Stop The World

Stop the World

Yesterday was August 24th, and I almost forgot.

For years, I knew what that date meant without having to look at a calendar. It was one of those days that stayed somewhere in the back of my mind, waiting for the year to come back around.

But yesterday, I was looking for something else when a reminder popped up, and I realized the anniversary had almost passed without me noticing.

My friend Kyle died by suicide on August 24, 2013, in Coshocton, Ohio.

There was a time when I could not have imagined forgetting that date. His death affected me so deeply that it felt like something I would carry in the front of my mind for the rest of my life.

And yet, there I was, surprised that another year had already gone by.

I did not feel guilty. It was not that I stopped caring or that he mattered any less to me. I was just struck by how time keeps moving, how grief changes, and how life gradually fills back in around the places we once thought would remain empty forever.

But once I started thinking about Kyle, I started thinking about the others too.

Zach.

Tony.

Three friends I cared about. Three men who are no longer here. Three lives that ended in ways I still struggle to understand.

And somewhere in the middle of remembering them, I realized that I do not want their stories to begin and end with the way they died.

I want to remember how they lived.

Kyle and I grew up in the same hometown. He was a year younger than me in school, and although we were not especially close back then, we knew each other. We also worked together at a grocery store in town.

I still have a picture of him working behind the counter as a cashier.

It is just an ordinary picture.

A young guy at work, standing behind a register, going through a normal day.

Nothing about it would have seemed particularly meaningful at the time.

But ordinary pictures have a way of becoming something else after someone is gone.

They become reminders that a person existed in the middle of all the little moments we barely notice while they are happening.

That they had a life.

That they went to work.

That they laughed.

That they stood in familiar places and were part of our world long before we understood how much we would miss them.

Years after working together at that grocery store, Kyle and I ended up on the same job in Ohio.

I started out helping him, and over the months we worked side by side, we became closer than we had ever been when we were younger.

We talked about everything.

And I mean everything.

There was no topic that was off the table. Serious things, stupid things, personal things, random things. Whatever came to mind, we talked about it.

We laughed constantly. We gave each other shit. We acted silly and found ways to make the day entertaining.

Being at work with him did not even feel like work.

It just felt like we were hanging out and having fun all day while somehow getting the job done in the process.

That is the version of Kyle I remember most.

Not somebody I merely worked beside.

A friend who made the entire day feel lighter.

When you work on the road, you spend a lot of time away from home. You end up in unfamiliar places, surrounded by people you may not know very well, living out of motel rooms or temporary apartments.

Sometimes, if you are lucky, you find somebody who makes all of that feel a little less lonely.

Kyle was that person for me.

Then, one Saturday night, he killed himself.

I still remember going to the motel where he had been staying.

I remember seeing the paramedics take him out on a gurney with a white sheet over him.

I remember trying to make sense of the fact that somebody I had spent so much time laughing with was suddenly gone.

I also remember talking to his family.

I was one of the only people up there they really knew personally, and I think they needed to hear what happened from somebody familiar.

I talked to his sister, who I had also gone to school with.

I was the one who confirmed that he was dead.

There is no good way to have a conversation like that.

There is no version of the truth that softens what someone is about to hear.

There is just that moment when the words leave your mouth, and you realize that somebody else’s life has changed forever.

At the beginning of the next week, we had a safety meeting.

Everybody gathered around in their hardhats and work clothes while the people running the job talked about the agenda for the days ahead.

Kyle’s death was acknowledged. Condolences were offered.

Then the conversation moved on.

The schedule.

The work.

The next thing that needed to get done.

And I stood there with tears running down my face behind my safety glasses.

I tried to hide it.

I was a construction worker with a hardhat, a beard, and a face that probably looked like I had everything under control.

But inside, I was falling apart.

I wanted to scream.

Someone stop the world.

My friend has died.

Stop and notice.

I could not understand how everybody could go back to talking about work when Kyle was gone.

How the equipment could start up.

How people could return to their assignments.

How the day could continue as though the world had not just become a different place.

But it did.

The meeting ended.

People went back to work.

