Doomed

I wrote this on the train Saturday. It's true:

Wet roads, brown, January grass. A smoky lumber mill. Weeds and litter. Broken houses. The Golden Rule grocery store.

The train I’m riding to Portland has just hit and killed someone. We stopped suddenly. The smell of hot metal searing our nostrils.

I find myself thinking now, I hope it’s not a child. But then, I hope it’s not a mother or a father or a brother or sister either. And it is someone.

I see nothing of the accident. I only hear the conductor coming over the intercom, giving us an update every quarter hour. He is sighing, affected. An investigation is ensuing. The body is being removed. “The Mess”, as the conductor refers to it, is being cleaned up.

My fellow travelers seem curiously unmoved. They laugh and eat, assuming it's a suicide and therefore, unworthy of their sympathy. I hear one young guy, after a long time of sitting on our motionless train, exclaim that they should just scoop up the remains and get on with it.

An embittered sixty-something man across the aisle from me checks his watch every few minutes, updating his wife. At the two-hour mark he mutters, “Jesus!” I try to give him the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps he’s traveling to visit a sick family member, perhaps he’s hoping to catch a flight out of PDX. But then I hear his wife on her cell phone and their plans, it seem, are social in nature. So we are late. “At least you’re not dead,” I want to snap.

I try to write and listen to Ani Difranco on my ipod and watch the on-board movie (The Nanny Diaries) but I am distracted by images of what lies one car and an engine ahead of us.

Comments

[slouching mom]

Oh, honey. That's just awful. I'm so sorry.

[AndreAnna]

Oh, what a terrible thing. And it truly surprises me how inhuman humanity can be.

Ani DiFranco is the perfect way to remember that, too.

Sorry you had to go through that. But, lovely prose.

[BethanyWD]

I'm grew up in Portland and went to school in Tacoma, and I've ridden that Cascades train more than I can to remember! Wow, I can't believe that people actually behave that way - what a jerk.

[Tootsie Farklepants]

That's terrible. Some people are completely lacking in all things decent.

[bon]

Coming up on the four year anni of my BIL's suicide via train. I appreciate this post and your sensitivity.

How strange that people would feel that a suicide is unworthy of their sympathy... my BIL chose his, after a war of attrition with bi-polar and drug addiction problems. How strange people can be.

[Lulu]

Wow. This seems to be a testament to how crazy, fast-paced, and self-absorbed our world has become today. God forbid someone DIE and interfere with our plans.

[All Things BD]

Similar thing for us in the Bay area in California. Guy on the bridge threatening to jump is causing massive traffic problems. As people drive by/around, they are shouting "Just jump already!"

People suck sometimes.

[Madame Queen]

I'm so sorry. I find myself as much affected by your co-passengers as I am by the man killed. What must their life be like? How can they have so little compassion. Even if that person was a suicide, think of the pain left behind (it will be great pain, I can assure you).

[Waiting Amy]

How tragic. Both the loss of life, and the loss of humanity.

[AbsolutelyBananas]

Wow... that is truly awful. I don't think I even heard about the accident on the news. Very sad.

[Burgh Baby's Mom]

That's horrible. I'm so sorry for you, the passengers that realized the magnitude of what had happened, and for the family that lost someone they loved.

[Emily R]

That is really sad. Did you feel strange writing about it as it happened?

[Mahala]

How heartbreaking..

[Jamie (BlondeMomBlog)]

I am so sorry. I stumbled across your blog tonight and I did not want to stop by and "not say" anything when I read this post. What a horrific thing. People react so coldly to things...I think we are sometimes immune because of all the violence we hear and see on the news, etc.

[Asthmagirl]

It's so sad. I hate to think that society has become so desensitized to death that we have no compassion in the moment.

[Julie Pippert]

Oh how horrible, but how movingly you write of it.

[Stephanie]

This is so sad. I had a similar experience when traffic was stopped on a bridge because someone was threatening to jump. People started yelling the most cruel things at the man just because they were irritated at being stuck on the bridge. Fortunately, in that case, the man changed his mind and lived.

I echo the words that someone commented earlier...people react coldly sometimes.

[Lyssa Ireland Thomas]

It makes me think about the way I react to things. Am I always in such a hurry that I make snide remarks that reflect poorly on me? I certainly wouldn't scoff at death, but maybe I need to be more patient with mankind overall. Thanks for the food for thought.

[Carrie]

I am so sorry you had to go through that. It was an awful weekend for accidents in our area too.

[Oh, The Joys]

Oh, that's awful. I'm so sorry.

[kerrianne]

Horribly sad. And horribly gross the way people can be anything but compassionate at times when that's exactly what they should be.

(Do you live in Portland?)

(I live in Portland.)

[kerrianne]

Horribly sad. And horribly gross the way people can be anything but compassionate at times when that's exactly what they should be.

(Do you live in Portland?)

(I live in Portland.)

[Deb (Missives From Suburbia)Deb]

Sometimes I think humanity is extinct.

I'm sorry you had to experience that.

[Whitney]

I was on a train tonight to Portland from Seattle. Around 4:45 we stopped for a medical emergency. I thought nothing of it. Police started running by and people were whispering and saying we had hit someone.

I went to the dining car to get a drink of water and someone asked if we had really hit someone. The amtrak employee said yes. We sat there for nearly two hours as they continued to make announcements about a trespasser on the tracks, and how the police were conducting an investigation.

If's funny because I felt the same reaction as you. My fellow riders were making jokes about why we had to sit there so long because the coroner must have been the one to kill herself.

I hadn't felt a thing, not even the train stopping had felt unusual. I can't help to wonder though if all of those people on the train, and all of the emergency responders had just payed a little more attention to that person while they had been alive if they really would have taken their life tonight.

Now I feel fucked up. We went through a suicide prevention training at my job two weeks ago. I laughed through most of it because it seemed so over the top. Now I can't stop thinking about the final moments for that person, or the person driving the train. I googled train suicide, and it brought up you.

[frantically simple]

I used to live in Salem, Oregon. I worked on a street that had train tracks going right down the center of it. I often had to wait for the train to pass so I could cross to the parking lot. One day I came to work and found out that earlier that morning a homeless man had thrown himself under the train.
It was so sad...
I am sorry that you had to experience what you did, but I am glad that you are able to feel. Wouldn't it be so much worse to be one of those impatient people? What an empty life.