As with the still missing Malaysia Airlines plane last year, the Germanwings plane crash was a devastation also is difficult to understand, especially given that we now know the pilot who crashed the plane suffered from depression, was suicidal, and purposely crashed the plane. Every time I see a headline about it or an article, my eyes have watered this week to think of all the innocent lives that had to die because of one man’s suffering. We can’t fully blame him because of his suffering and disease…. But can we?

I look back on my brother’s death quite often, and I think about all the ways he might have thought about killing himself that would have been “easy.” A self-inflicted gun shot wound if he could get a hold of a gun was one of them. Jumping off a bridge was another, and sadly the way he chose to go. Walking into oncoming traffic? Yes, that would be easy, but that would adversely affect the lives of the driver and whoever else was in the car. Ed was so painfully cognizant of his own pain and how it could affect other people. I’m assuming that this pilot was so blinded by his pain that he couldn’t see this the way Ed did. One of the things Ed said during a meltdown he had with my mom the year he died was, “One day, I will disappear. You won’t know where I’ve gone, so don’t come looking for me.”

I still get choked up remembering my mother telling me this after the fact.