Posted on 12/26/2010 8:53:38 AM PST by Farmer Dean
My friend Bill killed himself in 1992.He couldn't deal with what he saw and did in Vietnam.I still miss him and feel that I could have done more to help him.
That’s a terrible burden to carry all these years. Let it go, just let it go. Some folks are beyond our help.
I have have a couple of childhood friends who are, to this day, only half way back from Nam. I understand your heartache, but you bear no responsibility.
Peace to you, FRiend, and the Joy Christ be with you.
Merry Christmas.
Would Bill have wanted you to suffer all this time because of him?
In the end, it was Bill’s decision, not yours. I have been in a similar situation, and its only afterwards that the signs all become clear.
He was probably glad to at least have you as a friend, who cared, such as you.
Matthew 5:4.
Matthew 7:7-12.
Luke 11:5-13.
I pray that you can move beyond your feelings of regret over the suicide of your friend, but I know that Christ can deliver you the peace that you seek.
No,but if I’d been a more understanding and perceptive man-I might have been more able to help him.
*shrug* Maybe. You have lots of training, skills and experience in PTSD counseling, no doubt? Perhaps one of the most skilled practitioners on earth could have saved him, but even they lose patients.
You had more to offer than any paid shrink. You were his friend.
Even now you miss him and wonder if you could have done something -anything- to bring him back.
Your grief/guilt is now old enough to vote. It’s an adult. Time to let it go out into the world on its own.
God have mercy on this poor soldiers soul. Suicide never solves anything. It only means you aren’t around to deal with what was depressing you and it leaves questions that can never be answered. 34 years ago my best friends kid brother committed suicide at 15. Never understood why. It was horrible, utterly destroyed my friends family. His poor mother went damn near insane.
That reads like you were doing the best you knew how to do at the time.
That's all we can do.
If, as time passes, we learn that there was more we could have done if only we had known, we have to remember that we did not have that knowledge at the time and we were doing the best that we could.
Dean,
All any of us can do is our best.
There is no book, no list of what to do. We all just simply do our best.
It's only natural to feel that way. But realistically, there is no way to know if you could have helped. I think the best you can do is to honor his memory.
A friend of mine “checked out early” a few years ago. When we got the news, the conviction immediately sank into my soul — I had done what I could.
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