So yesterday morning my nephew Isaiah and I were driving to Venice Beach. He’s visiting from New York, and I thought it’d be cool to show him the sights.
Well, he saw the sights.
Roughly 15 minutes into our drive, traffic came to a dead stop. There were cars in front of us, cars besides us, cars behind us. I saw a bunch of flashing lights a few feet ahead, and a firetruck down the road a bit.
Then, I saw him.
The man, wearing an orange shirt and dark pants, was hanging off the wrong side of the fenced overpass at Edinger Avenue. There were a slew of officers surrounding him; I assume, trying to talk him down. At first, I yelped to Isaiah, “Holy shit—there’s a jumper!” I thought about the horrors that could potentially await. A man plummeting to his death. The collective gasp. A splotch of humanity on the road. Having (as a New Yorker) experienced the up-close hellscape of 9.11, my mind flashed back to the unspeakable. Witnessing death is terrible, but witnessing death via a plummet is soul-hollowing. I didn’t want to see it. I certainly didn’t want my 22-year-old nephew to see it.
The minutes ticked away. The traffic grew. The minutes ticked away. The traffic grew. Shock and dismay turned to a state of timelessness. Our lives were collectively suspended. I leaned back my seat and took a nap. Isaiah watched a World Cup game on his phone. After a while, people started abandoning their vehicles to get a closer look. I walked toward the front, where four people were speaking Spanish. They seemed concerned. I joined another group, where they were (understandably) expressing their frustrations. There were places to be. Flights to catch. Jobs to work. Loved ones to visit. “Either jump or don’t jump,” I heard one man say—and, while it was harsh, I overlooked the momentary tastelessness. We were trapped, flies in amber. It wasn’t fun.
I thought a lot about the man in the orange. Who was he? What happened to him? How did he reach this point? Was he on drugs? Despondent? Had his wife just left him? Were his kids mad at him? Was he fired? Tried? Battered? What was going through his mind?
As I returned to my car, I saw a woman speaking with my nephew through my open window. She was a social worker, and was debating whether to offer her services to the police. Maybe the jumper needed a friend. A comforter. The woman had a warm face, compassionate cheeks. I’m guessing she leads the league in hugs.
Then, suddenly, a rush!
The police were re-opening the highway. The jumper was still dangling, but how long could we all be stuck in place? So the men and women who abandoned their Hondas and Chevys and Priuses bounded back toward their Hondas and Chevys and Priuses. You could see a glee in the collective motion. We were free. All of us were free.
And yet …
Were we?
For the 45 minutes (or so), a random assortment of people were thrust together, not so much by fate but by the mechanisms of one man, who believed his life may no longer be worth living. We were together. Forced together, but together nonetheless. There was nowhere to go and nothing to do.
Just existence.
Just a moment in time on the 405.
•••
Hopefully, even though many trapped in that moment were anxious to get where they were going, thought about that man, when their heads hit their pillow last night. And maybe they recalled that their mother, or grandfather, or priest or kindergarten teacher said to care for others, and about others.
And if they spent a few minutes reminding themselves of how sad they were that the man who wanted to jump must have been suffering a pain few of us will ever know, then that man probably helped us more than we helped him.
Had a similar experience in Santa Monica at one of the six-floor car parks. A white dude in a business suit on the top-floor ledge was threatening to jump. The lunch hour crowd was mesmerized. We left, and I later heard someone talk him down. And I was glad for that. I have also witnessed the opposite. While in college on my summer job lunch break, a jumper landed 10 feet in front of me at 32 and Broadway. I was covered in his blood...