And life kept moving full steam ahead.

That is one of the hardest things about grief.

The world does not stop just because yours did.

After Kyle died, my friend James, who had also worked on that job, told me something that stayed with me.

He said that when he had been working with Kyle, Kyle had been listening to “Down in a Hole” by Alice in Chains a lot.

I do not know what that meant to Kyle.

Maybe he simply liked the song.

Maybe it had nothing to do with what he was feeling.

But after someone dies, you start looking back at things differently. You replay conversations. You think about their moods. You wonder if there was something they were trying to say that nobody realized they were saying.

And it made me think about how the people who need help the most are sometimes the ones who never say it directly.

Maybe they do not know how.

Maybe they are afraid of being judged.

Maybe they do not want to burden anyone.

Maybe they are trying to hold everything together and do not know where to put the pain.

But sometimes people speak through things they are not actually saying out loud.

Through a song they keep playing.

Through a lyric that seems to hit a little too close to home.

Through a joke they make about themselves.

Through a change in their behavior that does not seem important until later.

The problem is that you cannot always know what any of it means while it is happening.

A song might just be a song.

A bad day might just be a bad day.

And it is not fair to decide after the fact that somebody should have known what nobody could have known for certain.

But I still wonder.

I wonder whether Kyle was feeling something he could not put into words.

I wonder whether the music was giving him a way to sit with emotions he did not know how to talk about.

I wonder how many people are trying to tell us they are hurting in ways we do not understand until it is too late.

What makes that especially difficult is that Kyle and I talked about everything.

At least, I thought we did.

There did not seem to be anything we could not discuss.

And still, there may have been something inside him that he did not know how to share.

That is the part that stays with me.

You can spend your days laughing with somebody. You can feel close to them. You can believe they would tell you if something was wrong.

And you still might not know how much pain they are carrying.

Zach was another friend I lost, but my memories of him belong to an earlier part of my life.

We lived together for about two years in college and were in the same fraternity.

When I think about Zach, I do not immediately think about the doctor he eventually became.

I think about my roommate.

My friend.

The guy I spent Saturdays with in the woods behind our college house.

We had this thing we called Sniper Shooting Saturday.

We would borrow our friend Todd’s .22 rifle, go out into the woods, and put playing cards on a bale of hay.

Then we would spend the afternoon shooting at them.

Nothing complicated.

Nothing expensive.

Just two college guys finding a way to entertain themselves.

I can still picture the woods behind the house and the playing cards on the hay bale.

I can still remember how much fun we had.

Those afternoons were not remarkable in the way people usually define remarkable.

But they mattered to me.

They were the kind of moments that become more meaningful over time because they remind you of who somebody was before life pulled you in different directions.

There is another memory I have of Zach that has stayed with me just as much.

It was spring break, and I was really hard up for money.

I needed to pay bills, and I was trying to figure out how I was going to make enough to get by.

Zach told me he was going to work with his dad for a few days. His dad did landscaping, and Zach said I could come help if I wanted to.

His dad would pay me.

So I went.

And man, I had no idea how hard landscaping really was.

I thought I knew what hard work felt like, but those two or three days were some of the hardest days I had ever worked up to that point.

I worked my ass off.

There were times when I was struggling, but I did not want to slow anybody down. I did not want to look like I could not handle it.

It seemed to come more naturally to Zach, probably because he had been around that kind of work before.

I was just trying to keep up.

But I kept going.

Afterward, Zach told me his dad had been really impressed with me.

He said his dad thought I was a good worker and that I was welcome to come back anytime.

Even later on, Zach would tell me his dad still talked about how hard I had worked.

That meant more to me than I think either of them realized.

Because it was not just about earning a little money.

It was about a fatherly figure noticing me.

Seeing that I was trying.

Seeing that I was willing to work hard.

Telling me, in his own way, that I had done a good job.

That I was enough.

I think there are certain things people need to hear from the adults in their lives, especially when they are young and still figuring out who they are.

Sometimes you carry the absence of those words around without fully understanding what you are missing.

And when somebody finally says them, even indirectly, they stay with you.

