One day a man decided that he had had it, he was done, finished. He made up his mind, made up his soul, prepared his body, and walked to the Golden Gate bridge to take his last look around. The officials on the bridge are good at spotting jumpers. They all have a certain look to their walk, with just a bit of determination, but also a bit of consideration for everything around them. After all, it would be the last time they’d see anything ever again. This man was no different. They spotted him, watched him, and dispatched the EMT’s as soon as he went for the railing.
Mid-flight, and on his way down to a million broken pieces, he realized that all of his problems could have been solved… except for the fact that he’d just jumped from the bridge.
In the end, he did end up surviving the fall, but I often wonder how many people have that same realization just before bouncing off this mortal coil. It seems to me that we all go through a sort of mental checklist when we’re close to death. I know I have. Even in the split second after a crash in a car, or a close call, my first thoughts are of my family and my friends. What will they do if I’m gone? How will they cope? Did I leave the coffee pot on at home?
We all do it. When a person takes a bottle of pills and lies down to sleep forever, I often wonder if in that last precarious moment, they think, “What am I doing?”. We’ve all considered suicide, or even tried at some point in our lives. The times I’ve been at that point, I always came to the same important realization, “I don’t want to die. I don’t want less life. I want more life.”
Which brings us to our next story, a story of a man who saw no way out.
He saw all the hatred in the world and the way that people treated each other. He wrote his suicide note, explaining his actions and the reasons, and walked to the bridge. Witnesses say that he jumped without even a moment of hesitation. He didn’t pause, didn’t look around, didn’t do anything but walked to the middle and immediately threw himself over the railing.
In the suicide note, he had said that he didn’t understand those around him. How could they be so cruel? How could they not care about others? How could his glances toward others, and his smiles, go unnoticed and unregarded by those around him?
His walk to the bridge was four miles. Four miles of considering his actions, turning it over, working himself up, and every step a moment of introspection. And he just jumped without a moment of hesitation.
In the suicide note, he had said, “If just one person smiles at me on my way to the bridge, I won’t jump.”
He didn’t make it. I wish I would have been in San Francisco to smile at him as he passed. I wish someone would have. We sometimes forget in our day to day that we may be meeting a person on the worst day of their life. We just don’t know. Wouldn’t it be better to give them the benefit of the doubt?
I try and smile at strangers every day. It’s frustrating when there’s no response. But I won’t stop. I may have already saved a life. Maybe not. But there’s possibility and there’s hope in still trying.
EDIT: An interesting article about suicide and the Golden Gate bridge.
From it, another sad tidbit similar to what I wrote above:
Kevin Hines was eighteen when he took a municipal bus to the bridge one day in September, 2000. After treating himself to a last meal of Starbursts and Skittles, he paced back and forth and sobbed on the bridge walkway for half an hour. No one asked him what was wrong. A beautiful German tourist approached, handed him her camera, and asked him to take her picture, which he did. “I was like, ‘Fuck this, nobody cares,’ ” he told me. “So I jumped.” But after he crossed the chord, he recalls, “My first thought was What the hell did I just do? I don’t want to die.”