To the Editor:

I appreciate the family of Princeton High School Freshman Owen Gerrard Bardzilowski for their willingness to share the cause of Owen’s death [“Community Responds To Student’s Death With Deep Grief, Support,” Town Topics, Sept. 21, page one]. It’s important for survivors, family, friends, and community to understand the angst we all encounter, whether we’ve had suicidal ideations, acted upon them, or are among those left behind to ask “why?” after loved ones have left us.

It is too reductive for us to suggest this simply is an issue of mental illness, when here in Princeton suicide has become pervasive. Two of my friends killed themselves in 2015, four months apart, both local Princeton residents. We all know of other suicides in our area. The first I heard of just as I moved into town 10 years ago — of the mother of a special needs child — which touched me deeply being father to an autistic teen now at Princeton High School. We know too of suicides before and after this, in our town, 2008, 2011, 2014, among these another Princeton High School and another Princeton University student. And we know that within the last three years 10 students have killed themselves at nearby UPenn, and in nearly all cases no one expected anything was wrong. No danger signs. No red flags. Nothing.

There needs to be a conversation started, and delved into, and there need to be more safe sharing spaces, the type that exist at some area yoga studios, the monthly book club at Gratitude Yoga, the weekly Breaking Bread fellowship in the tiny side chapel of Nassau Presbyterian, among the friendships formed in the Princeton Yurt community, the Men’s Sharing Circles around town, and the classrooms of the Princeton Learning Cooperative. Also of course the open doors at Hi-TOPS, Trinity Church, and Good Grief. These are some of the bridges over our troubled waters. NAMI-Mercer’s annual Harvest of Hope will take place on October 1st, where Princeton High School students from the NAMI Stomp Out Stigma Club have volunteered every single year since the club’s founding — this too is a bridge. Safe spaces exist; we just need to open these doors, and let others in.

Some of us ask “What can we do?” What we should not do is blame ourselves, nor feel despondent that we did not do enough, nor that what we did not do makes it our “fault” — it’s never anyone’s ”fault” — this does not serve those we love dearly.

Instead, how about this? First, don’t wait too long to share your own story — so I openly share that I myself have suffered from severe anxiety most of my life, and periodically from debilitating depression, and yes this can be a struggle, yet I have come through it, and continue to do so. And second, the next time someone asks you “How are you?” respond honestly, so they can too. I’m feeling terribly sad, and my thoughts are with the Bardzilowski family, and the students of Princeton High School.

Adnan Shamsi

Nassau Street