A Cautionary Tale

I struggled for a while to come up with a title for this post. Something happened recently that I have wanted to blog about for a while, but it took some time for me to sort out my thoughts and decide where I wanted to go with this post. This post concerns the death of a man we will call Gary. Gary passed away early this week.

Gary was the patriarch of a family of dear friends of both Heather and mine from back in the old hometown. They were quite a lovely family in better times: mother Mary Ann, twins Fred and Sharon, and daughter Laura. Sadly, this family was beset by a number of gut-wrenching tragedies over the years. Any one of these happenings would be incomprehensible for any close-knit family to swallow, but this family just seemed to have more than their fair share of troubles for reasons we will never understand in this life.

Nearly two decades ago, Sharon unexpectedly passed away as a teenager due to a severe asthma attack. She was such a sweet girl, and she would no doubt have grown up into a fine woman someday. It didn't seem fair that God could call home someone so wonderful who had barely begun living. Sharon's death deeply affected their whole family, as well as all of us who knew her.

Almost a decade later, Mary Ann herself would be killed in a car accident while driving to work one morning. This happened about a month or two after Heather and I got married. Her passing was so bittersweet -- we knew she would be reunited with Sharon in Heaven, but we missed her here on Earth, and we were so sad for the family she left behind.

These events serve as a reminder of life lesson #1: you just never know when your time here on Earth will end. We have no guarantees of a long life. Get right with God, and hug your family every day.

For the rest of this post, I want to talk more about Gary. Gary could be an incredibly difficult person to be around at times, even before all the tragedies. He was frequently gruff and abrasive. He was apparently a rather learned individual, having attended the University of Illinois (one of my alma maters!) at one point. I believe I even heard once that he had a law degree. However, whenever we were around Gary, we frequently got the impression that he felt he was smarter than all the rubes around him. I suspect he didn't really much care for taking orders, and I recall he got let go from at least one job. He tried starting at least one business, which ultimately failed. Many people found Gary to be very off-putting. We aren't sure what Gary did for much of the time he was unemployed, as he stayed home while Mary Ann went to work as a teacher. I know Mr. Mom situations are perfectly normal these days, but most Mr. Moms tend pitch in with the housework while their spouses are working. We never really saw that with Gary. I know he wrote letters to the editor of the local paper a lot, but I am not sure what else he did with his time. At any rate, teachers are woefully underpaid, and the family really could have used the additional financial help he could have provided by taking a job.

This brings me to life lesson #2: sometimes you have to suck up your pride and step up to provide for your family's needs. Believe me, I have been in situations like this before. It's not easy.

Now I will admit that there is a lot about Gary that I don't know, not being a member of their family. I hope I am not coming across as overly judgemental -- if so, I do apologize. It is easy for those of us on the outside of the situation to criticize. I think it is entirely likely that Gary suffered from some kind of clinical depression or other mental illness. I saw similar symptoms in my own grandfather, who was hospitalized at a state hospital in Texas on a number of occasions. Sadly, mental illness often carries a stigma in our society, and this stigma discourages many people from seeking adequate treatment. There is no shame in having a mental illness -- it is an illness, just like diabetes or high blood pressure. If you have a mental illness, and you have the capacity to recognize it and get help for it, then you owe it to yourself and your family to do so. I don't know if Gary ever sought out any help -- but if he didn't, he should have.

Toward the end of his life, Gary did not cope especially well with the many tragedies that had befallen him. We know he turned to alcohol to deal with his pain. People on occasion tried to reach out and help him, only to be rebuked by Gary in one of his drunken stupors. Gary had become a bitter and angry alcoholic. I cut the man a little slack on that one -- many of us would probably face the same temptations in dealing with the unimaginable amount of anguish he faced.

And this brings me to life lesson #3: we ultimately have choices. We can choose destructive ways of coping with our issues, or we can choose to reach out and get help.

Ultimately, Gary died a bitter and lonely death. He was estranged from his own surviving children, having disapproved of their choices of spouses. His obituary has yet to appear in the local paper, and I wonder if it ever will. When I first learned of Gary's death, I felt disgust. Disgust at the choices he made, and what he put his family through over the years. After reflecting on it a while, my feelings have changed more toward pity. He could have had such a better life for himself if only he had made different choices. While it would be easy to say that his life, in many ways, was a waste -- perhaps it is not so after all. His life can serve as an object lesson for all of us to make better choices, love our families unconditionally, and strive to do better.

Farewell, Gary. I hope you are in a better place now.