I found out today that a friend of my mid kid killed himself. It hit hard. It felt like one more thing this kid has to deal with in a life filled with dealing with things that don’t seem fair. The boy who died was an adopted kid–one of three siblings adopted by a family that has six kids in all. They felt a lot like my own mixed up family of six kids. It was their mid kid who took his own life–a boy the same age as my own who just could not figure things out for himself and spent a lot of time angry at the abuse he suffered prior to being adopted. Life was rough for the kid. My boy looked out for him. The kid’s older brother and my boy are pretty tight, so it hit my boy hard to lose someone he’d just spent time with.
I don’t know what to say about it in these ten minutes. I don’t have the words to try and express the pain that everyone involved must be going through. Kid deserved a better life. Every kid deserves a life in which they feel like there is value to living. Not every kid gets that. Seeing it hit so close to home reminds me of how fortunate I’ve been as a parent and even as a man for making it this long and having a family that is healthy and happy enough to want to survive.
I have work to do. I have to keep my kids safe from those destructive thoughts. I have 6 kids who are nothing like one another and all have different aspirations in life or none at all. I have a responsibility to keep reminding them of the value of life and of how much they deserve something worthwhile.