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What I will never and always carry
Jan. 24th, 2024 01:54 pmYears ago, before I was married to her, Marie at seventeen, had a boyfriend (Bob) that had recently served as a Marine in Vietnam. For whatever reason, he had become severely alcoholic -– to the point of waking in the mornings to drink copious amount of hard liquor. This put an extraordinary strain on their relationship and as a result Marie told Bob that she planned to leave him. While I'll never know the exact details of that exchange on that day, I do know that he threatened to kill himself if she went through with her decision.
She walked out of his small trailer and he put a gun into his mouth and ended his life. Obviously, this incident affected her significantly and I think she always carried a measure of undeserved guilt in her heart over it. Ever since I knew her, she never liked guns and certainly never liked to be around them.
We lived gun-free for the nearly thirty years we were together until she passed. To this day, I really have no desire or feel the need to own one. I know there are many people that carry them with the fear of some situation where they perceive they might need such protection. I do not. I always figured if someone shoots me then so be it and that the risks I would take to “protect” myself with a firearm aren’t worth the risks of someone else getting hurt by accident if I had such a weapon. But even more so, there are already enough fears in an everyday life and heart.
In an old photograph, there is a picture of Bob and it reminds me of the sufferrng in his own life as well as the immense suffering unleased unto others. I feel a bit of tempered anger towards him for how this impacted other's lives.
A good friend of mine once shared this: “A life lived in fear, is a life half-lived” and it seems to make all the sense in the world to me.
She walked out of his small trailer and he put a gun into his mouth and ended his life. Obviously, this incident affected her significantly and I think she always carried a measure of undeserved guilt in her heart over it. Ever since I knew her, she never liked guns and certainly never liked to be around them.
We lived gun-free for the nearly thirty years we were together until she passed. To this day, I really have no desire or feel the need to own one. I know there are many people that carry them with the fear of some situation where they perceive they might need such protection. I do not. I always figured if someone shoots me then so be it and that the risks I would take to “protect” myself with a firearm aren’t worth the risks of someone else getting hurt by accident if I had such a weapon. But even more so, there are already enough fears in an everyday life and heart.
In an old photograph, there is a picture of Bob and it reminds me of the sufferrng in his own life as well as the immense suffering unleased unto others. I feel a bit of tempered anger towards him for how this impacted other's lives.
A good friend of mine once shared this: “A life lived in fear, is a life half-lived” and it seems to make all the sense in the world to me.
