The recent suicide of former Fleetwood Mac guitarist Bob
Welch was the saddest news I have heard in a long time. I always felt a special
bond with his music, starting back when I would play his ethereal Future Games late at night as a college
disc jockey, and continuing to the present day: I was just listening to his
latest 2012 album Bob Welch Sings the Best
Songs Ever Written a week before he died.
We will never really know what led Welch to end his life -
that is personal and private. But according to news reports he had recently
undergone spinal surgery, had been told he would never recover, and did not want
his wife to care for an invalid, a fate that met his own father.
To me, this brings up a deeper point. Men often naturally
define themselves around what they "do." It is a survival instinct
that goes back thousands of years for us. When early man lost the ability to
hunt and gather, it meant the end of his life. To this day, the end of our
productive years is often one of the most bitter and lonely experiences men
ever go through.
To be blunt, too many men I know have died or disappeared into isolation soon after
watching their life's work fade into the sunset: family members, classmates, neighbors,
and people in the community. Far too many to be a coincidence in my book. And I
have tasted it myself. Leaving corporate life as I neared age 50 - knowing that
at my age and salary, I was probably never coming back - was one of the most
painful things I ever experienced. It is a deep, spiritual pain that doesn't go
away easily, even as you recover financially and move on.
Thankfully I regained my own joy of living again. (I used to
joke that the most powerful antidepressant I could take would be a book
contract, and there was ultimately a lot of truth in that jest.) Nowadays I can
actually thank this experience for what it taught me. Today I am fiercely proud
of running a successful business for nearly a decade, and practically militant
about the need for men to develop self-employment skills as they age. And when
I eventually went back to school to become a therapist, it not only fulfilled a lifelong personal
goal, it was in part to have a role into retirement that no one could take from
me.
Whatever your gender, we now live in an unprecedented era that
treats too many of us as being disposable as we age. I feel this hits men
particularly hard, because we have such a long history of being providers. My response to this? Fight back. Understand your feelings and survival
instincts. Let them lead you to new paths in life, to counselors who can help
you, to the fellowship of others. Your intelligence and talents are often
the very reasons you hurt so badly. Don't give up.
And finally, a few words for those who love the men in their
lives. Don't gloss over what they are experiencing with pat answers or chirpy
slogans. Don't wait impatiently for them to "get over it." And please
don't tell them they should just learn to live in the moment like you do. We
aren't wired that way. Listen to them and learn from them, and they will tell
you what they need.
Rest in peace, Bob Welch.
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