A few weeks ago, Amy and I set out for a run around the neighborhood. As we crested a hill on Charles Street, we saw several police cars parked around an intersection. Amy thought that maybe they were there harassing a homeless man who sometimes sleeps in the bus stop, and we chatted lightly about police harassment until we drew closer and saw the police tape strung around the bottom corner of the building. A glace upward showed a uniform building facade, interrupted by a single open window and a man leaning out and looking down. At the foot of the building there was a white sheet spread out on the ground, with the peaks and valleys of a body beneath it.
We stopped running and took in the scene for a few moments, before heading back up the road. For a couple of minutes we speculated about the scene- whether it was a suicide or a murder, if it was a Hopkins student or if the building was too upscale to house students, why there wasn’t anyone standing around at the scene, that sort of thing. Gradually the conversation turned to other topics and we finished our run chatting about the minutia of daily life, only acknowledging what we had witnessed at the very end of the run by saying “that was creepy, huh?” and going our separate ways for the day.
I was painting by myself over at Erin’s house and listened to the news, hoping for some explanation of what I had started my day with. As I processed it I felt so profoundly sad. I felt like I had invaded someone else’s grief, that what I had witnessed as an unnerving event on a daily run was going to alter the lives of that person’s community, but that they were mostly likely still sleeping or going through their morning routines, not knowing that in a few minutes or a few hours everything would change. And I had somehow butted into that, by gawking at a curiosity and then getting on with my day, altered for it- but not at the core, not personally.
I wanted an explanation, and searched the local news sources, even calling the city to see where a record would be kept. They told me that an ambulance would have been dispatched, so the local fire station would have more information. I filed this knowledge away until a couple of days ago, when I was walking past the fire station and the doors were open, with a few firefighters sitting inside. I popped my head in and asked if any of them know what had happened, and one of them said that it had been an old woman who had committed suicide in the early hours of the morning.
Even though this happened several weeks ago, I haven't written about it and I'm still processing why. One reason was the need to know, to not have that anonymity continue. For me to be able to put a name or a face or a descriptor to the corpse that was under the sheet. I also was left with such a sense of profound grief at what I had witnessed that I didn't know how to honor that, and wondered if writing about it was simply a cheap thrill, a way to titillate an audience, rather than to share something meaningful. I hope not.
