Memories, inspirational words shared by family and Rabbi following death of Maya Gold, 15

I’m here to tell you that if your friend is hurting themselves, get in their face. Look out for each other. Be brave. Risk losing a friend in order to help them. Share your deepest fears with each other, and your biggest dreams. Loving one another is wonderful and life-giving, but also very risky and challenging work. And it is the best thing you will ever do. Be bold, take a deep breath and reach out.

We adults, annoying as we are, are right here with you. We know that you teens sometimes move close to the edge of the darkness. Our hands are always ready to reach out and grab you and pull you back into our arms before you fall. Often you give us enough warning signs that you are losing your balance that we are able to run over and grab you before you fall. Maya’s descent into the pit was so quick and unexpected that we could not grab her in time! It is a tragedy; I can’t think of anything worse than what has just happened. We couldn’t catch this wonderful young woman in time, and now she is gone. But we adults are still here; we are still paying as close attention as we can to the rest of you, our beloved children; our hands are right here, reaching out. We remember being 15. Hate us, resent us, make fun of us — we can handle it! — but know that our hand is there.

And yet we live in a time, thanks to social networking, when you kids spend more time in each other’s company than you do with us adults. Therefore you usually know more about each other’s lives than we know about you. That’s a fact. Thanks to the Information Revolution, you also know way, way more about the terrible things happening around the planet than we ever did at your age. This is amazing, but also a burden on you. And so, these days more responsibility than ever before is on you to watch out for each other. In a very real way, you teens need to grow up faster than we did and take responsibility for each other’s well-being. I know a lot is being asked of you. Will you step up? We support you all the way. Lives may be saved because you are looking out for each other.

But we can’t support each other effectively if we don’t talk openly about the dangers that we face. So I want to talk about drugs and alcohol. After Maya’s death, Mathew and Elise found over-the-counter drugs in her room — drugs with incredibly dangerous side effects. In recent weeks Maya had been depressed, and it appears recently turned to some drugs that made her feel better. They found Mucinex DM, a cough suppressant; Benadryl, an antihistamine; and synthetic THC, the active ingredient in marijuana. All of these drugs are easily available on the street. All of them, taken too frequently or in large doses, have terrifying side effects: euphoria, hallucinations, temporary psychosis, even suicidal fantasies. It is very possible that young Maya, new to recreational drug use, took too large a dose of one or more of these drugs and was in a deluded state when she chose to take her own life. Given how much Maya loved life and all of her exciting plans for her future, it is hard to understand how she conceivably could have killed herself had she been in her right mind.

You teens have to be more mature than ever in looking out for each other around drugs and alcohol. When you see a friend losing their balance and teetering at the edge of the darkness of drug and alcohol abuse, you must be brave and act. Reach out your hand and tell us what is going on, so that we can help. It will probably be messy: You might make a fool of yourself, you might lose some friends; but you could literally save someone’s life the next time. Is anything more important?

I also want to speak openly about suicide. The stigma and shame attached to suicide means that we do not usually share with others about the suicides we have been close to, or about our own attempts. Who here today knows someone, a friend or relative, who committed suicide? Raise your hands. It looks like at least half of us have someone close who killed themselves. If we don’t break the silence about suicide, if we don’t talk with one another about it, then we’ll never be able to help prevent it. Maya’s family and I encourage you to learn about suicide prevention at the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention: www.afsp.org.

My father committed suicide when I was 24. After many years, naturally, of feeling angry at my Dad, now I am left with compassion for him — maybe because I have been alive long enough to appreciate how hard it is to be good human being. It is time to break the cycle of shaming and harsh judgment when we learn of someone taking their own life, and instead respond with compassion and try to understand the unbearable suffering that led them to their choice to die. Again, as I recall my own teenage bouts of despair, my young adult debacles and defeats, I too might have fallen into that pit. There but for the grace of God might I have gone. Do not judge Maya. You were not in her shoes, and will never know what she was experiencing. Instead, open your hearts to those who are suffering, and if you can, catch them before they fall.

Because I’ll tell you: It is a hard world; but it is a wonderful world, too. Life is difficult, but it is worth it. It is overflowing with sunsets and laughing children, acts of kindness, great music, running barefoot, fresh fruit, great conversations — the list of goodness is literally endless. In the Jewish community, this is the week when we read Genesis, Chapter One, “In the Beginning.” After each day of creating, the Creator looks it all over and declares, “This is good!” And when it is all done, at the end of the sixth day, “the Creator looked at all that had been created, and behold, it was very good!” Yes, life is very good. So please hang in there, you beautiful people: It will get better. It may be hard work to be a person, but it is worth all the hardship.

Maya knew the good in life. Wow, did she enjoy life, and was she ever engaged in living! I ran into Maya and Elise in August in front of Mexicali Blue in New Paltz. Maya told me all about her plans: to graduate high school early, to earn money and travel and study and then to find a way to help people as her life’s work. She planned to live a life of purpose. I listened to her with delight; I drank in the light from her eyes and her smile and her deep intensity and her zest, and I hugged her. If there was ever anyone I wanted to see grow up, it was Maya Gold: part of the solution. We have lost her, and now are faced with the daunting task of being worthy vessels not only for our light, but for the radiant light that was Maya. Now we must hold Maya’s family, reach out to them, stay with them, walk the path with them.

Maya was a seeker. Maya felt the ecstatic joy singing through the universe just as surely and just as intensely as she felt its pain. It was certainly my great fortune that Maya chose to study Judaism with me as she pursued her quest for understanding and manifesting the infinite love that is everywhere, yet so easily slips from our grasp. Perhaps in her passing from this plane into the Great Mystery, Maya’s glorious essence has now merged with the infinite sea of light and joy that each of us drank from when we looked into her eyes. I will always miss her. I will look for her essence pouring forth when I look in your eyes. Maya’s memory is truly a blessing.

Maya Gold at a girls’ residential school in northeast India.

How to help

Fifteen-year-old Maya Gold was very committed to helping children in need. To continue her work, donations may be made in her memory to:

• Nepal Youth Foundation: https://www.nepalyouthfoundation.org/
• Woodstock Jewish Congregation Teen Program: https://wjcshul-donations.org/rabbi/general-donations.php
• Rowe Camp Woodside Campership Fund: https://rowecenter.org/pages.php?name=Woodside.

Suicide prevention resources

• American Foundation for Suicide Prevention https://www.afsp.org/https://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/suicide
• Crisis Hotline Family https://www.familyofwoodstockinc.org/emergency-services-hotline-walk-in-centers/family-of-woodstock/
• Mobile mental health team https://accesssupports.org/behavioral-health/#quick-response-team