The shot that ended his life was not heard around the world but it did and does reverberate through at least three generations. At the time of his death, he wounded his wife, his sons, his siblings and his extended family. His aged father was not told of his death, but by some parental instinct, some fey connection, he knew and mourned.

None of his grandchildren were born when he died by his own hand but we were affected. Grandpa Otto - as we called him with posthumous respect - was a benevolent, loving figure that we revered. We heard stories about him, I had his dark blue eyes, and we had a few treasured photographs. He was a master candy maker and we had his handwritten receipts for the candies that delighted thousands, made in his copper kettles at the candy company where he worked.

Each May we carried flowers to his grave and lovingly brushed dirt away from his grey, World War II era veteran's stone. My dad, youngest of the three surviving sons, would tell how his father had always asked that vegetables, not flowers be brought to his final resting place. His gardens - victory gardens in the last years of his 52-year-old life - had been his pride and more than once my dad brought homegrown tomatoes to place near the headstone.

The manner of his death was never discussed and by the time I was eight or nine, I was well aware that was odd. I knew how other relatives had died - of disease, of accident, or in war but because adults skirted his death and used hushed tones, I knew it was not a usual death.

By the time I was 11 and then 12, I had enlisted my cousin to help solve this family mystery. As junior sleuths we were sure that he must have been murdered. From a few chance, overhead comments, we knew that a gun had been involved and still young, still innocent, we were sure that murder must be the answer to our unasked question.

When my uncle, oldest of the trio of sons, died, I was 12 and when the minister came to pay a condolence call to my grandmother, I heard her talking about her late husband and his death. She spoke of a shotgun and enough particulars that I could guess what happened and my interest curdled in my heart.

I was 14 when my grandmother, always intuitive and close to me in a way that more like a sister than a grandparent, told me how her beloved Otto died. She spared me no detail, she told the story from her point of view, and I was both relieved to have gained the knowledge and also appalled.

My mother knew that she told me but we did not talk of it for years. I would learn later that my cousin knew long before me but had been sworn to silence by his father. My own father and I have never spoken of the tragedy, we tap dance around it to this day and will never discuss it.

In her later years, our great aunt Sophia, our grandfather's sister, talked to my cousin and me about her brother and told us her story.

Between her version and our grandmothers, we could piece together some small story of what happened. Grandpa Otto thought he was ill, suffering from cancer in an era when that was still most often a death sentence. After leading the other candy makers on strike, he had suffered a nervous breakdown.

On the day that he ended his life, my brave, strong grandmother had gone to interview for a job at the nearby hospital. I can guess, but never know, that he thought she could not provide for the family and from his sister, I believe that in his ill mind, he thought that he was sparing his family emotional pain.

Instead, he delivered emotional hell, an unexpected tragic blow that had the potential to either destroy them or make them strong. They were strong and his suicide made them stronger, made them fight the good fight of life even as they remained in denial about their father's death.

Sin is a strong word, one seldom in my vocabulary but if sin means to do wrong, to hurt others through actions, then my grandfather sinned on that long ago November Day, All Souls Day, in 1945.

I imagine his soul has atoned for his sins, that he regretted his violent act as soon as it was done if the soul survives the body but his transgression affects each one of his descendants and though tempered by distance and time, we hurt.

Suicide is more than a self-inflicted act; it is a weapon that wounds and leaves scars.

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