Early Storms

We're having our first Spring storm. It smells really nice out.

A few days ago someone I know quite well killed himself. The crazy thing is when I heard about it I wasn't shocked. It wasn't surprising. He'd always been this really big strong guy...but I knew he didn't see himself that way. There was a lot of unresolved pain in there...

He was a great guy. I worked with him for about a year at the plasma center, but then he was shipped off to Iraq. During his tour there we would email back and forth.

I would never have considered him a friend, necessarily. The only time we really communicated was while he was stationed Iraq. It was sort of odd. When he came back to the states we probably only spoke a handful of times, that is if you could hold a conversation in your hand. Long story short (I use that phrase way too much.) I left the company for about a year, and when I came back he had just quit. He 'dated' a supervisor from work. So I kept up on him through her.

I'm not going to go into their personal life, nor am I going to talk about why I wasn't surprised. Because I mostly don't think the internet is the appropriate place for their story., at least it's not my story to tell. His story. But what I will say besides feeling quite sad that he is gone, I am really pissed off at him. You know? Yeah he had a painful life...but he also had a lot of people around him who cared about him a lot. And now who are all blaming themselves for a choice he made, and there is nothing anyone can do to stop this painful journey they are on. It's not fair for them. They never got to make a choice. He made the choice for them. Not to mention suicide = no life insurance and no military benefits paid to his child.

The storm is mostly gone now...just some rumbles off in the distance. D. is flying into Cedar Rapids Airport in about an hour. He got caught in San Diego after an Anatomy and Cell Biology conference because of American Airlines and their janky planes causing tons of cancellations. (I love American Airlines response to all the cancellations. They said something like 'we're grounding all the flights to look into wiring issues. We are putting your safety first.' Well, if they were doing that they wouldn't have failed their inspections in the first place.)

Anyway...D was lucky enough to get on the flight he did. There were 40 some folks on standby and 1 person got on. Him. I will be glad to see him. I've been alone in this house all week (except today I went to work...wow it was crazytown busy there. ) It's been a bit sad. Brody does an excellent job of cheering me up, though. He's a good dog.

Well. That's all I got today. Sorry I've been so quiet this week. Just workin' stuff out in the noggin' you know?

*The photo I obviously did not take during a Spring storm in Iowa. We don't have mountains. Just a bit of trivia for you. Iowa = No Mountains.