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DEAR MISS MANNERS: A student at my child's high school died from suicide at the very end of the last school year. The young man was a popular baseball player on the school's team, and he was from a socially popular family in my neighborhood.

There were multiple tributes to him made by well-meaning members of the community: Green ribbons were tied on trees throughout the neighborhood, along with every tree in the median of the street that goes from the neighborhood to the school; a memorial ceremony and balloon release were held at the school's baseball field; and the lights on several nearby high-rise office buildings were changed to green one night in his honor. Flags and yard signs were also created. The student council announced that everyone should wear green to school on what would have been his 16th birthday.

The problem with this is that all the experts on teen suicide recommend schools not organize memorials, moments of silence, plant trees, etc. for a suicide victim, and that they remove spontaneous memorials that show up on campus within five days.

Months later, the long public mourning of this child continues. Eventually, I felt something needed to be said, and I posted on a common social media platform for neighborhoods. I did not mention the young man's name or even the name of the school. I acknowledged that the organizers of all these tributes had the best intentions, but then provided the expert consensus that these kinds of tributes can have very serious unintended consequences for mental health.

The response to my post was overwhelmingly positive. I only got one negative piece of feedback, from a woman I think is a friend of the family and one of the organizers of all these tributes. She pressed me to take down my post, said the social media platform was not the appropriate place to discuss this and that I should have brought it up in a neighborhood board meeting.

Were these months too short a time to wait before addressing this? Was the social media platform the wrong place to address it?

GENTLE READER: One does not debate grief. It is not only unseemly, it is unproductive.

Posting on social media was a mistake, but not for the reasons given by the organizer -- and her idea of raising it at a neighborhood board meeting would have been equally bad.

None of which invalidates your concern for the health and safety of other children in the community; you merely need to have the discussion in a forum that is not open to the boy's parents. They are grieving, and do not want to think that they may inadvertently be party to demonstrations that may lead to other suicides.

There is also nothing to be gained by opposing the organizer, whose attention, understandably, is on the boy's family.

Miss Manners would have you talk -- behind the scenes -- to responsible and disinterested parties at the school, or any other institutions that may be planning further memorials.

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(Please send your questions to Miss Manners at her website, www.missmanners.com; to her email, gentlereader@missmanners.com; or through postal mail to Miss Manners, Andrews McMeel Syndication, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106.)

Copyright 2026 Judith Martin

COPYRIGHT 2026 JUDITH MARTIN