It's a really obscure answer. It seriously took me about an hour to figure it out with a friend and that was because of a lucky guess.
Okay here's what you were supposed to find out: He was a blind midget and worked as a circus freak, hence the lack of girlfriend. He walked around with a cane, and one day termites ate at the cane, leaving sawdust. The man didn't see this, but noticed that his cane no longer touched the ground, so he thought he was growing. Because of this, he thought that his life as a circus freak was over, and he committed suicide.
Which leads us to-- Had he seen the sawdust, he would not have died.
Like I said, obscure.