Jump

 

Last night around 5:10pm my husband and I were rushing in slow motion across one of the three bridges near our home.   We were trapped in a downpour.  A torrent of water gushed down on the top of our car like a giant water balloon, slashed wide open.  The windshield wipers were on double time.  Traffic was backed up.  We were trying to unemotionally discuss a situation involving a tenant who broke several expensive items in a house we own.  They don't pay the rent on time, won't pay late fees and are arguing with us over a new lease.  We were debating whether or not it was worth evicting them.   Big drama.   

While I texted our friends, "We are running late!" a man jumped to his death from the high level bridge, not 1/2 a mile away. One moment he was talking with a state patrol while straddling his bicycle high above the river, and a split second later he threw his wallet over the safety rail and, jumped.  Had one of us turned our head and looked through the rain at the bridge just to our right, we would most likely have seen him fall.   

Today I was walking our now-well-behaved lab across a little bridge leading from our island to the mainland.  I looked over at the tiny house we used to live in, right next to this bridge.  I remembered one early spring morning I looked out our back door to see a gentle dusting of snow, powered sugar I remember thinking, covering our yard and dock.   There was a knock on our front door.  Somebody had jumped off the little bridge.  As my husband and I looked out at the river scene, a lone turquoise life cushion was floating up river, carried by the strong Piscataqua current.  We later learned that the blue cushion had been thrown just down river in a futile attempt to save the young man.  He grasped for it, appearing to have a change-of-heart, and then slid into the deep green river. 

I have had my moments.  No doubt.  As a child I was mostly not happy.  In fact I have a strange amnesia when it come to remembering much about my life as a kid.  And, I wondered if it was all worth it through much of my adolescent years.  I might have even wondered what it might be like to end it all.  However, I can gratefully write that as an adult I have found happiness. 
 

We are sitting in traffic with no idea when our wheels will turn again, it's raining outside like a son of a gun, we are late for an appointment, we have a disagreement with a tenant.  Such small things in life, really.