It’s an interesting phenomenon really—how it just so happens that you bump into people whose story-lines you share, people who aren’t new to you, yet somehow you never really knew that part of their story, the part of it that mirrors your own, the part that they’ve tried to keep hidden deep down inside of themselves. Yes, after finally choosing to step out and openly share my own personal history with suicide, I’ve begun to bump into its fallout far too frequently to be called “coincidental.”
One such encounter occurred at a local retailer when I ran into a woman whom I’ve been bumping into there for years, a woman whom I’m quite fond of and whom I thought I knew a lot about. I learned more about her, though, when I decided to mention what I’d been up to/why she had not seen as much of me recently. “I’ve been working on another book,” I told her. “It’s about suicide in the Church-the story of my father. I really hope you’ll check it out.” Her response wasn’t what I expected.
“You know, my husband used to say that it felt like he had a snake in his pocket, and it kept sticking its head out and telling him to just do it; and then one day he did. He died from suicide, Angela. Yep, he sure did—he just couldn’t fight it anymore.” I was silenced almost completely by what she shared in the middle of the store; and I felt as if time stood still for us for just a few quiet moments, as people continued to scurry by us both as if nothing tragically big had ever happened to any of us at all. Her words hung heavy in the air between us and from them an image was painted in my head that I have been unable to erase since that day—a snake in his pocket.
He was desperate for change she would go on to tell me, struggling for many years with the challenges of addiction; and he needed relief, a change, and that serpent in his pocket told him repeatedly that the only way he was ever going to get it was to leave this world. I so wish, wish with everything I’ve got in me, that the voice he heard in that one pivotal moment had whispered something far different to him—You’re so loved and valued, you are seen, it doesn’t have to end this way, there will be a better day down here. But that wasn’t what he heard.
Yes, I can be quite the romantic, and I can have those moments when I believe that the perfect words at the perfect time really can rewrite the whole story-line—and I do believe that this is a real possibility. But I also believe, because I’ve lived through it too, that mere words, even the most wonderful ones, cannot and do not always mend us. Nonetheless, we can choose to say to those around us the types of things we so wish our loved ones had somehow been able to hear in their last moments here; and that can be the change we carry in our own pockets.
Dr FOSS, I have read your latest book, HOME, A Story of Two Fathers. I read it in one sitting, as I could not put it down until I had read every word. I loved my Daddy and rode with him in his pick-up truck, too, enjoying every minute of the short trips fro
one customer to another. Your book of family love and tears is like no other book that I have ever read.
If this happy, sad and charming book can touch one heart to not even think of suicide, it is so worth your amazing true and lovingly-written book.
Thank you!
Thank you, Kay, for taking the time to write this, and thank you for reading the story of my fathers! As is always the case, you are so very kind/encouraging, and it is so very appreciated. Let us pray together for only good things to come from this latest project that is so very special to me.