Restaurant Conversation Helped a Stranger Return Home, New Hampshire Man Recalls

A conversation at a Chinese restaurant in Dover, New Hampshire, helped a distressed man feel that his life was worth living, according to an account David Couture shared with Good News Network.

Couture recalled the encounter from more than a decade ago. He had moved into a townhouse with a washing machine so small that he began taking his laundry to a laundromat. During one visit, he went to the restaurant next door for a cocktail while waiting, Good News Network reported.

There, Couture struck up a conversation with another customer. He described the man as drinking heavily and feeling deeply unhappy with himself.

According to Good News Network, Couture offered encouragement and told the stranger that he had reasons to keep living. Before leaving to check his laundry, he handed the man his business card and offered to speak whenever he needed someone to talk to.

Later that evening, Couture received a telephone call from the man’s wife.

In Couture’s account, she explained that her husband had left a note expressing an intention to end his life. He subsequently returned home and told her that meeting someone at the restaurant had helped him feel that life was worth continuing, Good News Network reported.

She called Couture to thank him for speaking with her husband.

Couture told the outlet that the experience also changed how he viewed his own evening. What began as frustration over an inconvenient laundry trip became a source of gratitude after he learned what the conversation had meant to the stranger and his family.

He concluded his email to Good News Network with a passage from the biblical book of Proverbs about the power of gentle speech.

Sources

• Good News Network: A Chance Meeting in a Chinese Restaurant Saved a Man’s Life – As Everything Happens for a Reason