'To Bless All Mankind' December 5, 2016 Issue

Two approaches to stopping suicide

John Yemma

Adapted from an article titled “An imperfect, important approach” published in The Christian Science Monitor, September 5, 2016.

A dad I know was pals with his grown son. They would chat on the phone almost every day. On weekends, they would go target shooting. “We’d go to a range in the woods. It was fun and loud, plinking away at soda bottles and paper targets,” the dad recalls.

One morning, the son didn’t answer the phone. Hours went by. Finally, the dad drove across town in a snowstorm to his apartment. There he found him. And the gun.

It wasn’t evident, but “he had been in a down spot,” the dad recalls. “He wanted company, didn’t get it, and started drinking.” Depression and alcohol certainly didn’t help. But neither did the gun. Had the gun not been there, he might have found another way to kill himself, but he could just as well have passed out and rubbed his eyes in the light of a new day. “He made a stupid snap decision that affected everybody’s life forever.”

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