May 05, 2008 19:32
Last Friday I saw a dead body being pulled out of the river that runs through my neighborhood. He was a guy who went missing a month or so ago, coming back from a bar at 4 a.m. Apparently he threw himself into the river on purpose rather than someone pushed him in.
The last anyone saw of him (if you can call it seeing, per se) was that he was caught on a security camera film at the train station near our house. The same station I take the train from. It's terrible to think that when he was there, he was already walking to his death, since he was past his house. He was on his way to the river. It kind of makes me sick to think that in those security camera images there's a man who's already dying.
It was pure chance that we happened on the scene at the rapids a few miles downstream just when they were going in to fish him out, we were on our way to see cherry blossoms when we saw the cops and fire-trucks. Still, as much as it upsets me now to have seen him, it was soothing as well, I guess. Like my sister phrased it, it gave a sort of closure to it, having seen the missing person posters and wondered what happened to him. Although it was rather obvious that he'd drowned in the river, that's where people around here disappear to.
Now we're all wondering what came over him that night, walking back from the bar, after telling his friends he was going home. It doesn't make me very happy thinking that.
It's like I think about people and their suicides way too much when I have to write them down, time and time again, each suicide getting its own sad little entry with the pathetic disclaimer "I just need to write it down to get it out of my head".
i saw it