He is Gone

He could have chosen another day, another time, another place. But he chose to end his life here, at a Westin Hotel within eye shot of an Illinois highway.

Shortly after 2 pm, on a Thursday, one day before thousands would perish in the worst typhoon ever to hit the Philippines, he plunged 17 floors to a courtyard cafe where some of my colleagues were lingering after a leadership conference at the hotel. We later learned from a security guard all that would be known: that he was in his 50s, and had been observed walking around the hotel lobby before his fall.

The irony was that the conference had been attended by dozens of therapists- any one of them might have been able to talk to him just long enough so he could get help.

I don't know his name, or name of his mother or where he lived. But he is gone.

My mind flashed back to scenes of a funeral for an Episcopal Bishop of Boston who had killed himself with a rifle just days before his retirement. Shortly after his death , it was disclosed that he had sexually abused some women who had been his parishioners in Florida. I don't remember those details, but I remember the mist that surrounded those of us in the overflow crowd on the cathedral stairs. It felt as if I were in a surreal painting by Dali. How do you come to grips with the fact that the man charged with imparting hope to others had no hope?

We said nothing, the small group of faithful on those cathedral stairs. Our looks of disbelief said it all.