Zach gave me the opportunity to have that experience.

He helped me when I needed money.

He brought me into his world for a few days.

And he made sure I knew his dad had seen something good in me.

I have never forgotten that.

After college, Zach became an emergency room doctor.

I went into pipeline and construction work.

Somewhere along the way, I started feeling like those two paths put us on different levels.

He was a doctor.

I was a guy who got dirty for work.

I felt self-conscious about reaching out, like maybe he had moved into a world where I no longer belonged.

Looking back, I know that was my own insecurity talking.

But it felt real at the time.

We stayed connected on Facebook, but we did not really interact much.

He moved around the country for work.

I did the same in my own way.

And then one day I heard that he had killed himself.

I was shocked.

Zach?

Of all people?

He had accomplished so much. He had become a doctor. He had built the kind of life people might look at and assume meant he was doing well.

But achievement does not tell you what a person feels when they are alone.

From what I understood, he told his wife, Jen, that he was going to the grocery store.

Later, he was found dead.

I have thought about Jen a lot.

I have thought about what it must have felt like to watch someone you love leave on what seemed like a normal day, never realizing that the life you thought you were living was about to disappear.

I have felt angry at Zach sometimes.

Not because I stopped caring about him.

Because I cared.

Because I hate the thought of what his wife must have gone through.

Because I wish he had told somebody.

Because I wish he had said, “I’m not okay.”

But I also know that when someone is overwhelmed by pain, depression, shame, or hopelessness, they may not be thinking clearly about the aftermath.

They may not be able to see past whatever is happening inside them.

I do not know what Zach was dealing with.

I do not know what was going through his mind.

I only know I wish I had reached out more.

I wish I had told him I still cared.

I wish I had not let my own feelings of being lesser than keep me from checking in with somebody who had once meant so much to me.

Tony was the third friend who came to mind.

I met him on a job in Oklahoma around 2010.

He was from Arkansas, and he was the kind of guy who was easy to like.

He was good at what he did.

He was polite.

He was thoughtful.

If he had a chance to go into town, he would always ask whether anybody needed or wanted anything before he left.

He just had that kind of consideration for people.

I have a picture of him bringing me a Mountain Dew.

I must have asked him to grab one while he was in town, and he came back with this big Mountain Dew.

In the picture, I am holding it while he gives it to me, and he is smiling.

I think it is funny because it is such a random thing to have a picture of.

Just a guy bringing his friend a soda on a job.

But now, that picture feels like a small window into the kind of person Tony was.

He noticed other people.

He remembered what they asked for.

He did not have to do any of it.

But he did.

And he looked happy.

That is something I keep coming back to with all three of these men.

The images I have of them are not of people walking around looking like they had given up on life.

Kyle laughing and talking about everything under the sun.

Zach out in the woods shooting at playing cards.

Tony smiling while handing me a Mountain Dew.

People can have good moments.

They can be kind.

They can laugh.

They can make other people feel better.

And they can still be carrying pain that nobody else sees.

Tony and I went to concerts together. We ended up sharing a house with other people because it helped us save money while we were on that job.

When the work ended, I assumed I would see him again before long.

Instead, ten or twelve years passed.

Eventually, I saw him again at my union hall while I was taking classes.

He was one of the instructors.

I remember being proud of him.

He had done well. He had become someone trusted to teach other people in our field.

We spent some time catching up, and he asked whether I was married.

I told him I was.

Then I asked whether he was married.

He paused.

“Yeah,” he said. “I was.”

Then he ended the conversation and walked away.

I did not know why.

Later, I found out that his wife had died by suicide a few years earlier, and that he had witnessed it.

I felt terrible when I learned that.

I knew I had not done anything wrong. I had asked a normal question without knowing the pain behind it.

But I hated that I had unknowingly touched such a devastating part of his life.

I wondered what he carried after that.

Whether he blamed himself.

Whether he replayed it over and over.

Whether he felt like anybody understood.

I cannot say what was happening inside him. I had not been close to him during all those years, and I do not know everything he may have been facing.

