About a hundred yards from my building at work is a pair of railroad tracks. They're one of the main lines in and out of downtown. They're used as much by freights as by Amtrak and Metrolink. I walk across them most days to go to lunch.
Today, a lady threw herself in front of one of the trains.
I didn't see it happen, but I saw the aftermath.
This is the second train suicide I've seen in less than two years. This one was less gruesome than the other. But, because of the previous one, every time I cross these tracks going to lunch, I think about that guy who stepped in front of an Acela going 90 mph, and who then exploded all over the Edison, NJ train station. Almost every time I walk to or from lunch I think about that, and I look down the tracks, and think about how much I've always loved trains and about how as a kid I was always thrilled by the rare chance to stand next to the tracks when a huge freight would go charging by...and now selfish bastards have turned this magical thing into an instrument of violence and angry death.
There was a line of cars on both sides of that crossing. There always is. All the people who were in those cars all had their days--weeks, maybe more--ruined; their psyches burned by the image of a lady too weak to face another day but somehow just bold enough to let herself be crushed out of existence. And every time they cross railroad tracks, they too now might think of someone's shattered body instead of day dream. They may think about what they could have done to stop her...if they could have; about the way she might have hunched over in front of the train--they usually bend over, head facing the oncoming train; about the shrieking horn and squeeling emergency brakes; maybe they caught a glimpse of the engineer's face, twisting up under the weight of what his engine was about to do...nobody deserves to have to think about and relive these things, but if you've seen it, you can't not think about it, especially when you walk by or drive by or take a train by the place it happened.
Slip away...slip away if you must. But leave as much of the rest of the world as you can in peace.
