Suicide Isn't Painless

Bill was a long-haul truck driver for the company where I was working. He was a fairly quiet sort of guy who did his job and waited until the next run came along...just your average Joe trying to make a living in the dog-eat-dog world of the trucking industry. I was constantly putting in those 12+ hour days and was often in the office when Bill would come in from one of his runs late in the evening. We talked on occasion, mostly just small talk about the weather or a recent stock car event (Bill loved NASCAR), but every once in a while our talks would turn to more personal issues like family and faith. Turns out Bill was quite the rounder in his younger days and growing up in the 70's had seen his share of hard drugs, hard music and hard women. Clearly that was his past, but sometimes our past has a way of catching up with us.

Bill had settled down in the mid 80's and married a local girl. It wasn't long before he became a dad to a beautiful little toe-headed girl who was all her daddy's joy. Unfortunately, Bill's carousing in the 80's left little time for education and life skills development which put him at the bottom of the ladder struggling to raise a family on a trucker's pay. Please don't misunderstand me, trucking is an honorable profession and necessary for our society, but the fact of the matter is when you step into that industry, the early years will either make you or break you and often the family bears the brunt of trial and error failures. After 10 or 12 years, Bill's wife left him for a more lucrative relationship. Needless to say, Bill was devastated and the only thing holding him together was weekends with his daughter.

One evening I was in the office working against a deadline to produce financial statements when Bill poked his head inside my office door. Believe me, it was the last thing I needed that day, but I did my best to muster a smile and invite Bill to take a seat for a minute. I could immediately tell he was agitated and perhaps just needed to vent for a minute or two.

We exchanged our usual pleasantries and then he launched into a monologue of how his ex-wife was threatening to deny visitation rights, how she badgered him for more child support and continually berated him for being a lousy husband, father and provider. I listened sympathetically for several minutes, but then Bill began speaking of "putting an end to it all" and how he had contemplated putting a bullet in his head to shut her up once and for all. Now, here I am up against a deadline and I have this guy sitting across the desk from me talking about suicide. When Bill's eyes welled up with tears I knew I had to act quickly and I had better come up with the right words to say because this guy was on the brink of eternity!

Calmly, I got up from my chair and sat on the corner of my desk in front of Bill and put my hand firmly on his shoulder. I began witnessing to him and assuring him that Jesus was bigger than any problem he faced. You could physically see the change in his demeanor as he began to relax. The hardness in his voice became soft as we talked about his daughter and how much she needed him in her life. The tears began to spill over as he confessed how he had made a mess of his life and had neglected God for years. After a few minutes I whispered a prayer for Bill. There was no earthquake, no angelic choir, no rainbow in the heavens...Bill simply looked up at me and thanked me. Before he left, he spoke of getting back in church and taking his daughter with him. He even talked of making amends with his ex-wife regardless of how awful she would treat him.

Bill left my office that evening and I really don't know what took place in his heart at that moment. I may never know what happened in his life or the impact those few minutes in my office had. A few days later we got a call through dispatch that one of our tankers was involved in a horrific accident. Bill somehow had lost control of his rig and plowed through a convenience store setting off an inferno. The cab of the truck caught fire from a ruptured fuel tank and Bill died in the flames.

I often think about Bill and the last time I saw him, the last conversation we had and wonder if I made a difference.