But I know grief and trauma can stay with a person long after everybody else expects life to return to normal.

Later, there was a job I was supposed to go to.

My former wife was working for the same company and got dispatched there before I did.

She called and said, “I met a guy named Tony who said he knew you. He said you were a really good guy.”

I told her, “Yeah, Tony’s a great guy. I’m looking forward to seeing him.”

Before I made it up there, she called again.

Tony had been found dead.

I was told his death was believed to be a suicide, although I never received official confirmation.

And just like that, another person I expected to see again was gone.

Kyle.

Zach.

Tony.

Three different lives.

Three different stories.

And yet, when I started reading about suicide, I realized that some of the patterns surrounding their lives were bigger than I had understood.

According to a CDC analysis of 2021 data, men in construction and extraction occupations had a suicide rate of 65.6 deaths per 100,000 workers.

The rate among working men overall was 32.0 per 100,000.

That means men in construction and extraction occupations died by suicide at roughly twice the rate of working men generally. CDC: Suicide Rates by Industry and Occupation

I cannot read a statistic like that without thinking about the life I know.

Long hours.

Temporary jobs.

Time away from home.

Financial pressure.

Injuries.

Physical pain.

Drinking.

Motel rooms.

Uncertainty about where the next job will be.

The CDC identifies seasonal work, demanding schedules, injuries, chronic pain, and time away from family as factors that can affect construction workers’ mental health. CDC: Construction Worker Health and Safety

And then there is the culture of keeping everything to yourself.

The expectation that you stay tough.

That you do not complain.

That you handle your own problems.

That you do not let anybody see how much you are struggling.

I think about Kyle.

I think about Tony.

And I think about how many men in this industry may be carrying things they do not believe they are allowed to talk about.

Then I think about Zach.

A doctor might seem like he belongs to an entirely different world, but the emotional pressures are not always that different.

The American Medical Association identifies physician suicide as a serious concern and notes that physicians experiencing suicidal thoughts may be less likely to seek the help they need.

In one survey, 38.3% of emergency medicine physicians reported mild to severe symptoms of depression. That figure refers to symptoms of depression, not suicide deaths, and it does not tell me what Zach personally experienced. But it does show that many emergency physicians carry emotional burdens that are easy for the rest of us to overlook. American Medical Association: Preventing Physician Suicide American Medical Association: Depression Across Physician Specialties

An emergency room doctor.

A construction worker.

A man teaching classes at a union hall.

Different jobs.

Different expectations.

The same possibility of suffering in silence.

And I understand that possibility more than I wish I did.

After my divorce, there was a period when I was drinking heavily and spending most of my time alone.

I was heartbroken.

I missed my former wife.

I missed the life I thought we were going to have.

I wanted things to go back to the way they were, and I could not accept that they never would.

One night, I went into the closet in my house and opened the case to my handgun.

I loaded it.

I held it against my temple.

I remember the weight of it.

I remember wanting to imagine what that moment would feel like if I decided I could not keep living with the pain.

I was not thinking about the aftermath.

I was not thinking about the people who would find out or what my death would do to them.

I was thinking about how badly I wanted the hurt to stop.

How tired I was of replaying everything in my head.

How lonely I felt.

How desperately I wanted my old life back.

And standing there, I started crying even harder.

Because I could not believe my life had reached a point where I was even entertaining that thought.

I did not want to die.

I wanted the pain to stop.

There is a phrase people use: a permanent solution to a temporary problem.

I understand what it means now.

But when you are in the middle of that kind of pain, the problem does not feel temporary.

It feels endless.

It feels like the person you loved is gone, the life you wanted is gone, and nothing good is ever going to replace what you lost.

What I did not understand at the time is that temporary does not always mean short.

Sometimes it means surviving something for years.

Sometimes it means healing slowly.

Sometimes it means learning to live with scars.

Sometimes it means realizing that you may never get your old life back, but you can still build a different one.

The pain does not have to disappear overnight for life to become worth living again.

It only has to change enough for you to keep going.

And it can.

There was another time during that period when I posted on Facebook about how badly I was struggling.

