THE SUICIDE

I just wanted to pee, instead I saw a woman kill herself. I never knew that people actually died, I only saw it in movies, but after this I realized that I was living in Disneyland.

I JUST WANTED TO PEE

When you're 19 years old you figure the most important things in life are your friends and having fun. I don't remember what I was doing that day, I think I was on my way home from my sister's ex-husbands house in San Francisco. I was on the BART transit system in Oakland when I realized that I had to pee, so I exited the train network and found a magazine shop to relieve myself and pretend to look around as if I was going to buy something.

EVERYONE WAS GONE

Have you ever been reading something and looked up to realize that everyone was gone? It used to be more common when magazines were everywhere. You'd be around a bunch of people, look down for a while, then realize that either the people are gone or have changed into other people. Maybe then you'd be attracted to the ones who also didn't leave. I escaped from the magazine and looked around to find that everyone was gone. Even the store clerk. I walked outside and people were walking to the left so I followed them to see what was going on. I was nine-teen years old.

THE SUICIDE NOTE

A bunch of people were crowded around the corner and there were papers strewn all over the floor. I reached down to grab one, it was her suicide note of which she had produced hundreds of photocopies and threw them from the roof like confetti. In the note was a plea to the public to listen to her situation. She couldn't afford rent and layers were taking all of her money. She said that she was being evicted and can't continue. Later that night I got completely drunk and vomited as a way to release myself from what I saw that day. I kept the note for three hours. A friend told me that I should throw it out so I did. I'm not sure if I'm glad that I threw it away, part of me thinks I could've kept it to honor her life, another thinks that perhaps it would've motivated me to kill myself. It was written on college ruled paper and the words still had nowhere else to go.

WAITING FOR HER TO JUMP

We all just stood there and waited. I periodically looked at the note to gather information about what was happening and looked up at her. She was wearing all black, with black sunglasses and a big rimmed black hat. A decade and a half later I talked about her clothing and death on stage and afterward an audience member mentioned in passing that she was dressed for her own suicide. We all just watched her sit on the ledge of the building. People were talking but it was more of a murmur. I felt like I should say something, yell at her to come down, and suggest that she use the stairs.

DID SHE JUMP, OR FALL?

I'm still not sure, the news said that she "pushed" herself off the edge, but that's now how it appeared to me. She rocked back and forth for forty minutes while she waited for the crowd to peak. I considered leaving and I'm not if I made the right choice. I wished that I could've found a fire escape and ran up to coax her away from the edge but I just watched like everyone else. The police arrived and placed yellow tape and barriers around the scene, it was like they were setting a stage, although it was probably so she wouldn't land on a baby. We all waited for her, the police, pedestrians, and youthful self. When she finally fell I heard a sound that I never heard in my life, or since, and one I'll remember probably for the rest of my life. It was a collective gasp of a hundred people that echoed through the city streets.

POSSIBLY THE WORST BIT

As she fell we braced ourselves and it was silent. It's amazing how many minutes and hours pass without a single reflection in your memory. The act of her death lasted three seconds and all three are clearly imbedded in my life. I was instantly transformed. I didn't realize that some could actually die. People die all of the time but how many times have you seen it death occur? Knowing that someone has died, maybe they go to heaven if you show up and they've changed state, but what about when you see them go from living with vitality to completely dead in three seconds? There was some kind of thin cabling that was connected to the two building and crossed the street. It was so thin that I couldn't see it against the sky. She made contact with the cable which flung her in a spiral on her way down and her body contorted and stretched out. That's not even the worst bit.

ACTUALLY THE WORST BIT

I don't mean to glorify the situation because I wouldn't know how, I'm just reporting exactly what I experienced, and would love you to listen so I'm not here alone. The police threw the blue tarp over her body and poured what looked like white sand around it's edges presumably to weigh it down and slop the spread of her blood. It was just as terrible as you can imagine, and I can relive, and I recommend you look away if you suspect you're about to see something this horrible. That was a persons life, a young woman, and I can visualize from memory and with fairly clear accuracy the inside of her head and her brain on command. The anticipation of shock is not worth the subsequent psychological changes to the inner child.

AMERICA CLEANS THE DEAD

I waited with the crowd for a few moments and began to retreat once I felt the cold breeze. A couple of buildings down the road was a small ledge overlooking an office park opening, I leaned against the railing and read her note, as I waiting for something else to happen. I knew the coroner was going to clean her body and I waited because I felt like I didn't want to leave her alone, I made it this far, why not stay and see her off. They finally arrived in their standard black van, two people clothed in a white scrub suit and gloves exited the vehicle and the police formed a shield around the scene as they hoisted her body onto a gurney and into the back of the van. I forgot who cleaned the biology from the curb but I remember a hose and efficiency.

Two hours passed and people were walking on that very spot as if nothing had happened. I stayed until the last dust particle fell. I guess I felt like I needed to encounter the whole event, rather than just the terrible part because the ending could've made sense of the rest of it, which it mostly has. American cleans the dead. She comes in with a shield and ensures the general public will be saved from seeing such horror. We go home and watch Disney movies with our kids while distressed people all over the country kill themselves in public. I imagine they cry for a while before killing themselves, Mary cried for years and it's possible that no one heard, or her cries were so robust that death was a good alternative. People kill themselves in silence as well, but Mary posed with a tombstone engraved with her name, and premeditatively photocopied hundreds of her hand written suicide note.

FINAL WORDS

This is not a comedic work, rather it's a plea to you to listen, and to do so with compassion. There is a documentary called Boy Interrupted which highlight a young boy who seemed destined to commit suicide. Robin Williams, Anthony Bourdain, people with money, poor people, people of all ages kill themselves. It's a terrible tragedy of the current human condition. I will never say that I hope people do not kill themselves because wishing an outcome that most benefits myself is something that I'll never do upon a fellow independent person. Instead I do my best to listen to someone when given the opportunity and glad that it's with me who they chose to communicate. I have yet to read Andrew Solomon's book The Noonday Demon, an atlas about depression, but will surely do so to educate myself on the science and potential reasons why someone would kill themselves. Mary Jesus killed herself publicly, with a huge audience which I was a part, and although she didn't make a sound her existence as permeated nearly every day of my life since.