When Jason Roberts killed himself this March, everyone in Needham was surprised.
We weren’t particularly shocked that yet another good-looking young kid had committed suicide; after Kyle and Asya, after Young-Chul and Greg and that horrible car crash that killed both Keith and Igor, nobody thought that the teenagers of our tiny Massachusetts town were invincible.
Instead, everyone from the middle school girls who had pined for him as he played football to the Greek owner of the bagel store wondered aloud why. Why would a funny, confident, popular boy with a spot at Hartford and a new Jeep feel so low that he only saw one way out? “A brand-new Jeep!” the bagel store owner moaned. “Can you imagine!” The people in line nodded solemnly.
I found out about his suicide the same way I found out about all the others; first came a tentative, unconfirmed text message from someone I hardly spoke to after graduation, followed by a small flood of texts, calls and emails from my parents and friends from home. Needham isn’t large and only has one high school, and this kind of news spreads with the speed only a town used to tragedy can muster. We’ve figured out how to streamline the dissemination of information, reducing our grief down to 160 characters or less.
And what I find strangest about Jason’s death was how public the response has been. Everyone I know, in Needham or otherwise, uses Facebook. Jason had an account just like anybody else, and in the days and weeks and months that followed the announcement, hundreds of people logged on to write final messages and goodbyes on his Wall. Because of the nature of the site, anyone with an email account and a fascination with the disturbing can read these sometimes shockingly private notes. His parents, cousins, girlfriend and friends all posted multiple times, always writing as though he has Internet access wherever he’s ended up. It’s sweet and hopelessly sad.
Relatively speaking, I’ve been lucky for a Needham High graduate; although I’ve been affected by all the deaths, it’s mostly been in a muted, peripheral way, watching my neighbors and friends of friends mourn the unending string of losses of people I barely spoke to. In a way, it gives me an enormous amount of respect for classmates I’d written off as petty or ditzy or uncaring, seeing the grief they have to shoulder that I’ve never even touched. I feel ashamed reading the Facebook posts that unabashedly and publicly express raw pain and emotion, like I’m watching strangers strip naked for an audience, but it’s a personal shame tinged with admiration. I’d like to believe that this is the last time Needham will suffer such a blow, but it’s become almost routine by now. Are other towns like this? Is it a product of our wealth, our tight-knit yet suspicious community, our pressure to succeed academically and financially and socially before we even know what we’re supposed to be?
I don’t know. And judging from the desperate, lost, rambling messages I've pored over on Facebook, nobody else does either.