I had been drinking, and I wrote that I was having a hard time wanting to be here anymore.

At the time, I do not think I fully understood how seriously people would take it.

But looking back, I think some part of me was trying to be heard.

Some part of me wanted somebody to know I was hurting.

One of the people who responded was Jen.

Zach’s wife.

She told me she was glad I was saying something.

She said she wished Zach had done the same.

That has stayed with me.

Because she knew what it felt like to lose someone who never said how badly he was hurting.

And maybe that is part of why I keep thinking about Kyle and that song James remembered.

Not because I believe a playlist can tell you everything about a person.

Not because I think someone should have magically understood what Kyle was feeling.

But because I know people do not always say the words directly.

Sometimes they say, “I’m tired.”

Sometimes they say, “I don’t know how much more I can take.”

Sometimes they make a joke.

Sometimes they post something online.

Sometimes they disappear.

Sometimes they play the same song over and over because it says something they cannot.

And sometimes the bravest thing a person can do is stop hinting and finally say, “I need help.”

I have wondered why I am still here when my friends are not.

Was I stronger than they were?

I do not think that is the right question.

Kyle was not weak.

Zach was not weak.

Tony was not weak.

They were people.

People who may have been dealing with things I will never fully understand.

And I do not think survival always comes down to who is strongest.

Sometimes it comes down to whether somebody reaches out.

Whether somebody answers.

Whether the moment passes.

Whether there is still enough hope left to hold on for one more day.

My relationship with faith has changed over the years.

When I was younger, I believed in God with more certainty. When I was afraid, I had somewhere to take that fear.

As I got older, my beliefs became less clear.

I did not feel like I could simply return to the same version of religion I once depended on.

But even without that certainty, I still did not know what came after death.

Heaven.

Hell.

Nothing.

Something else entirely.

I did not know.

And maybe not knowing helped keep me here.

Maybe some part of me understood that being alive still meant there was a chance for something to change.

That might not be the same kind of faith I had when I was younger.

But it is still faith.

Faith that pain can shift.

Faith that loneliness can loosen its grip.

Faith that the life you are living right now is not the only life you will ever have.

While reading about suicide, I also learned how deeply it affects older adults, especially older men.

The CDC reports that adults 80 and older had the highest suicide rates of any age group in 2024. A separate CDC analysis found that men 85 and older had a suicide rate of 55.7 deaths per 100,000 people in 2021. CDC: Suicide Data and Statistics CDC: Suicide Among Adults Ages 55 and Older

That hurt to read.

Because I could picture the loneliness behind it.

A person lives a full life.

They have friends.

A spouse.

A job.

Family gatherings.

People to call.

Places to go.

Then, slowly, those things begin to disappear.

The people they love die.

Their health changes.

They do not get out as much.

The phone stops ringing.

And one day, they are sitting alone with the memories of a life that used to feel full.

I think about my mom.

I think about the people she has lost.

I think about how much smaller her world has become.

I think about how her faith gives her something to hold on to.

And I think about how many people do not have that.

How many people feel forgotten while they are still alive.

That is what gets to me.

Not only that people die.

That they may spend years before dying feeling like nobody sees them.

And that is why I keep coming back to the idea of community.

Real community.

Not another social media group.

Not another place where everybody posts the polished version of their life.

I mean real people, physically together.

Sharing a meal.

Getting coffee.

Going for a walk.

Helping somebody move.

Working on something together.

Asking whether anybody needs anything from town.

Showing up in small, ordinary ways that remind people they matter.

The CDC has found that people who report loneliness are substantially more likely to report a history of depression than people who do not. That does not mean loneliness explains every death or every struggle, but it tells me connection is not optional. CDC: Loneliness, Social Support, and Mental Health

People need to feel known.

They need to feel like they have a place.

They need someone who will notice when they are not themselves.

Someone who might ask about the song they keep playing.

Someone who might call just to check in.

Someone who might sit with them without trying to fix everything.

I do not know exactly what that kind of community would look like.

Maybe it would include construction workers.

Maybe doctors.

Maybe older people.

Maybe people going through divorce.

