Suicide

Once again, it has been a while. This is a  time to reflect as I sit in an empty office on the eve of the move into my new home.
Summer has gone…I wonder if it ever came at all, as I did not see much of it. The flowers have already frozen and died…The leaves have fallen off the trees…

There is one  event that has been weighing on my mind; it is a sad sighting in the port: I saw a drowned man floating in the water.  I was told that bodies initially float as long as there is air in the lungs and then they sink to the bottom where they start to decompose. As this process advances gases are produced and that is when the bloated body floats back up to the surface. And because of the weight/ resistance of dangling arms and legs they are usually face down.
To pull a body out of the water it is wrapped in a net, so it does not fall apart. I did not witness that part as the operation was taking a long time, firefighters, police and photographers all involved somehow….
I did find out that this person had been reported missing for 10 days, had been carrying a wallet full of money and had no marks of violence on his body, so all this points to a suicide.
It made me very sad to think that this person was in such pain that only death could relieve him….and that he was not able to reach out to anyone for help.
I am well aware that everyday people attempt suicide in the metro…and elsewhere….but seeing a body floating face down in frigid water made it more real and sad. Why can we not help these people more? I see the awareness campaigns, I know about the call centers but it is obviously not enough… I wonder what could we do as a society to help people in distress, to support each other when things get rough…to keep people from slipping through the net…