“None of your concern :)”

The event produced excruciating sadness for this young woman’s parents, a cataclysm for any family; and because of its shocking and mystifying story-line, it is impossible for the rest of us to comprehend with rational thought why it happened. In a verdant setting at an inward curve of the Washington State coastline — among beach-combers, grasslands, evergreens and mountain views — our subject hung herself by the neck from a limb until dead by asphyxiation. She had just turned Sweet 16. She had recently attended Prom surrounded by friends, made the cheer-leading squad and Dean’s List; an accomplished contortionist, a risk-taker, a movie actress with dreams of one day piloting commercial aircraft — she was slim, beautiful, extroverted and determined (witness her thought-out and successful suicide); and appallingly in our last glimpse of her she hangs like alien fruit, lifeless on a tree.

A competitor from age three at beauty pageants, often a winner; a Miss Photogenic, she was considered a ball of energy, perpetually excited; her smile was so powerful and consistent she inspired friends and acquaintances with her unfailingly sweet and high spirits. Her face as a four-year-old child — grinning ear-to-ear with one cheek dimpled — became part of American, and perhaps world-cultural iconography. That photographic meme persists and is still popular today despite turbulent attrition in the realm of electronic symbolism. She is perpetually known as that “Grinning Girl.”

The deceased left a final, cryptic message on a social media channel: “None of your concern :).”

Toward whom she directed this communication remains unknown. ‘None of your concern’ seems synonymous with ‘Mind your own business,’ or ‘Stay out of my details.’

Her comment might also allude to words from a contemporary song: It’s none of your concern anymore. None of your concern. Is it even worth it at all? Is it even worth it?

The symbol at the end of our victim’s statement — a colon preceding a right-hand bracket — has become code for happiness, states of happiness, or seemingly any condition of mind-body causing one’s face to light up with a smile:

So we might (with trepidation) attempt a free translation of the desperate teenager’s last writing:

“My details are my own. I am happy now.”

Writing on the internet a friend left a simple elegy: “Miss you tons. I thought you had it all.”

[Images were appropriated, creators unknown; song lyrics: J. Aito]