This morning David Kellerman, 41, Acting CFO of mortgage giant Freddie Mac, was found dead, an apparent suicide.  Freddie Mac has been harshly criticized for financing risky loans that are now defaulting.  The company was also under fire for planning to pay more than $210,000,000 in bonuses to their executives, to give them incentives to stay.  Kellerman, who had taken over when the former CEO had been relieved of his duties, was responsible for 500 employees and was working on the current financial report at the time of his death.  He leaves behind a wife and a five-year-old daughter, Grace.

Why did Kellerman kill himself?  Was it the many points of pressure?  Was in shame, for being involved in what he knew were slight-of-hand loan deals?  Was it some illegal act that is yet to be uncovered?  There will be an investigation.  There will be follow-up articles.  But we may never know the truth.  He himself may not have fully understood the demons which pushed him to take his life.

But the question before us is: what’s worth dying for?  Making a mistake–even a big one–is not worth dying for.  Doing something that you are ashamed of–that’s not worth dying for, either.  Trying to live up to others’ expectations and failing–that’s not worth dying for, either.

What is worth dying for?  To save the life of another, perhaps.  To make justice.  To go against the powers that be, when the powers are corrupt and evil.  These are things worth dying for.  We remember those who have done so: the firemen of 9/11; soldiers who lay down their lives for their comrades or for their country; Martin Luther King, Jr.; Archbishop Romero; journalists who are murdered for writing the truth about crooked political leaders.

But suicide?  No.  It is always, always, always possible to start over when you make a mistake, or when you do wrong.  Forgiveness is always an option.  If it were not, which one of us could keep going, with our more or less constantly besmirched lives?  We all “fall short of the glory of God,” as my saintly grandmother used to say.  We can say, “I was wrong.  I’m sorry.”  And we can start over.  Every day, in fact.

The one who commits suicide just “wants out,” because the pain is so great, and that person cannot see an end to the suffering.  Many of us feel that intensity of pain at one time or another.  But depression can be cured, pain will end, and life turns round.  Dear reader, if you’re ever considering suicide, remember that. 

It is sad beyond words when a little five-year-old is left without a father–and answerless questions that will last a lifetime.  Suicide colors so many lives, and for so long: a wife left alone; fellow workers asking, “Why?”; friends blaming themselves and saying, “I should have called . . . .” 

 Sometimes it takes courage just to keep going, just to get up every morning and face the day.  But there is no honorable alternative, for it’s not just your own life–you belong to all of us.  We are all diminished when any one person takes his life.

We are irrevocably connected, the one with the other.  Stay with us, brother.  Hang in there, sister.  Together, we can find a way through anything.