As University of Pennsylvania running back Kyle Ambrogi pulled the trigger of his own volition, his life ended definitively and the resulting tragedy resonated with many.

Kyle was a senior at Penn until Oct. 11, when he committed suicide in his home. It was an unbelievable shock to learn that a high school classmate of mine at St. Joseph's Prep in Philadelphia ended his life.

How could he kill himself? On the football field, he authored a volume of football accomplishments that belong next to Paul Bunyan in the library's folklore section. In the classroom, he excelled, even in a Latin class that could have wiped the smile off Cicero's face.

And yet, he killed himself. Now, a month later, there's a chance depression and anxiety will burrow deep within his friends and family.

So it was that much more painful to wonder what might have been if Kyle could have seen the masses who came out to celebrate his life. If he had, he might have felt like the regal figure mourners crowned in their prayers and memories instead of the victim of his own depression.

Instead, what's left are newspaper quotes and tributes on a Philadelphia area high school sports Web site, www.tedsilary.com, a place where friends and teammates honor him effusively. Their respect and admiration for Kyle leaps off the pages.

However, these praises seem to forget the fact that his life ended not by accident or another hand. This outstanding and troubled young adult ended his life by himself, and took the darkest way out of a world in which life can end in so many ways.

Do not think for a second his friends and family forgot this fact. But there is a larger point: A suicidal person's depression, not just Kyle's, does not end with his death. It stands a great chance of affecting his mourners and moreover, causing the same tragedy again.

There's nothing wrong with wanting to honor someone who took his life. A counselor from the Centre County Can Help crisis line, which offers over-the-phone psychological counseling 24 hours a day to the State College region, said it's normal for people to reminisce. Thinking of the good times is a natural part of coping with death. But while it's natural to write tributes, the counselor said she didn't know how normal it is in the case of suicide.

She said people need to be aware that when a person commits suicide, it's his choice. In addition, people who seem to be on top of the world, like Kyle, can do something like that. In Kyle's case, it was surprising.

According to an Oct. 13 article in The Philadelphia Inquirer, two days before the suicide Kyle was "as happy as [his friends] had seen him."

This only demonstrates how depression hides within a person, and how dangerous it can be. Friends and family of the deceased need to recognize the potentially lethal effect a suicide can have on them.

"...Once one kid takes the leap, other kids who are upset with their lives feel encouraged, and they try too," Peter Crabb, psychology professor at Penn State's Abington campus, said in a Feb. 15 article in the Bucks County Courier Times.

About 20 teens or children have committed suicide in Bucks County since 1999, according to the article. Suicide is the third leading cause of death among people ages 15 to 24, according to the Center for Disease Control Web site.

When two of those 20 students at Neshaminy High School, a school in Bucks County committed suicide within about a month of each other in 2002, it became clear that suicide is not an isolated incident.

A friend and classmate of the Neshaminy students told me how her friend, Andrew Patrick, killed himself on Oct. 6 -- shock and sadness filled the school's halls. When she told me his friend Anne Marie Nyzio committed suicide on Nov. 4 because the pain of Andrew's death was too much, it was as if someone poked a pinhole in a balloon and all hope leaked out life of for those who knew both students.

Suddenly, the effects of suicide were clear.

A person's suicide can breed hidden hopelessness, and awareness of that is the first step in dealing with that larger issue. Not every friend or relative, or maybe any friend or relative, of a suicidal person is going to commit suicide. Yet, it's important to be aware of post-suicide depression developing, of the small pinhole in the balloon that leaves a person slowly sinking and losing air. The effects are too chancy to ignore.