Reach Out

Tragedy struck yet again in our small community. Last week another fell victim to suicide in our small community. This marks the fourth since our own son Stephen took his own life. Its difficult for me to imagine that any person reading this post has not known and has been affected by a death in this manner.

My heart breaks for the family of this dear one that recently passed as it does for the families of all the “survivors” of suicide in our community. There are as many different reasons for suicide as there are those who choose to take their lives by it. There are stories in plain view but more often than not, there are hidden stories that we as survivors may never fully know.

In most cases, this comes out of the blue and it takes every one of us completely unaware and off guard. Then in the wake, we continue to ask ourselves, what could or should I have done? And also to try to console ourselves we say to ourselves, if I had only known, I would have done or said this or that.

The overwhelming similarity is that each person who contemplates this tragic way out of their internal prison is that they are in a very dark place that they keep in the secret recesses of their soul. Their lives are in utter turmoil and they do not know how to cope or where to turn next. This becomes the only escape that they know. Its very difficult for me to put myself into that dark place and try to understand it. But yet there are multitudes among us who are traveling down into this darkness continually and we never know it, because we see them smiling and laughing as they present to us a completely different face. Sadly, we know this must be a fact by the sheer number of suicides that happen daily in our own country.

I would encourage each one of us to take time out of our busy lives and take the opportunity to spend time and be with our own loved ones. We must let them know that they are loved, wanted and needed. We must encourage them to find hope in their own lives and guide them toward that hope continually. For we may truly never know what is going on in the hearts and minds of our loved ones. It behooves each of us to reach out to our loved ones each and every day and let them know that they are never alone.