How Parents Turned Their Grief Over Their Children’s Death Into A Campaign For Suicide Awareness

''Ellie’s Bus is a bright orange ‘78 Volkswagen camper van. There’s a Scooby-Doo decal on one side and Shaggy’s cheeky grin plastered across the other. Sixteen-year-old Ellie Leikin, of Severna Park, Maryland, didn’t mind the homage to Scooby-Doo’s Mystery Machine when she bought the minibus secondhand, but the fake eyelashes on the headlamps came off.

The camper van was a gift to Ellie from her parents on her 16th birthday and as a reward for making the National Honor Society. She researched the bus herself and fell in love with it. Larry Leikin, Ellie’s dad, warned her it wouldn’t be easy to drive; it was hydro-powered and had a dodgy shifter linkage – not the kind of car a teenager would normally go for. Ellie powered through and got the hang of driving the van; in fact, “she mastered it”, Larry told BuzzFeed.

On 29 November 2015 Ellie killed herself, leaving behind her parents, Larry and Sherry, her two siblings, and that bright orange bus. The only sign Ellie was thinking of ending her life came afterwards, when her parents found her diary, a “10-day journey leading up to her death”, according to her father...''

by Maggy van Eijk