The questions we do not have answers for

My son Grover who lives in Spokane had to deal with the suicide of a family friend two weeks ago. My friend Dolly Siegfried of Desert Aire dealt with a suicide in her family last week.

My son is still wondering what happened? Dolly has a good idea what did.

Grover coaches off-season wrestling nearly year-around. He’s had contact with probably every kid who wrestles and knows many of them closely.

I called him two weeks ago to see how things were coming along with a discipline issue involving one of his sons.

“Oh dad, it’s been really a tough week. A friend of the family committed suicide. This is really tough.”

Suicide never makes sense to those of us left behind. I still wonder why my cousin Pete did it back in the 1970s?

If there was anything positive for Grover in this, it’s learning that there are bigger things in life you to have to deal with than disciplinary problems with your children.

Stopping for gas in Sunnyside last week, I received a call from a Mattawa number I didn’t readily recognize. It was Dolly.

She wanted to tell me about the celebration of life for her son William Jr., 63, which occurred last Saturday. It took her a moment to tell me how he died on April 14.

“I’m not sure why I called you,” she said in a shaky voice. “I guess I just needed to tell you what happened.”

I told Dolly I’d see her in the afternoon. When I got there, I asked if I should take notes. “Yes, something positive needed to come out of this.”

I met Dolly about 3 years ago when she and her husband Bill – both well into their 80s – sat at a table at Tidally Didally’s acting like a couple of teenagers. I snapped a picture and interviewed them then and there.

Life got real tough for Dolly the past four months. Bill Sr. died of cancer, ending in an official sense, their 70-year marriage. Then this.

Bill Jr. had been dealing with a mental situation that led to sleep deprivation over the years. He was constantly making doctor and clinic visits, but no one could help him.

The sleep deprivation wore him down. In recent times, Dolly said, he was constantly asking to be taken to a facility where people could help him get some sleep.

Dolly prayed to God to “zap that thing out of him.”

Dolly spent the day prior to Bill’s death with him in Sunnyside. The sun was out, and the day was pleasant.

“It was a beautiful day,” Dolly said.

The next morning Bill dressed himself especially nicely to cross the street to see her. But he didn’t arrive. Instead, he sat down in a chair in his garage and decided to end his life.

I was surprised how calm Dolly was in telling me this. But she had her moments, which I respectfully allowed her to express.

“I feel like I’ve been run through a wringer,” she said.

Dolly remarked she and Bill Sr. hadn’t included God in their lives the first 25 years of their marriage, and wondered if there was a connection.

“No, that wasn’t it,” she said.

Could be Bill Jr. just wanted to be with his father? He had always said his dad was his best friend.

My own father was in his 80s when one day, out of the blue, he said he had very few friends left. Just before his death at 89, he said no one needed him any longer.

Life for some can become very lonely, especially when you are of the mindset that people no longer care or find you useful, which typically isn’t the case at all.

It’s hard to put your finger on the reason or reason someone could reach the point where they feel they need take their own life to end the pain they are going through. One of many questions that there are no answers for?