You Never Know
by ANDY JANNING
That’s what we say when we first learn about an inexplicable tragedy in another’s otherwise picturesque life. We struggle to pull sense from the senseless while grudgingly admitting that the full truth will ultimately slide into the dark. Terminal illness stalks a friend. A marriage implodes. A neighborhood explodes. A career collapses. A child vanishes. A public hero lives and dies in a private nightmare.
The most recent and raw example of this final disaster is Jovan Belcher. On Saturday, the Kansas City Chiefs linebacker shot and killed the mother of his three-month old daughter Zoe just before taking his own life in front of his coach and general manager. Successful and accomplished by virtually every external measure, the loving family man his teammates thought they knew is a phantom, fiction, or something beyond reach and reason.
Tragedies caused and suffered by those like Jovan affect me deeply because I used to be a crisis and suicide counselor. Even though nearly two decades separate me from those nights on shift, I still hear the sobs of strangers as I tried to convince them why their next breath was better than the bullet they just loaded. They wrestled daily with stress unimaginable while working and living in quiet desperation, trying to move through a life they no longer wanted to live. Yet sadly, tragically, they were everywhere.
And you never knew.
My mentor and dear friend Jenny Budreau, Chief Operating Officer at FORUM Credit Union, always reminded me how we must balance the demands of the bottom line with the needs of the employees who make those numbers possible. We must be sensitive to the battles other employees faced outside of the controlled culture of the credit union, because far too many had already put in the physical and emotional equivalent of a full day’s work under their own roof before they ever clocked in under ours.