Maybe anybody who feels like life has become too heavy to carry alone.

I just know I want it to be something real.

Something that exists beyond a screen.

A place where people do not have to wait until they are desperate to admit they are struggling.

A place where nobody has to prove they are strong enough to deserve support.

A place where being honest is not treated like weakness.

Because I have spent a lot of time feeling alone.

And it fucking sucks.

I know what it feels like to look around and wonder where the people are.

To want connection and not know how to find it.

To feel like everybody else is busy living their lives while you are trying to figure out how to survive yours.

And I also know that sometimes what helps is not some grand, life-changing gesture.

Sometimes it is a friend inviting you to work with his dad when you need money.

Sometimes it is someone telling you that you did a good job.

Sometimes it is two people spending an afternoon shooting at playing cards.

Sometimes it is a coworker making you laugh until work does not feel like work anymore.

Sometimes it is somebody bringing you a Mountain Dew because they remembered you asked for one.

Those moments may seem small.

But maybe they are not.

Maybe those are the moments that make people feel connected.

Maybe those are the moments that remind us we are not invisible.

Maybe those are the moments we need more of.

I cannot go back and save Kyle.

I cannot go back to that motel in Ohio and change what happened.

I cannot call Zach and tell him he was never too accomplished to hear from an old friend who still cared.

I cannot sit down with Tony and tell him I am sorry for what he went through or that he did not have to carry it all alone.

But I can remember them.

Kyle behind the counter at the grocery store.

Kyle laughing with me at work, talking about anything and everything.

Zach in the woods behind our college house.

Zach telling me his dad thought I was a good worker.

Tony smiling and handing me that big Mountain Dew.

Tony asking whether anybody needed anything before he went into town.

Those are the things I want to keep.

Those are the parts of their lives I do not want to lose.

Because a person is not only the worst thing that happened to them.

They are also every kind thing they did.

Every laugh they shared.

Every ordinary moment that made somebody else’s life a little better.

And maybe that is what I want someone else to hear.

If you are struggling, the way you feel right now is not all you are.

You are not only your heartbreak.

You are not only your mistakes.

You are not only your loneliness.

You are not only the thoughts that show up when you are at your lowest.

You are every person you have helped.

Every friend you have made laugh.

Every kindness you have shown without realizing how much it mattered.

You are the story that has not finished yet.

I still hurt sometimes.

I still think about the people I have lost.

I still wonder what they were carrying.

I still wish I could go back and ask one more question, make one more call, or tell them one more time that they mattered.

But I am here.

And I know now that life can change in ways you cannot see while you are trapped inside your pain.

Not perfectly.

Not quickly.

But it can change.

Yesterday, I almost forgot the anniversary of Kyle’s death.

There was a time when I wanted the world to stop because he was gone.

I wanted everybody to notice.

I wanted someone to understand that his life mattered.

And maybe that is still what I want.

Not for the world to stop forever.

Just for us to slow down long enough to notice each other while we are still here.

To listen a little closer.

To ask the question.

To make the call.

To remember that sometimes people are saying things without saying them.

To understand that a smile does not always tell the whole story.

And to remind the people around us that they do not have to carry everything alone.

The world did not stop when Kyle died.

It did not stop when Zach died.

It did not stop when Tony died.

But maybe we can stop for each other.

Maybe we can notice.

Maybe we can listen.

Maybe we can stay.

And maybe that is how we help somebody hold on long enough to discover that the moment they thought would break them was not the end of their story.

Because getting better does not mean the pain disappears. It does not mean we stop missing the people we have lost, or that every wound heals so completely we forget it was ever there.

It means the weight becomes easier to carry.

It means the loneliness does not always feel quite so permanent.

It means we learn that even after everything we have been through, there are still moments worth staying for.

A friend who makes you laugh at work.

An afternoon in the woods.

Someone who notices you are struggling.

Someone who remembers to bring you a Mountain Dew.

Life does not have to become perfect to be worth living.

It just has to keep offering us reasons, however small, to believe that tomorrow might feel better from today.

And in my experience, it does.

Not perfect.

But better.