I could never have expected his dying like that.
I thought there were things he was still looking forward to.

Despite it all…

He had quit smoking.Do men contemplating suicide quit smoking?

He seemed to have gotten
over his divorce.

I guess people do.

He was in his late 40s. A gifted carpenter.
The business and crews which he himself had put together so long ago laid him off a while back. 

They said he was no longer fast enough. He was old.

He left the home he had built with his own hands to his wife. Or surrendered it, and found a tiny room in Tampa.

Took his tools from job to job —
including the nail gun he shot
through his brain.

When they found him they saw he
had been drinking — and smoking again.

A pile of cigarette butts and bottles encircled the old rusted lawn chair he slumped in on the tiny porch.

Are suicides doomed I often pondered among those I had known or seen.

He was not a religious man. Nor was he a wicked man. Lonely is all.

Praying for his soul we considered
that God saw these very prayers,
before the foundation of the world.

And our groans for him.

Who knows but that the good Lord answered them?

SH