A Hug That Saved a Life

A huge thank-you hug to MaryLee of San Jose, California for sharing this amazing experience.

This is a time I found out for real a hug can make all the difference! It was many years ago, over 22 about, my family worked in the restaurant business and I became a bartender. I thought to make drinks for clients, but I was always giving them rides home or giving them some inspirational message, like typing up the poem Footprints for them. People who spend a lot time in bars are really very sad.

I was working nights, 6pm- 2am, and one night a man came in and he was very quiet. I tried to chat with him but he said little. I was taught to get customers to meet new people, but he was having none of that. I asked him his name, he said, "It doesn’t matter." The beer he was drinking was 80 cents, he was getting 2 dimes back each time. I could see he was making something with his dimes.

Well, as the night came to a close I went around the other side of the bar to clean up the tables and get ready to close. I put the ashtrays on the bar next to him; he stood to leave and feeling his heavy heart I said, "May I give you a hug?", and said, "This shall pass. Give it a few days." He left and when I went back to the bar to clean his spot I saw that he had made a question mark with his dimes. The week-end passed and I went back to work. Monday night when I went out to the car to go home there was a white rose on my car. I asked everyone and no one knew a thing. This happened for 4 nights in a row then on Friday that man I hugged came in the door with a white rose at closing time. I said, "It was you!"

He told me that night he was going to kill himself and because I tried so hard to talk to him and then asked to hug him and said this will pass in a few days, it reminded him of the bible verse he knew from his childhood. But he said it was the hug, someone caring about him and hugging him that made him change his mind. We cried together. I never saw him again, but from time to time I got a white rose and I send a little prayer to him still after all these years.