Stupid Decisions
Saturday afternoon I went into work and was told that a fellow employee had passed away that morning. I figured he had passed from the heart problems he had recently. He was in his late 60s and his heath hadn't been the greatest. Later that day, I learned that he had gotten a ride home and put a bullet in his head. Damned fool....
He had gotten into a very embarrassing bit of legal trouble earlier in the week. Something that humiliated him, his family, and our organization. But it was NOT worth killing himself over.
He has left behind a wife, his children, a town full of people who cared deeply for him (he had spent 13 years as the mayor), coworkers who thought of him as family, and untold numbers of Youth Challenge cadets and graduates whose lives he had touched in untold ways.
His funeral is Wednesday morning. The Cadets will form a corridor for his casket to pass through. I am sure that this will be an extremely well attended funeral.
My only hope, as strange as it sounds, is that the cadets who attend the funeral learn something from it. That they see all of the lives that are touched, some shattered, by such a decision. That suicide is not the way out. That it leaves way too many broken hearts in its wake.
And it is so sad and ANGERING that he made such a devastating, irreversible, selfish decision.
A stupid decision.....
He had gotten into a very embarrassing bit of legal trouble earlier in the week. Something that humiliated him, his family, and our organization. But it was NOT worth killing himself over.
He has left behind a wife, his children, a town full of people who cared deeply for him (he had spent 13 years as the mayor), coworkers who thought of him as family, and untold numbers of Youth Challenge cadets and graduates whose lives he had touched in untold ways.
His funeral is Wednesday morning. The Cadets will form a corridor for his casket to pass through. I am sure that this will be an extremely well attended funeral.
My only hope, as strange as it sounds, is that the cadets who attend the funeral learn something from it. That they see all of the lives that are touched, some shattered, by such a decision. That suicide is not the way out. That it leaves way too many broken hearts in its wake.
And it is so sad and ANGERING that he made such a devastating, irreversible, selfish decision.
A stupid decision.....