LogFAQs > #888301716

He was trimming hedges when I called. They weren't going to keep their house. It honestly wasn't worth much but even so they couldn't make payments on it. He decided if they could sell the house before they lost it, they could maybe buy a trailer--a cheap one at that. But either way, his wife was going to leave him. (That much at least turned out to be overly negative. She finally started to work, and they use that money now to pay for their house. But he didn't know that then and I certainly didn't.)

I was at a loss for words. I couldn't say anything. I had nothing to say. I couldn't empathize with him. I couldn't give him any advice.

The day he learned he was going to lose that fight with cancer was one of the happiest days of his life. He had six months to live, which has now run out. Those six months, he was happier than I had ever seen him.

Look guys, I get it. Suicide sucks and you want to do what you can to try to prevent it. And that's great. Really, I mean that. But I think one of the biggest problems with suicide is that nobody takes it seriously. It's easy to stand at the top of a cliff and tell people to climb it. To the people at the bottom, you can never know how hard it is to climb that cliff, and the worst part is your stubborn insistence that the climb is worth it when you have no idea what it costs or what it takes.

I don't have a solution. I'm sorry. I wish I did. But at least be real for a second. You don't know how anyone else feels. If you have any chance of preventing suicide, it's not going to happen by trivializing their situation with supposition of familiarity.

The best thing I can come up with is actually what I did during those phone calls. I was humbled and completely blindsided, but even after several years, the best I can come up with is just to listen and pray for them.
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