Larry Eggett has a tinge of regret for not sharing his chocolate milk with his son the night before he died. There was one small bottle left in the refrigerator that Blake wanted to drink. His father wanted it for his lunch the next day.

The Eggetts have since come to know that Blake didn't die over chocolate milk.

"You can't play that 'what if' game," Barbra Eggett said. "If you do, you can't move on."

Margaret Jackson, who lost her son Eddie to suicide, agrees.

"Everybody goes into their little shame corner, and there is no healing for the families," she said. "There is no healing."

A highly motivated honor roll student with an ebullient personality who feeds homeless people on Sunday mornings doesn't end her life hanging in a closet. Not in a perfect world.

But Martika Lynn Canphone Bate didn't live in a perfect world. Despite her loving kindness, her laughter, her academic achievements, her beauty, the 15-year-old East High sophomore suffered inside. No one really knew her pain because she didn't share it.

Kerry and Marilyn Bate didn't hide the fact their granddaughter, for whom they had legal custody, committed suicide. A line in her Jan. 29 obituary reads:

"She hid her own vulnerabilities beneath her need to take care of others and quietly succumbed to depression over fear of failure to achieve her idea of perfection, taking her own life at the age of 15."

The Bates didn't know how much Tika was hurting. She didn't talk about suicide other than to call it something she would never do.

Tika's life began to unravel after a rocky start in a high school class that resulted in a failing grade. Her identity was wrapped up in her grades. To her family it appears that when she lost control of her grades, she lost her grip on life.

But that wasn't all she couldn't control. She couldn't control the strained relationship with her mother. She couldn't control her father's mental illness. She couldn't control the grief that came with the death of a cousin and an uncle.

"If you have several deaths in your family, it makes it look like an acceptable thing," Kerry Bate said.

Her depression really wasn't revealed until she started counseling just a few week before she died. Bate believes had she kept her head above water in therapy, her death could have been prevented.

Instead, her 14-year-old cousin Joshua, who also lived with the family, found her one Friday night. She had hanged herself in her bedroom.

As is the case with most families connected to young people who take their lives, the impact on Tika's family has been profound.

Joshua never slept in his room again. In fact the boy, who goes to therapy and is on a 10-month waiting list for grief counseling, barely slept at all until recently. "I was always thinking about her," he said.