The Young Lady in Black

Reader Alert: Some readers may find this post challenging to read and/or triggering due to the fact it contains discussion about mental health, death, dying and suicide in particular. It's a long read, but I'd like to think that it is powerful enough to make it worth the ten minute emotional ride. Special thanks to those of you who continue on...



I remember about ten years ago when I did a personal writing challenge called Thank You to a Stranger. In the exercise I challenged myself to make Facebook posts for 30 consecutive days where I shared a short story about something I saw in my everyday routine that made me wish that I could thank someone for a thoughtful action I noticed them carry out in the Matrix of life. Sometimes it was something unmistakable, like the time I saw somebody stop another person from accidentally stepping out into traffic on a busy downtown street corner. Other times it was something relatively simple like the time I noticed a car change lanes to avoid a giant puddle on the road near the spot on the street I was walking, thus avoiding covering me in a shower of murky puddle water. 

The exercise of going through my days looking for things to be grateful for was so empowering that I actually continued it well beyond the original 30 day plan. If I recall correctly, I think I wound up making about 75 overall Thank You to a Stranger posts and at one point I even considered keeping it up for a whole year and turning it into a book. I'm not sure why I never followed through on that grandiose plan. Like many things in life, I think I put it up on the someday shelf and never picked it up and revisited it later down the road. Maybe now that I have brought it back to the front my mind I will revisit that idea? 

I even turned one of my Thank You to a Stranger stories into a short speech titled "His Name Was Jamal" which I used to win the first three rounds of the 2015 Toastmaster's International Speech contest. Ultimately I came in third place in the regional round, only one step away from the national semifinals. The speech was about a man named Jamal who I serendipitously met on a Red Line train one freezing cold morning earlier that winter. Jamal's outlook on gratitude for what he has in his very modest life, touched me in ways that continue to have an indelible mark to this day. You can actually get the full story and watch a home video of my club level speech which is posted on Youtube by clicking on this link. 

As much fun as it is to let my mind wander back to the days when I was attending Toastmaster's meetings and Moth Storytelling shows three nights a week, the primary reason I am bringing up my Thank You to a Stranger days is because of what the whole experience taught me. Not only did I learn to be far more grateful than I had ever been before in my life, but it also trained my eyes to look curiously at the world around me and see things much more deeply than just on the surface level. As a writing coach, one of the primary reasons people tell me they have trouble writing consistently is because they don't have anything interesting to write about. When you look deeply into your everyday world, you realize that there is so much richness in the mundane that it is entirely impossible to ever run out of potential material.

The action of going through my day with eyes wide open has helped me create hundreds if not even thousands of blogs, stories, speeches and even just personal journal entries over the last decade or so. Just the other day my curious eyes even helped me notice a young woman who was in the process of trying to decide whether or not she wanted to take her own life by suicide. Yes, you read that right, << Test First Name >>. I was given the gift of acting along with a group of amazing humans who helped someone make the decision to not jump. The magnitude of the experience is still so fresh that I hardly know what to do with it, so I decided to do what I always do. I decided to write. 

Last Sunday morning I took a little Jim time. Part of my Jim time was actual gym time working out, but I also did some shopping and a few other errands. My original goal was to be home by noon for the kickoff of the Lions vs. Bears football game, but I also wanted to try to make it to the bank to cash a check I had been hanging onto way too long. I had to make the decision to either drive past our house to the bank and get home later than I intended or just go straight home and leave the bank stop for another day. 

I had already checked my phone and was surprised to see that the bank was actually open on Sunday until 1 PM, so I went ahead and decided to take the extra time to do my banking, even though I would get home after kickoff. When I got to the bank, I noticed that the parking lot was completely empty. From the parking lot the bank lobby looked dark. When I walked up to the door, sure enough, the bank was actually closed. 

As I jumped in the car and started driving south down Lincoln Avenue towards our home, I couldn't help but think what a waste of time it was to try to cram one more task into my Sunday morning instead of just going straight home to be with my family. A few minutes later as I got closer to our Chicago two-flat, something unusual caught my eye. About fifty yards ahead I saw a pair of shoes on the sidewalk on the passenger's side of my car. It is not unusual to see clothes, shoes or other personal belongings abandoned on the streets of Chicago these days. What was unusual about this situation though was that the two shoes were right next to each other as if they had been placed there with intention. I also think the fact that they seemed to be pretty nice shoes and not some random worn out sneaker made them catch my wandering eye. 

