Bob Welch and the quiet desperation of men

To contact us Click HERE

The recent suicide of former Fleetwood Mac guitarist BobWelch was the saddest news I have heard in a long time. I always felt a specialbond with his music, starting back when I would play his ethereal Future Games late at night as a collegedisc jockey, and continuing to the present day: I was just listening to hislatest 2012 album Bob Welch Sings the BestSongs 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 recentlyundergone spinal surgery, had been told he would never recover, and did not wanthis wife to care for an invalid, a fate that met his own father.
To me, this brings up a deeper point. Men often naturallydefine themselves around what they "do." It is a survival instinctthat goes back thousands of years for us. When early man lost the ability tohunt and gather, it meant the end of his life. To this day, the end of ourproductive years is often one of the most bitter and lonely experiences menever go through.
To be blunt, too many men I know have died or disappeared into isolation soon afterwatching 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 Ihave tasted it myself. Leaving corporate life as I neared age 50 - knowing thatat my age and salary, I was probably never coming back - was one of the mostpainful things I ever experienced. It is a deep, spiritual pain that doesn't goaway easily, even as you recover financially and move on.
Thankfully I regained my own joy of living again. (I used tojoke that the most powerful antidepressant I could take would be a bookcontract, and there was ultimately a lot of truth in that jest.) Nowadays I canactually thank this experience for what it taught me. Today I am fiercely proudof running a successful business for nearly a decade, and practically militantabout the need for men to develop self-employment skills as they age. And whenI eventually went back to school to become a therapist, it not only fulfilled a lifelong personalgoal, it was in part to have a role into retirement that no one could take fromme.
Whatever your gender, we now live in an unprecedented era thattreats too many of us as being disposable as we age. I feel this hits menparticularly hard, because we have such a long history of being providers. My response to this? Fight back. Understand your feelings and survivalinstincts. Let them lead you to new paths in life, to counselors who can helpyou, to the fellowship of others. Your intelligence and talents are oftenthe very reasons you hurt so badly. Don't give up.
And finally, a few words for those who love the men in theirlives. Don't gloss over what they are experiencing with pat answers or chirpyslogans. Don't wait impatiently for them to "get over it." And pleasedon't tell them they should just learn to live in the moment like you do. Wearen't wired that way. Listen to them and learn from them, and they will tellyou what they need.
Rest in peace, Bob Welch.