[Old School Hound]

Keep fighting brothe

Thank you, sir.  I've seen what the consequences of losing hope look like. My uncle was a former deputy sheriff in Warner Robins, GA. He had been estranged from his sister(my mother) for several years. He made a surprise visit to KY back in the early 90's in hopes of reconciling with mom. He ended up staying all week and he and mom made up. I remember talking to him the night before he left to go back to GA. He was very philosophical, asked if I thought there was an afterlife and if we'd see loved ones again who had passed on.  It was an odd, and a somewhat disconcerting, conversation.

He went home to GA the next day. He got into a bit of an argument  with his wife and left. Told her he would return. She was also on the police force there in WR. She called some of her fellow officers and told them to be looking for him, and that he was acting irrationally. The cops spotted him not far from the house. He was on foot, heading in the direction of the house. His cop friends told him to stop, that they wanted to talk to him. He turned his back to them, casually pulled a revolver that he had hidden, put it to his head, and pulled the trigger. Blew his brains out there right there on the sidewalk. He was 48 years old. Depression and mental illness is not only crippling disease, it's a killer.