Good article, as usual, Sean.

Two takeaways:

1. Life is precarious enough; no need to make the odds worse. Do you really need to do Show Jumping as a hobby? It is kind of risky, particularly if you have children to take care of.

2. There is almost always a reason to go on living, to soldier on. You just have to drill down to find it - and it helps if you have a Dana in your life to point the way.

Reminds me of a matter I had many years ago. A man in his late 60s was referred to me; he was being evicted from his home. He was blindsided by it. His wife, who was in charge of paying the bills, apparently had a gambling problem and neglected the house payments. She also intercepted all the letters and notices of foreclosure and eviction.

When I saw him, he was nigh suicidal. He said there was no way he could move from his home with the lifetime of personal property he had there. He begged me to try to defend the matter and to reverse the eviction.

I had to bring him around to the understanding that the jig was up, that there was no way of stopping the eviction....BUT.....first, I had to get him off the jump-bridge.

I didn't really know what to do; I had some counseling experience but I was not certified in it. I also knew that I had to get him to a therapist fast. But something occurred to me when I looked at him.

I thought that he was probably a father and likely a grandfather. I asked him if he had any photos of his kids or grandchildren in his wallet - he did - he showed me some shots of the cutest grandkids you ever saw.

I asked him to look at the photos; I then said to him: "These two grandkids are the reasons that you are not going to kill yourself. How, I asked, would people explain to these kids the loss of their grandfather, a person they adored." These kids would have to live with that loss, and the manner of it, for the rest of their lives.

It was not fair to THEM, I said.....

It would be a difficult thing for him to survive this adversity and get past it, but he had to do it....for them...he had no choice (people often don't like choices ;-).

We later talked about what his procedures would be to get out of the mess (including dealing with his wife's issues). I did the best I could for him, and then we went our separate ways.

I saw him 2 yrs later. He had moved and was doing pretty well. There was no reason for me to remind him of why he had decided to push on. You have to let people process these things themselves. and decide for their own reasons why they did it.

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Reeves led an extraordinary life, before and after his accident. He could have easily thrown in the towel but then the value to others of his struggle to survive his tragedy and the inspiration to the same, would have been lost...along with the lives, perhaps, of those who would not have been buoyed by his courage.

Good article.