Content warning: Suicide.

To my dear friend. My dear friend gone from us much too soon.

You pulled yourself from this world with one week before Thanksgiving. We were all floored because, as it always seems to be the case, no one would have guessed this would be the way you would go. Or, that you would go this soon at all. No one knew.

Your family didn’t have an obituary or a service. I don’t know why. But I do know many people would have loved to speak for you. How great you were. How brilliant. How smart.

You were 22 and in Med School. You were going to be a doctor. You were so brilliant. You had gotten your degree from a great university, did research and were an SI leader. You were so smart.

It’s such a shame to see you go, they would say. Such a shame that such potential was lost.

But you were more than that. You were more than your brain. Your intelligence. Your potential.

You were witty. Quiet at times, but a side-eyed glance and a whisper in the ear of the person to your left would cause an uproar of stifled laughter in them.

You were hilarious. Inside jokes dating all the way back to high school. Things like “I eat breakfast”, the joke of which is still completely lost on outsiders like me. But I still laugh at the complete absurdity of it, because you were laughing, too.

You were the best friend of many. Friends who don’t know why you’re gone, but will miss your presence at the movie nights and the New Year's Eve parties where we ignore the countdowns completely, swinging our arms in a circle to say goodbye as we go our separate ways until next time.

You were suave. You were handsome. In high school, you were cast as Elvis in a theater production, and I can’t think of anyone better for the role.

You were a smooth-talker. You somehow convinced me you give a back massage every time I saw you for around a year. We’d watch Portlandia and joke about putting birds on things while you sat on the floor in front of me so I could rub your back.

Remember when you put up posters of that Bear Grylls meme around the hallways at high school, and it got us all banned from using the school printers for personal stuff? Or the time we had a Lego-building contest at our friend’s graduation party and some other people we graduated with showed up uninvited? You leaned over to me and whispered that they were just looking for booze. There wasn’t any, so they left. Or when you had to work the day of my graduation party? You were a manager at a fast food restaurant and showed up late with a present - a giant bag of stale hamburger buns. We all walked to a friend’s house and spelled out words on her lawn with them when she wasn’t home.

You were brilliant.

You were so brilliant.

And you left us much, much too soon.

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If you or anyone you know is contemplating suicide, please reach out.

National Suicide Prevention Hotline: 1.800-273-TALK (8255)

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Aaron Mulheren took his own life on November 15, 2016 at the age of 22. He graduated Case Western Reserve University with a BS in Chemistry in 2016, and was an M1 student at Northeast Ohio Medical University. He was a very brilliant man.