"Say hi to forever"

Today my subway stopped. I ran late for JFK and missed my plane. When I came back home, my roommate told me a woman was run down by a train on the 6. Only a few stations from where I was when the traffic got stuck.

I later found out she was jumping after her handbag and didn't get off the rails in time. When the subway arrived, her head was squeezed between the train and the platform. A woman screamed "The head, the head!", a 12-year-old girl was witness to the scenario. I wonder how she will handle it.

Strange to say, this incident reminded me to a windy november night in Paris last year. A mile away from me, a girl of my age hung herself one night. She said a final 'hi' to forever after having failed to settle in life.

"Il n'y a pour l'homme que trois éléments: naitre, vivre et mourir. Il ne se sent pas naitre; il souffre à mourir et il oublie de vivre." (La Bruyère)

She must somehow have sensed, no, actually lived La Bruyère's last part. She went to search for the forgotten, said hi to all the small things on her way, but finally didn't succeed to really grasp life.

The woman didn't choose the end, the girl didn't make it to the beginning. Yet, both ceased in tragic irony.