Soccer Dad
At my son's soccer practice today, parents were told some stunning news. One of us, a dad, had killed himself last week. This is a man who had been at every practice and game. He had three young daughters, ages 5, 3, and 2, and at the practices he was always the perfect picture of a doting father with his children.
I had judged his outward appearance as stable and loving. I'm sure the loving part was right. Of course, I knew nothing about his personal life. That's what scares me... You just can't tell what is going through a person's head. On the outside they look as normal as you, but on the inside there's torment and sadness, and maybe worse.
The way this man took his life was violent, and it involved the police, but thank God his children were not physically hurt. Now they just have to go through the life-long pain of losing their father, a man they will barely remember in years to come except, perhaps, for a happy memory of playing at the park during soccer practice.
I had judged his outward appearance as stable and loving. I'm sure the loving part was right. Of course, I knew nothing about his personal life. That's what scares me... You just can't tell what is going through a person's head. On the outside they look as normal as you, but on the inside there's torment and sadness, and maybe worse.
The way this man took his life was violent, and it involved the police, but thank God his children were not physically hurt. Now they just have to go through the life-long pain of losing their father, a man they will barely remember in years to come except, perhaps, for a happy memory of playing at the park during soccer practice.
Permalink posted by Phil at 9:27 PM
4 Comments:
wow, sorry to hear that. It must be incredibly hard for his family. I knew someone who did the same kind of thing. Suicide is often the outcome of years of struggling with depression and/or mental illness, and often casual or even closer acquaintainces have no idea of these struggles. Sounds like the soccer parents and others will help this family through this tough time though.
Isn't strange that you think you know someone and you don't. One sunday our pastor was talking about pornography addiction. He said I want everyone to put their head down as far as you can, like almost in your lap, then he asked for a show of hands for how many struggle with this addiction. Out of 350 there...he said about 150 hands went up. Then he went on and said, how many of you struggle or have struggled with the thought of suicide...he said there were only about 100 hands that DIDN'T go up.... you never know.
Pray for your friends, pray for your children's friends and pray for the friends of those...you never know how these tragedies will shape our lives.
Welcome to the real world..ha.
I enjoy reading your blog.
It's always such a shock to learn about death, especially when it is so tragic like this. I just found ou thtat a girl I went to college with was killed, and it may have been her husband, I still don't know what to think because they dated while in school. (I only knew her in passing.) I hope those kids pull through and that they can find some understanding with such a hard time.
A girl I knew a number of years ago was going thru mental ups and downs, as was I. She had told many of her friends she was considering suicide. She wanted me to move in with her and take care of her...I told her I couldn't do that, but I would still be her friend and do things with her. A week later, she gassed herself to death in her truck on Coeur d'Alene Mountain.
After my Mom died of Cancer in 2001, almost two months later my Dad shot himself. My sister had to go identify his bloody body and she's now suicidal. I have been depressed for years, as is obvious by my writing, but suicide is not part of the picture for me. I feel blessed.
When a person commits suicide, it is analagous to him, taking his full trash can, dumping it on your lawn and leaving it up to YOU to clean up the mess. We ALL have suicidal thots; it's just part of the price us humans pay for having overactive brains that 'daydream' or do other weird things to us.
I'm not a psychic, or a mind-reader, but one of my life's philosophies is, that the 5 or 10 minutes you spend talking to someone might just enable them to live a few days longer...or a few years longer. We all touch each other. I am sad the gentleman you referred to, was so "closed off" that he couldn't "talk out" his feelings; sounds like he tried very hard to keep up appearances.
I suppose it's akin to "social Darwinism"; 'only the strong survive'. Don't let it get to you, buddy. Hang in there.....
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