It’s the end of summer and time to cut the corn. So many years ago, when Matt Yost was a toddler, he used to “farm the carpet” of his house near Moundridge using toys as heavy equipment with his older brother, Grant.

After finishing a real day’s work in the field this week, Grant’s phone rang, and he once more recounted memories of his younger brother, this time to a reporter. Grant couldn’t help but remember those first years, playing in the living room and making tractor sounds with Matt.

Today, Matt, 18, would have attended his first class at the University of Kansas, where he was planning to study architecture. Instead, his life was cut short in late July. After a struggle with depression, the young man known for his smile committed suicide.

Grant, a Kansas State junior, seemed used to talking about Matt’s life and death by now, and his words flowed evenly and coolly into the phone. Earlier this summer, when life was normal, Grant accompanied his brother to KU orientation, giving him a tip or two about college life.

Now Grant has to rely on the memories he and his family share of Matt, the youngest of three children. Grant remembered him as both an outstanding athlete and a strong academic student who scored a 32 on his ACT test and was in National Honor Society.

In the life history handed out at Matt’s funeral July 29, his older sister, Janette Crawford, wrote: “We’ll never know exactly why Matt ended his life, and we’ll ask questions until we leave this world. But we know God is bigger and more powerful than death, and bigger and more powerful than depression and other diseases of the mind. God knows the truth, and the heart.”

Matt was a gifted running back on the football team, averaging 10.7 yards per carry his senior year at Moundridge High School. At the funeral, Moundridge football coach Brad Hollinger spoke of the selflessness of the person called “Toast” by his teammates.

“Matt was probably a better back for us without the football than when he had the football,” Hollinger said, according to a transcript. “Matt carried out ball fakes that would win him an academy award.”

Matt would never put himself before his team, even though he was a star.

“When we would watch game film, any mention of his athleticism, big play or stats would just bring out that smile,” Hollinger said. “You know the smile, along with that curly mop of his that could brighten any room that he walked into.”

Kyle Neufeld, a classmate of Matt’s since they started school and a football teammate, remembered a strange habit he had.

“A really funny thing is during football practice every day he’d punt the ball to himself during breaks,” he said, giving a little chuckle as he pictured it. “He’d punt the ball straight up and catch it.”

Cassondra Huxman, another classmate, remembered both Matt’s humility and his famous blazing speed in gym class when they were young.

“You had to look out for him, because if you didn’t keep an eye on him, he’d be gone, flying across the gym,” she said.

Grant spoke of the work Matt put into his success in athletics. Matt excelled in track in addition to football, competing in the 800 meters at the Kansas state meet as a junior. Matt believed that a healthy diet was important to his success, so he became a vegetarian, Grant said.

Matt’s father, John Yost, said Matt had strong opinions on many subjects and was deeply concerned about political issues.

“He was well-read,” he said. “If things didn’t work out, whether it be global warming or whatever, he could see the fallacy in the discussion points. He was good at really looking at things and determining what’s really going on.”

Matt transferred to Rocky Ford High School in Rocky Ford, Colo., midway through his senior year, where he stayed with family and graduated in May. Crawford wrote in his life history that at the end of his life “Matt became a different person than the sweet, smiling Matt we used to know.”

Together, the Yost family – Grant, Janette, John and his mother, Carol – tried to convey who Matt was through written remembrances and interviews. Stories such as how much he cared for their cat Truman, and the time he stopped at every historical landmark off Highway 50 when driving his siblings back from a Colorado trip at age 16.

Just the things that come to mind. Snapshots, not one of them telling the complete story of a life cut short. There are so many happy memories.