Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire One of my Best Friends Hanged Himself Last Night

Squirrelnut: Sorry for your loss! It is a sad attribute of humanity that "we" can let our emotions/mental state/stress's lead us to ending our own lives.
Thankfully in my personal life I have only had one close relative take their own life and that happened ten years ago now.
He was my beloved cousin and ex-Navy S.E.A.L. from the Viet Nam era.
Like your friend he gave no indication of the seriousness of his troubles other than rarely mentioning his worries and misgivings about the Viet Nam war.
Needless to say his parents and sister and many other relatives felt guilt (for lack of a better description) about not perceiving his mental state.
I still feel remorse for his loss.
Sadly in my professional career over a period of 29 years I had to deal with the suicides of 13 of my co-workers (ten men and three women).
This number out of a total of 1,100 co-workers.
I attribute stress, harsh work conditions and frustration as what led to most if not all of these losses.
But who knows what finally leads our friends or loved ones to end their lives!
Again if any of us survivors would have perceived of any of these folks troubles we would have intervened and done what we could have to prevent these "losses"/tragedies.
Stay strong and do not dwell on any remorse as to what you "could have seen or done differently" - sometimes that is just NOT a possibility.
Again sorry for your loss.
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy

Squirreljizz if I had friends like you, I'd off myself too

Teenage depression often leads to suicide or suicidal thoughts/attempts. Often times it does not manifest itself until later in life.

Attended a concert last night with my two teenagers and the lead singer took 5 minutes to discuss his depression and how he is getting through it with help of doctors and therapist. Seeing all those teenagers nodding gave me a fuller understanding of how widespread this illness is...

Yep. Do unto others.

one side note about suicide , women clean up the house and dress up before doing it. but most guys do it on impulse.
depression has a lot to do with it , but it is not the only factor. medication and education will help.

Feel for your loss. At this point just talk to his kids if you are close to them and ponder on the good memories you had together. Also, it was great to see shrapnel posting again. Maybe some relevance may come back to the conversations on this board again. Man I have grown to miss his contributions to the discussions lately. I see people are already dragging arguments from other posts into this one, this is just not the place for this now. Everyone just relax and contribute to this thread positively and I'm sure there will be plenty of opportunity to rehash old dust-ups in the near future.

My buddy was sick and gonna be gone in less than a yr, maybe 6 months.
Not all exits are out of depression.
Some are quite logical.

However............we worked for a large company. Once a large company, let's put it that way.
With the phase out/layoffs/shutdown..........our local paper quit listing causes of death.
Suicides were all too common.
Mostly management and EE types. The ME's seemed to be a tougher lot.
SWAT guy told me he cleaned a suicide gun or two........weekly.


Lots of it due to divorce, not just loss of job.

a serious subject indeed. without naming names, i've worked for three ga. tech engineers as my boss over the years. two of the three committed suicide. thankfully it was not while i was working under their domain, it was later for the both of them. the third guy was tough as nails. i won't go into details of death, what good would it do?

suicide is often described as an action of cowards. i disagree. sometimes it takes great courage, and willingness. sometimes it's carefully thought out, and planned.

often times it takes some courage to say bye-bye to this world of the living. it could be thought of in terms of trade-offs..this for that.

Indeed.

Many aren't too sure of the afterlife.
It takes guts to make the final call.

Unfortunately, many self exits are out of depression or something else........something that might prove to be temporary.

Many times it's over relationship stuff.
IMHO a woman might make a mess of things, but they would be the last damn reason to shut it down.

Spite is a good thing

It's ironic because it's 18 months old. I think people are missing the point. For the love of God, let's all move on already.

Exactly,,,we all deserve a bit of sympathy at the time of passing, and our families and friends find comfort in our kind words and memories of those that left us on earth.

Have respect for the fallen, offer kindness or just don't speak at all...it's the right thing to do.

Some end it because they feel they no longer have anything to live for,
and at the opp. end of spectrum,
some end it because the pile of burdens/responsibilities they have become too much.

as to not telling anyone or 'showing signs' .. some people are comfortable with the idea and decision.
and strictly speaking, its nobody elses business why a person does it.

some people can't flick their own switch , hence why so many people choose to drink/drug themselves
to a slow death.

Read me loud and clear, I'm not defending squrrelnuts here.

BUT, the hypocrisy of some of the guys criticizing him is laughable. What this looks to me like is silence-anyone-that-doesn't-agree-with-you-thru-character-assassination-101. Seen it many times here on the fire. Did it ever occur to you guys that maybe Greg earned squirrelnuts sentiment towards him? Or heaven forbid, squirrlenut has an opinion of his own and it doesn't agree with everyone else's.

You know the left is famous for using character assassination as a means of silencing opposition right? And we criticize them when they do it, right?

Oh, I'm reading you loud and clear.

Both of you should just STFU.

This was bumped to make a point. Astonishing how many fail to read and comprehend that simple fact.

No [bleep]....in spades.

+1 I've been wondering that since yesterday.

PS....bet they don't read these two posts either.

It has nothing to do with character assassination, this thread proves that people reached out and gave Squirrelnuts sympathy for his loss...in his time of sorrow. Not 1 poster said "fugg your buddy, the worlds better without him", no instead they offered condolences on his loss...or said nothing at all.

Sometimes silence is the more virtuous choice.

Zactly......

I certainly know why I bumped it, though I wasn't expecting the Oregonian victim to make it about her too.

You are just too stupid for words.