Hello my talented reader,

This week I wanted to write about some of the random thoughts that come into my head.  They come and go, just like people in your life.  They happen while I’m walking, working, daydreaming, or riding the train… these thoughts just drift by.  I’m not the only one who has random thoughts, but I have a blog so I might as well put them somewhere.

Today’s topic is going to be suicide.  Yes, I know, we already talked about this, but this time is a little different.

There are so many things I have thought about in relation to suicide.  Of course I have thought about doing it, otherwise we wouldn’t have this post.

But I don’t mean thinking about suicide in relation to doing it, I mean thinking about in an analytical sense.  I often think about things through different lenses and analyze things, even when they don’t need to be analyzed or thought about.

But, sometimes, I wonder what people feel.

Recently I saw one of those television crime documentaries, which talked about a man who had committed suicide by laying on the tracks.  His body was on the outside of the tracks, his neck on the rail, and his head on the inside.  It was in the early hours of the morning, the investigators estimated it was around 4 or 5 am, which means the visibility was low, and it was in an area where the tracks had a sharp curve and lots of trees.  The likelihood of the conductor seeing a person on there, was practically zero.  The conductor didn’t see him, and had no idea anything had even happened.  It was later, when the light of day came that the man was discovered.

I wonder about that man whose name I don’t know.

He laid on his back, his head on the inside of the rail, facing upward.  What was he thinking, as he was looking up at the darkness that was between night and dawn?  When he started to feel the vibration of the train coming closer and closer, was he scared?  Did it ever cross his mind that he didn’t want to do it? Did he ever change his mind, but it was too late?

I think the same of people who jump off of buildings and bridges.  Is there a moment in between, just when it’s far too late, that they think, “no, wait, I want to live.”

A lot of planning goes into killing yourself.  I would know.  But in that planning, you also have a moment that you think, “wait… I don’t want to do this.” Sometimes you have several of these moments.

The man on the tracks, the investigators found out, had set all of his business in order.  He had no wife or children, and had organized all of his documents and money and wills, etc., for the rest of the family.  He had done plenty of planning.  He must have thought at one point that he didn’t want to go through with it.

The man on the tracks, had worked at a nursing home, and it was described that everyone there loved him.  He held a fairly important position too, I believe he may have even owned the hospice.  The narrators said that he would make it a point to speak with everyone there, even people he didn’t have to speak to, because he genuinely cared about how everyone was doing. Did he consider that he would be missed, as he lay there in the darkness with the rumbling beneath his neck?

When the police found him, they said nothing was disturbed around the body.  There was nothing out of place.  He was not tied to anything, but he had not moved.  He never changed his mind and tried to live in those last moments.  He stayed where he was.

After a body dies, certain things tend to happen along with rigor mortis, especially when a persons head is severed from their body.  Blood is obviously a big thing that happens, but also the eyes bulge out of the head.  Our bodies are sort of vacuum sealed, especially our heads.  So how we are found, is not necessarily how we died.

I wonder if he closed his eyes, or if he kept watching the sky as the darkness and silence was drowned by the light and sound of the train.

There are many strange things I wonder sometimes.  Especially this man, whom I never met, who lived in a different part of the world, and whose name I don’t remember.  I think about his death occasionally.  Did he know people cared about him? Do you think he knew that a funeral would be held for him and many people would attend? Did the thought ever cross his mind that he might actually want to live?

I wonder what it’s like to feel so lonely and isolated, that you would be willing to lay on the gravel, the cold steel on your neck, watching the dark sky above, as you feel and hear the train coming.  And you don’t move.

The man on the track surprised everyone who knew him by doing what he did.  Many people miss him, and they cried as they talked about him.  Would he have laid there if he opened up to someone?  Would he have gone through with it, if he know how much he would be missed? We’ll never know.

I do know that when I said something, my world changed.  It turned out that it’s not as lonely as I made it out to be.  Don’t make permanent plans while you’re in a temporary situation.

Quirkily yours,
The Quirky Digest