in the early morning and found her hanging in her closet. No further details needed here. What appeared as a suicide of a 13 year old girl with no known depression, no real "major issues," had friends and a good family has been potentially upgraded to something completely different.

       It was discovered, as they were frantically trying to figure why their beautiful daughter would commit suicide, that she had been participating in a "game" called "the passing out game" with several of her friends.
      
        For those of you who made it through the teen years without playing this game < I know I played it with my friends> it is where you hyperventilate for about a minute with your head down, as soon as you start to feel light headed, you swing your head up and a friend then, not chokes, but presses the sides of your neck to stop blood flow to your head. This causes you to pass out in short order. The feeling of a "high" is then produced when you are waking up.

       Evidently this little one really liked the feelings it produced and wanted to play it often. The police found notes from her to friends, and back talking about it. Everyone thinks it is very likely that she had never even thought of the possibilities of what her actions could cause, but simply wanted to feel the effects of such a thing before she went to bed. They think she tried to rig a system to help her do it alone, without the friend help. I won't betray the trust I was given with the details. As you can see, her passing out set up didn't work and resulted in a horrific accident. It's something I think all parents should take the time to talk to their children about.

       This family will live the rest of their lives without knowing 100% that their beautiful daughter didn't commit suicide, there will always be the question of did it happen because she didn't think out the consequences of her set up for passing out.

       I also thought about the fact that if this was a stupid, crazy "game" that I played when I was a teen, then there must be many, many others who played it too. Like the nursery school rhymes we all sang in school are passed down generation after generation, is this too a game thats been passed down? I hadn't thought of that "game" in YEARS. But now I look at my 13 year old daughter, and have now questioned her, and scared the hell out of her with this, and guess what.........we live in a city 30 miles from that family, we haven't seen them in a year and my daughter knew of this "game."

       Please add this to the ever growing list of things to talk to your children about.

Local News - The Idaho Statesman - Always Idaho Here is one of the articles about it.