Silence

A co-worker of mine committed suicide this morning. He jumped off a freeway overpass and plunged into rush hour traffic. Every time I think about it, my whole body seizes up and for a moment I can't remember how to breathe. Although he and I weren't particularly close, this is so much more awful than Curtis or Tom's deaths were.

We worked in different departments and didn't spend time together socially, but our jobs crossed a couple of times a week and he sat just a few desks away from me. He was a good-natured sort, always helpful and friendly. The last time I saw him we compared notes about the Fourth and shared a good-humored eyeroll about how crazy work has been lately. I never picked up on even a hint of the yawning blackness that must have been consuming him, nor did anyone else who knew him better than I.

How far beyond despair must a person be to dive headfirst onto a busy freeway? Even in my darkest moments, I could never have imagined doing something so brutal to myself.

It was a horrible, wrenching way to start a morning, but it also smacked us collectively with a cold, hard dose of perspective. You could hear the mad carousel wind down to a screeching halt as we all tried to absorb the news and asked ourselves the same silent questions: Why are we allowing ourselves to be overworked into a frenzy? Isn't there someone we should be spending more time with, or something we've been meaning to do?  There were a few moments of absolute silence as we searched each other's faces for answers.

Slowly the carousel regained its momentum and we all climbed back on, whirling towards deadlines to a soundtrack of chaos & panic, but it was the silence that lingered in our ears.

Comments

[lorianna]

I am sorry.

[Teece]

wow.

So odd, becuase just this last Saturday, Tag and I were downtown and I showed him a bridge over the 110 that I used to walk, with the note "And i can't believe there aren't any fences there, becuase you could just fling yourself over the edge and into the freeway traffic below." I said it becuase as I'd walked over it in the past, I'd felt that urge, that call to the oblivion. I pushed it aside quickly, but for one brief moment was terrified to have even thought it.

It is a great sadness that your co-worker lost that fight.

[Chana]

I'm so sorry, Amanda. For you and your co-worker. All I can say is that I'm coming off a week of trying to celebrate the joy in all my relationships, and that it's never too little or too late to let someone know you care. Of course, I'm thinking all these warm and fuzzy thoughts from a beach in Maui, not actually in the same room with my relationships. It's a good theory, though.