My friend killed himself last night.
He'd been battling depression for a while now. It's been years since he'd been the person I first met who was so joyful and uplifting. I'm not being trite. He was a big strong man, and he could've physically lifted me, but what really lifted me up was his spirit. He relished doing life.
We became friends not long after we met. I was a naive transplant to the Portland metro area from Southern California. It was the early nineties, and I was at the front of a wave of immigrants from SoCal who were returning the favor for the Oregon population's exodus to the south a hundred and fifty years earlier.
My wife and I built a house in a tidy suburb. We had bought a pretty hillside lot, about a half acre full of trash trees, majestic Sugar Maples, and soaring Doug Firs. We kept as many as we could, but the builder still had to fell three or four of the 100 foot giants. It immediately turned me into Paul Bunyon.
The contractor suggested selling the logs, but I insisted that I was going to cut them up for fire wood. He didn't say much, but as I recall he raised an eyebrow before politely stacking half a dozen of the several ton, 40-foot logs on the back corner of our lot. Six months later, in May of '92, we moved in.
After the unpacking was done, I immediately went to the local power tool rental emporium and secured a chain saw the size of a horse's leg. I had never felt so manly (with the possible exception of discovering my first tufts of puberty). Fueled by fannel shirts and gas fumes, I sawed away for hours, and thought that I'd made good progress until I was told you're supposed to saw the logs cross-ways. Over matched, I reluctantly surrended my manhood, er chainsaw, to one very nervous Mrs. Smitchell.
A few months later I met my friend. His kids took dance with mine, and we also found out we attended the same church. Getting acquainted led to getting together, and when we visited their home, it was obvious that they heated it with wood. Some folks might've missed it, but since I now had chainsaw fumes in my blood, I didn't fail to spot the six or seven cords of wood stacked by their barn.
I asked my new friend where he got his wood. He replied that he got a permit from the forestry department each year to go into the Coast Range and cut the timber he needed. Seeing an opportunity to knock at least ten years off the chore of cutting my logs, I asked him if he'd be interested in a supply that's a little closer.
Over the next few months we cut and split the logs, stacking huge piles of split rounds and trucking them out to his place. Our kids helped some and played together alot. Our wives looked out at us and probably wondered if there was any difference between the dads who were working and the kids who were playing. My friend made the work fun. He lifted me up out of a tough chore and by his sheer relish of the work invited me into that joy. We laughed and sweated, as he patiently explained how to split a round, or section a log. It was good.
It reminded me of Gensis where God looked at all that was going on and pronounced it good. It felt like that. Like we could do this forever, and it would always feel this great.
I miss that guy. He hasn't been around for a while. And I can't imagine what must have been going on in his head and his heart to make him do what he did, but I know one thing for sure. My friend didn't kill himself. The person who did that was somebody else. But now that he's gone, I know he's once again my friend because he's with his Lord. And the pain, blackness, and despair that drove him to suicide can't touch him there.
Like David, I get up take a bath, eat, and go on, knowing that I can't bring him back to where I am, but that I will go to where he is someday.
He'd been battling depression for a while now. It's been years since he'd been the person I first met who was so joyful and uplifting. I'm not being trite. He was a big strong man, and he could've physically lifted me, but what really lifted me up was his spirit. He relished doing life.
We became friends not long after we met. I was a naive transplant to the Portland metro area from Southern California. It was the early nineties, and I was at the front of a wave of immigrants from SoCal who were returning the favor for the Oregon population's exodus to the south a hundred and fifty years earlier.
My wife and I built a house in a tidy suburb. We had bought a pretty hillside lot, about a half acre full of trash trees, majestic Sugar Maples, and soaring Doug Firs. We kept as many as we could, but the builder still had to fell three or four of the 100 foot giants. It immediately turned me into Paul Bunyon.
The contractor suggested selling the logs, but I insisted that I was going to cut them up for fire wood. He didn't say much, but as I recall he raised an eyebrow before politely stacking half a dozen of the several ton, 40-foot logs on the back corner of our lot. Six months later, in May of '92, we moved in.
After the unpacking was done, I immediately went to the local power tool rental emporium and secured a chain saw the size of a horse's leg. I had never felt so manly (with the possible exception of discovering my first tufts of puberty). Fueled by fannel shirts and gas fumes, I sawed away for hours, and thought that I'd made good progress until I was told you're supposed to saw the logs cross-ways. Over matched, I reluctantly surrended my manhood, er chainsaw, to one very nervous Mrs. Smitchell.
A few months later I met my friend. His kids took dance with mine, and we also found out we attended the same church. Getting acquainted led to getting together, and when we visited their home, it was obvious that they heated it with wood. Some folks might've missed it, but since I now had chainsaw fumes in my blood, I didn't fail to spot the six or seven cords of wood stacked by their barn.
I asked my new friend where he got his wood. He replied that he got a permit from the forestry department each year to go into the Coast Range and cut the timber he needed. Seeing an opportunity to knock at least ten years off the chore of cutting my logs, I asked him if he'd be interested in a supply that's a little closer.
Over the next few months we cut and split the logs, stacking huge piles of split rounds and trucking them out to his place. Our kids helped some and played together alot. Our wives looked out at us and probably wondered if there was any difference between the dads who were working and the kids who were playing. My friend made the work fun. He lifted me up out of a tough chore and by his sheer relish of the work invited me into that joy. We laughed and sweated, as he patiently explained how to split a round, or section a log. It was good.
It reminded me of Gensis where God looked at all that was going on and pronounced it good. It felt like that. Like we could do this forever, and it would always feel this great.
I miss that guy. He hasn't been around for a while. And I can't imagine what must have been going on in his head and his heart to make him do what he did, but I know one thing for sure. My friend didn't kill himself. The person who did that was somebody else. But now that he's gone, I know he's once again my friend because he's with his Lord. And the pain, blackness, and despair that drove him to suicide can't touch him there.
Like David, I get up take a bath, eat, and go on, knowing that I can't bring him back to where I am, but that I will go to where he is someday.
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