Rachelle’s aunt and uncle live right beside the train tracks overlooking the Rosedale Valley. The other week, while out in the garden, they heard a scream. An hour or so later, they saw police officers, a few in full hazmat suits, combing through the forest beneath them.
A woman that was going for her daily run turned a corner and happened upon the corpse of a man hanging from a tree. I imagine that the woman was in a very relaxed zone when she was running. It was a beautiful day and she may have been sorting optimistically through the things she had to do that day, when suddenly, she ran directly into a suicide. According to Rachelle’s aunt, her scream was primal and unrestrained, emanating from a place that known of us have any control over.
I suppose that I’m still young enough that when I think of all of the people that I’ve known who have died, suicide is probably still the largest killer.
In high school, at an outdoors party, a young boy who had just been socially ostracized, tried to hang himself from a lamppost. He had used the strap from his knapsack as a noose, and it hung there eerily beneath the night. A police officer wondered aloud how they were going to get it down, and excited, I volunteered, shimmying up the pole and pulling it down. I remember how the cop shook his head and whistled, amazed at youth, how I could so easily scale a lamppost, and how the other boy, so easily, could try to take his own life.
Another guy I knew leapt from his apartment balcony after coming in second in a guitar competition. I hadn’t known him all that well, but had always thought of his as sweet and shy, having no idea the sadness that must have kept buried within.
A waiter who worked at a pub I was a regular at, killed himself by carbon monoxide poisoning. He had a family, and seemed happy enough, if not entirely optimistic. He was sweet, too, and we always enjoyed seeing one another.
Another person I knew jumped in front of a Go Train. Growing up, I had always looked at this boy with envy. He lived in a huge house in Rockliffe Park in Ottawa, was the scion of a famous family, and had the natural good looks of a born leader. I always wished I could step into his skin and enjoy all the native advantages he had inherited. But no, he suffered crippling depressions that descended upon him, until finally, he just made a decision and stepped out in front of the oncoming train, all of his potential and light vanishing into the screams of the horrified people on the platform.