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Last week I went to the funeral of my Cousin in Iowa. Dick was ten years older than me. He was the guy in our family who everyone looked up to. He was the first in our family to graduate from College. He worked hard his whole life. He became a Sales Manager in a large company & seemed very successful & happy. He had challenges in life, overcame & moved forward. He had a loving relationship with his wife & family. Whenever I saw him, he had a smile on his face & always asked how I was doing & how my family was. He would ask about them by name. He was active in the Episcopal Church & volunteered in the community. He was the example I looked up to & tried to emulate. Toward the end, he & his wife were having health issues. Both were having mobility issues & other health problems. We talked on a regular basis. My Brother & I were making plans to see them within the coming weeks.
We went to the funeral service at his church & met relatives that we hadn’t seen for a while. I talked with his sister when she told me that he had taken his own life. She said that she had no idea that he was having any problems or issues that he couldn’t handle. I’m having problems wrapping my head around this. The problem I have is NOT on a spiritual level. I pass no judgement about what he did. I do not fully understand what was going on & never will in this life. The issue for me is: there is at least a dozen people that I know of, who would of dropped everything to help him.
On the way home I asked my brother (who’s a retired Policeman) what do we learn from this? The only conclusion we came up with is: regardless of any situation we experience in this life, if we feel we are backed into corner with no escape in sight, we have to talk with each other. We should never feel that we are facing a problem, issue or crisis alone. By the end of our (3+ hrs) trip, we decided that we had to talk to our wives, children, grandchildren & friends & tell them
Quote:You are not alone, talking to one of us could improve the situation. You never know unless we try.
In Church, we talk about the importance of praying to a God we can’t see. I believe it’s just as important to communicate with people in our lives that we can see on a daily basis. In the process, we must be selective in what we say.
That is what we’re trying to do on this site: communicate. There is a big advantage to speak what we feel, know & believe without judgement. And do it anonymously. Thanks everyone here for helping me along this journey.
MM, I’m sorry for this loss. It’s tough to learn that someone you love was struggling alone. I’m also using a lot of the advice and examples of those at this site in talking more openly with my own family, so I’m seconding your thanks.
Thanks for sharing that touching story. I am always reminded of one of my favorite hymns, “Lord I Would Follow Thee” and the line: Quote:In the quiet heart is hidden sorrow that the eye can’t see
One of my son’s high school classmates recently committed suicide. He was an ex marine, married with a couple children. I read some of the condolences in the online guest book thing. Several of them had words to the effect “I didn’t know you were in such pain and I’m sorry I wasn’t there to help you.” In some ways I think suicide is similar to feelings during a faith crisis. Nobody who hasn’t had a faith crisis can really understand those feelings. Likewise, I don’t think anyone who hasn’t seriously considered suicide can understand the suicidal person.
Quote:In Church, we talk about the importance of praying to a God we can’t see. I believe it’s just as important to communicate with people in our lives that we can see on a daily basis. In the process, we must be selective in what we say.
That is what we’re trying to do on this site: communicate. There is a big advantage to speak what we feel, know & believe without judgement. And do it anonymously. Thanks everyone here for helping me along this journey.
I couldn’t agree more, and also thank everyone here for the love and kindness toward me. I hope and believe this is just a faint shadow of the kind of love Jesus has for us.
Thanks for sharing these thoughts, MM. It was cool to hear how you and your brother talked about that and recognized that.
These kinds of thoughts are to me what the church is about. Home teaching, connections, sharing and serving and supporting.
We never know who is out there silently struggling and hoping they can trust someone to be safe enough to open up to and share feelings, or maybe get a little help to get unstuck in some areas of life.
Church provides some opportunities to do this. There are other ways too…but church can be that. It should be that. Regardless of the other stuff at church.
I just received a big compliment from my DIL. She is the wife of my youngest son. She said that Danny likes to talk things over with me. Whenever he has problem or decision to make he says:
Quote:I have to talk with my Dad.
As a Father, that is the greatest compliment you can be given.I wish my Cousin could of said the same thing:
Quote:I have to talk with my Cousin.
MM, I want to add my sincere condolences for your family’s loss. I also appreciate your sharing this. I think it’s a good reminder of the value of life, of real relationships, of sharing and communicating in meaningful ways.
I have been greatly blessed during my FC/FT trials by friends who cared and by this site, both in slightly different, but very impactful ways. So, thank you for all of you here. Now, I need to seek out my friends/family who have helped and thank them. I’m going to start with my wife, when I see her later tonight.
As painful as this post is, I need that reminder to talk person to person to people. Sometimes I run too fast and let opportunities pass. Thanks in an awkward way for the reminder. This reminds me of when I was working & had a business problem come up. It was the job of our department to do the annual physical inventory & reconcile the results to the financial records. Every year you had adjustments either to increase or decrease the value. It usually was small or insignificant amounts. One year I had a substantial writeoff. We were a publically traded company. It was going to be a substantial amount. Hundreds of thousands of dollars. It was going to draw the attention of everyone. Board of Directors, officers, auditors, etc. I worried about it for weeks and couldn’t explain the adjustment. So, I decided to go to my boss & explain “our” problem. As we sat down together, I went through everyone of the adjustment I used to value the inventory. I had done it many times by myself with no conclusion for the adjustment. I talked & my boss listened as I went through each entry. He didn’t say a word. But, in the process of verbalizing what I had done, I realized where the error was. I had suffered needlessly for weeks agonizing over a problem that was solved in a matter of minutes when I verbalized the problem with another human.
I’m not naive enough to think that all problems can be corrected by talking with another person for a few minutes. Or, to think that this problem I just described equals what my cousin was going through.
The conclusion I come up with is: I have a better chance to solve problems, (including my FC) by talking to one or more people than struggling to solve it by myself.
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