Eyewitness to Suicide: A personal account

[Guest guest]

I happened to be riding my bike down Market Street in San Francisco today near the Powell cable car turnaround when a man jumped from a window ledge to his death. This incident was disturbing enough in itself, but far worse was that some people in the gathered crowd were laughing out loud about it. I have tried to process some of the shock I feel about this somewhat traumatic experience by writing a blog post that connects it with some of my experiences as an animal advocate who has found it difficult to deal with humanity's lack of compassion for both humans and animals, but still sees the possibilities for our species' redemption. You can read the blog post here, if you like.

Peace to all,Mat Thomaswww.animalrighter.org

[Guest guest]

Mat, you may be aware of this, but I'll just throw it out as a discussion point. Sometimes people who witness things that don't fit with their reality and that shock them express their themselves in ways that in a logical sense are inappropriate. A lot of people notice this at funerals, where someone will laugh or make inappropriate and unappreciated remarks. In my grief counseling role, I hear these stories often, and even when talking with the person who made the remarks, it wasn't necessarily that they had no empathy, but more like they found the situation absurd, the idea that in one moment there was life, and in the next there was not. I've found this to be true for me when I witness a death, sometimes it seems almost unbelievable that it just...happens. In less than a second, a body has a rhythm and and a look in the

eye, and in the next it's all changed.

 

Emergency Responders also often will express in dark humor, and in my experience this is so that they can function in their job. The ones I know are extremely caring people and would do anything to help, and when there's nothing they can do, they go to humor to function and exist.

 

I don't know if that might be part of what you witnessed, and there are certainly some people who are hardened or simply never developed empathy. I haven't witnessed what you saw and count myself fortuanate. I'm sure it must have been quite a shock, and I think I would have been very angry to see people laughing.

 

Lou Leet --- On Tue, 2/16/10, Mat Thomas <ma> wrote:

Mat Thomas <ma> Eyewitness to Suicide: A personal account"BAV mail list" , "BAARN" <baarn >Tuesday, February 16, 2010, 10:48 PM

I happened to be riding my bike down Market Street in San Francisco today near the Powell cable car turnaround when a man jumped from a window ledge to his death. This incident was disturbing enough in itself, but far worse was that some people in the gathered crowd were laughing out loud about it. I have tried to process some of the shock I feel about this somewhat traumatic experience by writing a blog post that connects it with some of my experiences as an animal advocate who has found it difficult to deal with humanity's lack of compassion for both humans and animals, but still sees the possibilities for our species' redemption. You can read the blog post here, if you like.Peace to all,Mat Thomaswww.animalrighter.

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