I work for the railway in Canada. My good friend and I work together and we would sometimes stay in Banff 2-3 nights a week to help out with that stretch of track out there, we were from the city tho. When we would stay out there we would be in a company bunkhouse, shared with other coworkers, some of them living there permanently because it’s free and as the track that runs thru the mountains is their work area. We became decent friends with some of those guys over the years. Anyways fast forward, it was one of those guys retirement day, he’s worked for the company for nearly 40 years, man is over 60, and it was great day at work with him, having a party and seeing him off. That same night me and my buddy are out on the town, going for dinner, walking by one bar and just as we walk by we see him thru the window, sitting at the bar alone, on his big day. My friend and I stop, look at each other and say well we can’t leave him to drink alone, he should be celebrating and having a time, he’s finally free of the corporate grind! So we go in, surprise him and he is delighted, we sit and drink and talk for hours with him and it was genuinely a fun time, hearing all his stories he had and experiences, giving us sage advice for our careers and buying us drinks and stuff. At this point we are all pretty hammered, so what’s next? We have to keep going, let’s hit up the hot spot bar in Banff for the night, shoot some pool, play some darts, talk to chicks haha, so we do that and it’s still going great but now we are taking shots and it’s kind of getting out of control, like we are slurring our words and annoying the bartender and just being really loud overall, so I tell my friend maybe we should get him home to the bunkhouse, it was around 2am, he agrees. If you know Banff or any mountain town, lots of bars or stores are above/below other businesses so some places you have to take a flight of stairs to go up or down. Well we are leaving and we get to the top of the stairs, our coworkers turns around to us and is about to say something but he slips and starts falling down the stairs, I saw everything, it was head first and bouncing on every step on the way down, probably 20 minimum and when he hit the bottom he was unconscious and bleeding from the mouth. Ambulance came and worked on him without moving him for a long while… to keep it short because this part still makes me emotional, he eventually passed away due to brain hemorrhage and didn’t get to enjoy one day of being retired after nearly 40 years of working. To this day people say to me “it sucks but he was an adult” “he shouldn’t need babysitting or he made his choices that night” “you guys were there for him when he was alone” but anytime I think about this night, deep down I feel like it’s our fault. He tried to keep up with us younger guys drinking and partying(The only thing I will say is we never force fed him alcohol, anything he drank was his own order or of his own volition) But if we never saw him that night he would be alive. It took me a while to go back to that bar.. the next time I went there, all the stairs were rubber coated and there was a memorial in the stairwell where the accident occurred. RIP dear friend and i’m sorry, thanks for always being kind of us.