Survivor's Guilt

Okay, that's a dramatic title for a post, but reading An Imaginary Life has sort of pushed me into a melancholic mood. Frankly, I've been trying to avoid thinking about death or maybe I've been thinking about death too much lately. My roommates have even informed me that I should major in dead things (how sad is that?). I suppose it is because when I think of death I immediately associate it with a neighbor's son who committed suicide when I was young. He had been a really good friend of my brothers and I and had put up with quite a bit from us. I hate thinking about it because I feel sometimes that I should have sensed that he was going to kill himself. I had actually seen him outside playing basketball in his driveway a few days before he did it, he did that alot and would often play with us, and when I was talking with him, he seemed like himself. I guess I feel like maybe I missed something, missed him being upset and angry and sad. Sometimes I ask myself if I could have said something to him then or done something that would have prevented what happened. I feel like I messed up. Now when I look back, after learning about warning signs of suicide and all that, I can see them. I have to wonder if Hecuba or Andromache felt the same way about the deaths they experienced. Did Andromache live the rest of her life wondering about ways she could have prevented her son's death? Is it something that everyone experiences? What can we, the living, do after the dead are gone?