ONE SHOT, MANY LIVES.

He'd always been a dependable guy. Back when he was living with his best friend, he paid half the rent every month with a few exceptions. During those months when he couldn't or didn't pay the rent, he felt so bad that he would pay two months' worth the following month. He refused to ask his live-in girlfriend for any help financially and tried his best to help out his junkie sister whose interests seemed to run more toward gangstas and pissing off her parents.

He'd always been a moody guy. He was one of those people who'd look up at a sunny day and agree it was beautiful but damaging to the irises. His world seemed to consist of an unfulfilled purgatory where the only constant was his pride in handling his personal affairs without needing help from anyone else.

Then, like many living in Michigan these days, he lost his job of twenty-seven years. He was fifty years old and identified himself as much by what he was able to handle on his own as the job he'd done for nearly three decades. Realizing he might need to ask someone else for help, realizing the purgatory in which he lived had just become less than he could control, he came up with a plan.

He casually asked a friend if he could see that shotgun they'd talked about before. The friend, thinking nothing of it, handed it to him.

One day when his live-in girlfriend wasn't home, he decided it was time. He grabbed sheets and other things and made sure he covered everything in the room so she wouldn't come home to a mess. He then dressed in several layers for the same reason.

Nobody knows how long he waited after that or what he thought about, but at some point after he covered everything, he placed the shotgun to his heart and pulled the trigger.

His best friend, also fifty but by appearance and behavior much younger, was despondent. He felt responsible, as if he should have somehow intuited this and stopped it. The sister didn't help. She called the best friend and started telling him he should have known her brother was this suicidal and could have stopped it if he hadn't been so occupied with his own girlfriend. The resulting conversation wasn't pleasant, nor should it have been...

I have been thinking about this since I heard about it yesterday. The best friend, the survivor if you will, has always been the jokester type, finding any and everything funny. I've never heard a serious word come out of his mouth that wasn't followed by sarcasm. But I always knew there was a serious component to him. The person who related the story did not and, considering the best friend's tendencies toward manic depressiveness, has decided to maintain a quasi-suicide watch.

I can't help thinking about how we see ourselves and how we maintain our sanity. Most of us have such a tenuous grasp on our senses of self that the slightest setback can be devastating. Was he weak? Yeah, probably. But I won't judge his actions or his decision. Until the gun is pressed against a major organ, neither should you.

But let's all think about him from time to time. Maybe it will help us think about someone else we don't take quite as seriously as we should. Maybe we will be there when their moment of weakness and doubt overtakes them.

Maybe it will be us~