Dark places

It’s so common as to be a cliché: When you hear unthinkably bad news, your initial reaction is denial. No! This CAN’T be true! There must be some MISTAKE! So it was when I got a call from an old friend (and, I do mean OLD, as in 81 years old) that a mutual friend (much younger, at age 59) had taken his own life. No WAY. Can’t be true. Old man’s got his facts mixed up. I even got him to doubt himself, as we continued to talk. Are you SURE? Who TOLD you? Maybe he’s WRONG. But soon enough, the tragic news was confirmed. Gone. Gone. Gone. We had drifted apart, this friend and I. Admittedly, his life kind of went “off the rails” and he was haunted by demons – many of which were obvious, some of which obviously weren’t so clear to those of us no longer in his orbit. His passing has haunted my thoughts. We were friends. We spent time in each other’s company, often centered around running and other times around family. I’ve been unpacking the memories of happier times – Thursday night runs, followed by a casual beer in the high school parking lot; barbecues and kid birthdays; long weekend runs on the rural roads out where his family once lived; our family participating in the many local running events that he organized.

The point of this post is to reflect and give thoughts to the unthinkable. Please don’t try to console us; that’s not the point. This is not our loss. True loss, devastating emptiness, belongs to his immediate family – especially his two children. If you’re going to say an extra prayer, bow your head for them. As noted, our lives drifted apart. Not through any malice or hard feelings. It just happens. Our paths crossed less frequently, his life choices became a bit more erratic. We stayed in touch, but not frequently; we’d see each other here and there, exchange phone messages every once in a while. The news of his passing was jarring and shocking and surprising, but when we try to connect the dots of recent times, it became a bit more in the realm of possibilities – now, a little more than a week later, in hindsight. Still. What drives a man to enter such dark places? How does this happen? Didn’t he have so much to live for? Don’t we all have much to live for? These are thoughts that are inevitable, and yes they can be haunting, textbook, cliché for these things. Dark places. Who gets there and how does it unravel to that? There are no answers to these thoughts and questions, at least not ones that we’ll know. All we can do is lower our head, reflect, try to unpack complex emotions. And wonder.