I don’t know how many of the people who came to the 7th Annual Benefit  for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention had experienced the suicide of someone whom they loved. But a ripple of understanding ran through the crowd when the event hostess, Erika Kauffman Wheeler, spoke about losing her father to suicide.   I sensed both empathy and anguish.

Some of the women in attendance wore glitters and silk. Others mingled in cotton or denim.  Men in suits with elegant pocket squares shook hands with others in khaki or blue jeans.  But when the chair of the local chapter told us that two of her sons killed themselves, we all reacted as one:  With tears; with winces; with brief, knowing nods.

I studied the faces of my companions, wondering which of them had survived another’s suicide.  Regardless, I know that loss and grief can take other forms — divorce, demotion, distance, depression.

We vote Democrat, we vote Republican, we struggle to succeed, we walk to work, we drive, we take Uber, we post on social media.  We close the door on empty houses; we hear our children playing in the yard; we manage our wealth online; we balance our checkbooks at the kitchen table.   We have dark skin; we have olive complexions; we burn when our paleness meets the hot summer sun. Beneath deftly applied make-up, behind close shaves and gelled hair, our blood flows, our muscles ache, our hearts break.

We are more alike than different.

I have never felt this as keenly as in the last few years.  Unexpectedly, the wall between me and the rest of the world cracked and fell in a heap around my feet.  I stepped over the rubble and let myself mingle in the crowd on the other side.

It’s the third day of the twenty-eighth month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.

Waldo Brookside Rotary Club members supported our fellow Rotarians, Erika Kauffman Wheeler and her husband Jack Wheeler, co-hosts of last night’s benefit for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.