An odd weekend. Coming home Friday night, I was in a better, but none the less somewhat unhappy mood, feeling late, badgered, and ready to just be home. Then I got home to the Ravishing Mrs. TB out on the front porch, waving me in.
Her mother was on the phone. The father of my younger nephew, Gille Beag Dorcha, had shot himself in the head that morning.
He had had a troubled life of late. My sister in law had asked him to move out some 8 months or so ago, as his lifestyle and lack of job had pushed her to the limit. He had moved back in with his mother, and was staying there. He had difficulties with alcohol, difficulties with keeping a job (and supporting his son), and difficulties with the law. And he was also a victim - a victim of a bad divorce, one that punitively punished him and separated him from his daughter. And so, Friday morning while his mother was watching TV, he took his life.
It certainly changes your perspective on life.
Was he saved? Both my daughters asked me, and I don't have the full answer. I know he knew - probably three times over, as it occurred: we had discussed it once that I recall, I know my sister in law discussed it, and we also found out that it appears he attended Catholic church for some portion of his life with his grandfather. He knew the truth, and this side of death, we'll never know for sure. But the hope, I think, is slim.
The time we discussed it, he told me flat up that he did not believe in God. As I look back now, I wonder what his objection was based on. So often, I think, objections are based on what anyone feels, rather than on any sort of serious investigation of the matter.
How does it change your perspective? On one had, it certainly makes the importance of family that much more important. Every memory is important - because you never know when you will stop making them.
A second part is the criticality of the Gospel. Eternity is real. Every day, men and women are plunging into Hell -certainly from their own volitional will, but perhaps as well because someone, maybe me, failed to raise the issue for reasons that in the light of eternity, will seem silly indeed.
The third part is the nature of the important and the urgent. Life and death, eternal life and death, are important. The souls of men and women are important.
The other stuff will burn with fire as chaff.
Oddly enough, the thing that sticks with me the most is that yesterday, his brothers had to come to his mother's house to clean the room. What a metaphor for our sin - in the end, others end up cleaning up the mess, perhaps even the blood, that we leave behind, splattered all over.
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