another death to "ED" --

following is an excerpt from an article in the Washington Post...the entire article can be found at:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/01/AR2009050103262_pf.html

Sarah's Death at 19 Left Her Family Struggling to Understand the Power of an Eating Disorder.
By Caitlin Gibson
Special to The Washington Post
Tuesday, May 5, 2009

"Leah's voice was calm on the phone.

I'm on my way home, she said. Sarah died this morning.

In the steady tone my best friend would use to say she had a flat tire or was late for class, Leah explained that she was about to board a flight to join her family as they prepared for her little sister's funeral.

Leah had known on some level that this might happen. She'd read the books, done the research and understood that girls with eating disorders got better, or they didn't. She saw Sarah as what she was: the everygirl of her illness, not immune because she was smart and beautiful, popular and athletic. But the knowledge that it might happen did nothing to prepare Leah.

Her false serenity lasted until the funeral, where she sat beside her parents in the synagogue and greeted a seemingly endless line of mourners. I took my place behind her, next to her aunt. Person after person shuffled forward to offer tearful embraces, and Leah's cocoon suddenly collapsed. The piercing cry that tore from her throat silenced the room.

Leah's aunt and I lunged forward in the instinctive way that one body answers another: our palms pressed against her back, fingers wrapped around her shoulders. Leah's scream subsided into a whimper, then quiet. The day shuddered on.

A growing consensus suggests that for young people with eating disorders, the sooner the problem is identified and aggressively treated, the better the chance of recovery. It is a truth that haunts Sarah's family; the tragedy of a teenager's funeral is all the more poignant when there is an underlying question of whether the loss could have been prevented; when those left behind cry not just for the person who is gone, but for the missed moments and lost opportunities that might have saved a life."

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