47 Seconds

It’s movie kind of weather, still slightly summery with a touch of autumn chill. The nights are cool and dewy with the days dawning clear and sunny. It is refreshing not to be in constant heat. You can taste the freshness of the air on your lips as the coolness caresses them and you suck in the air. A sweet autumn kiss, that holds with it a sense of renewal, a change.

The evenings are good for snuggling into the sofa and watching dvds, knowing it is getting cooler outside while you have all the creature comforts and some distraction, inside.

I watched “Across the Universe” and initially wondered if I would be able to stick with it. Thank goodness I did. It is an amazing, totally absorbing commentary on life as seen through a compilation of characters, music and events from the 70’s. Fabulous animated sections interwoven with the ongoing story line of the lives of young men and women from around the globe. The songs are interspersed throughout the movie and the characters burst into song at times that surprise and delight. It is not a musical as such but an extremely artistic and carefully constructed combination of story-telling and the significance of the music of the times. Highly recommended and one of those movies, you just don’t want to end. (Amazing singing by Dana Fuchs – another one to go onto my cd list.)

At the other end of the scale, though no less compelling was “The Bridge.” A documentary film about the Golden Gate Bridge and its claim to fame as the most sought after suicide spot on the planet.

It takes 47 seconds to make the plunge into the waters below the bridge. A body reaches the speed of 120 miles per hour before impact.

In 2004 twenty-four people successfully ended their lives in this manner, at this place.

The film carried stories of the families and friends of those who had died in this manner. It wasn’t macabre. It was compassionate and deeply moving.
All of the dead were loved, if not by family, then by friends, who were left frustrated, sad and sometimes angry. The documentary showed clips of people taking the leap, of others being talked back over the ledge and of one woman who was hauled back over by a passing stranger.

One young man, who had taken the leap, survived. He spoke of changing his mind at the point that his feet left the ledge. He somehow managed to effect and entry into the water, feet first which was the saving factor. He suffered from a mental illness that requires him to be medicated for the rest of his life. He was 24 when the documentary was made. He now just wants to be seen as normal but that is not so easy for his parents, who live in fear of his death.

His father spoke well and said he had told him that if he had cancer, he wouldn’t have a choice but that with medication, he could control his illness and live his life, while limited by that fact, to his fullest potential.

The young man spoke of the experience of something brushing up against his body when he was in the water. He commented that he thought having survived the fall, he was now going to be consumed by a shark!! It wasn’t a shark, it was a seal that circled him and kept him buoyant in the water, which facilitated his rescue. He said this seal was god.

Another young man who had been suicidal all his life, made an agreement with a friend not to kill himself while his mother was alive. He also agreed to put this friends name is a sealed plastic envelope on his person so that she could be told of his death and also promised to phone her to say goodbye.

He kept to those agreements and the woman, who would have been in her 60’s spoke most wisely of the conflict this young man had lived in his life and of the effect this had on her. She spoke with compassion and honesty but like all of us, didn’t have any answers.

The father of another young man who had killed himself, said that he felt his son had been imprisoned in his body and that death was the only way he had of being free.

Both movies exploring the human dilemma of life and death, of happiness versus despair, of coping or not with what the hand of fate, god whatever, deals you.

In the context of my life experiences these movies have given me much food for thought. I doubt I would cope with a child of mine, taking their own life. I would hope there would be sufficient links established that he/she would not feel a plunge into the cold dark deep water was the only answer. As long as there is life there is always a moment of choice. How to accept that death was your child’s choice escapes me. It is another whole area of pain that, thankfully, I do not have to explore. I have the utmost respect and compassion for the familes of those so effected and their ability to make the best of the rest of their lives.

As the mother of a murdered child, I can speak about the death of my child when that choice has been taken away, made by some unknown person on their own secret mission.

I am extraordinarily angry that they felt they had a right to end my child’s life. That they thought this would somehow achieve something, other than the heartbreak and lifelong sentence of grief they have so uncaring inflicted upon myself, my family and anyone who knew and loved Shelley.

A grief that at times, has made me not care if I should die as opposed to making me want to end my life. A grief, that accompanies me every day of my life.

The futility of war and mankind’s inhumanity to man, is still a question with no obvious answers. There can be no answer, when we as peoples of the world, continue to live under the same beliefs that allow such actions to be taken. That someone is right, and therefore someone is wrong and must die, that as a nation, a religious group, a political entity we know best how some other nation or people should live; that we fail to care for or support our less well off members of society, our mentally unwell, our homeless or even our own kin.

There are seconds only, between life and death. Once the line is crossed, no matter by what means, there is no going back.


Kia kaha

KG
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