Three long seconds

A few days ago I had a conversation with that friend of mine who knew the Key Bridge jumper. I asked him if the man’s mother was still around, and if had knew how she was doing. He said he only kept in contact with her for a short time after his friend died and therefore had no idea. We discussed how she might have felt when the bridge collapsed, assuming she is still around. Our consensus was there was no doubt that event must have ripped open a very old wound in her, as it did with my friend. My friend also told me that the day his friend perished, a lot of people had thought it was actually him who had died. I am not sure how they figured that, as there was no pedestrian access to the bridge, and my friend has never driven. But there might be another reason that some people assumed it was him. It turns out my friend, I’m going to call him “John” from here on out, has his own dark history. While the Key Bridge was not in his neighborhood, and only accessible by vehicle, there were some local sites from where John had attempted to take his own life. One was a water tower that he had climbed, threatening to jump. The other was the roof of a building. And there were a couple of other attempts that did not involve jumping where he almost succeeded. All of this happened when he was much younger, so thankfully he survived and has matured past that rough part of his life. Sadly his friend did not….

But, really, what it is about these bridges? For John’s friend, one of them was a means to an end. A jump from a water tower would have been that means for John (or a roof) had he not been talked down. But a more curious question is why the jump? I don’t mean a specific bridge or other structure, but rather that method. Falling to a certain (or even potential) death would, in my thinking, have to be one of the most terrifying ways to die. While the exact moment of death might be instantaneous, the victim must first experience the fall. The Key Bridge jumper would have had roughly three seconds to process his final moments. Three long seconds before he crashed into the base of the pier and shattered almost every bone in his body, his vital organs torn asunder and his brain pulverized. Three seconds before his bleeding body slid off the pier and sank into the frigid grey water beneath the gore-smeared iron monster. Then there are those towering titans of all bridges, like the New River Gorge Bridge. A fall from it would take a horrifying 8 seconds to reach the bottom of the gorge. But a bridge of that height leaves no survivors; it is a monster that always makes the kill. The perfect predator to its willing prey. Once they give themselves up to it and jump, they have no more hope of escape. Most everything I have heard with regards to those who have survived a plunge is that as soon as they jumped, they instantly regretted it. But yet they still responded to their monster’s invitation and obediently walked to the edge, climbed over and let go. A bridge is merely a crossing point for everyone else, but for them, it becomes a pathway to cross into the next life.