It is so interesting the way out brain processes information. Neuroscientists claim that our brain receives 11 million bits of information per second through our senses of vision, hearing, touch, smell, taste and balance. That number is unfathomable to me. To put it in computer memory terms, that means we need about 75 gigabytes per day to process the information that is fed into our heads every 24 hours! 

The vast majority of the bits of information our brain receives as we go about our everyday life are trivial and fleeting. Every so often though, one of the 11 million bits of information we receive per second triggers us to explore more deeply. We then get to use our free will to decide whether or not we take action and become the explorer. On Sunday morning when my eyes saw the two shoes right next to each other, it took me a few seconds to process the information and decide if my brain wanted to seek more information or just return to the task of driving home to watch football. What I saw next was equal parts startling and heartbreaking.

When I first noticed her, all my brain saw was a silhouette of a young woman dressed in black from head to toe. She was standing on the guardrail of the bridge which crosses the north branch of the Chicago River behind my house. The young lady in black was alternately leaning out over the river and then sitting back down on the rail. The next bit of information my brain processed was another woman frantically pacing on the sidewalk while she was on her phone. It was as if everything instantly started to slow down inside my head as I built the story in my brain. 

This young lady in black was a person at the end of her rope who was on the cusp of deciding whether or not to take her own life by jumping off the bridge into the freezing cold Chicago River. The woman on the phone had already noticed the situation and was calling 911 to get help. I slowed down quickly, pulled my car over to the side of the road and jumped out to see what I might be able to do to help even though I had no idea how to proceed and I was scared as hell. 

I quietly asked the woman on the phone if she had already gotten though to 911 to which she nodded and confirmed that she had. I then inched my way closer to the young woman dressed in black who was precariously standing on the guardrail of the bridge. She looked to be about 20 years old give or take a few years. She was pretty and had long, flowing dark hair. Her clothes were clean and in good order. She was wearing makeup. Her lips were a soft pink shade that spoke to her youthful energy. This was no homeless person nor an individual who looked to have a visible history with mental illness. This was somebody's daughter, sister, cousin or friend. That thought brought things very close to home for me as the father of a 5 year old daughter. The next bit of information my brain processed was a question inside my own head:

Doesn't she now how much she is going to be missed?

The girl was sobbing as she continued to lean in and out over the river. It was as if I could feel her toggle back and forth between trying to work up the courage to take the leap and the once again deciding to sit back down and wait for someone to help her. I was the second car to stop, but in a matter of seconds other cars also stopped. It didn't take long for a small group to amass and to the best of my recollection, a couple of dozen people were gathered, about half of them on the north end of the bridge and the other half with me on the south end. 

The group on the north end started to drift closer to the young woman in black which to me seemed like a bad idea. I held my hands up in the and made a pushing motion as if to ask them to back off. Without shouting to avoid startling the young girl in black, I sort of loudly whispered, "Let her have her space. Too many people may make her feel pressured." Almost immediately the group gathered on the north end of the bridge shifted slightly back. 
 
A man on the south side of the bridge with me looked at me and said, "Why don't we just go up and grab her?" I responded by firmly saying, "She's on the other side of the rail. If we startle her and she slips there is no way we can get down to the river fast enough to help her without any rescue equipment." He nodded in agreement. Suddenly I felt like I had been elected unofficial spokesperson of group of helpers who were trying to save the young woman in black. If I hadn't made my failed trip to the bank, I would have never even been in this moment in time and now I seem to have become defacto point man in a suicide prevention drill! 

I started to hear faint sirens in the distance. My gut told me that help was on its way and would be there in a minute or two, but I could also feel the pressure of the situation elevating. The young lady in black seemed to me to be increasingly anxious and I felt like she was getting closer to make the decision to let go of the pole and fall into the river. Each time she leaned out, it looked like she was leaning further and further until she had eventually crossed the point of no return. 

At some point a little voice inside my held told me that more help was almost there. Even if she did slip and fall at this point there would be firemen and paramedics on site to intervene. That same voice nudged me to move in a bit closer. I can't really remember walking on the sidewalk towards the young lady in black. It was more as if I floated towards her until I was about 10 to 15 feet away from, about twice as close to her and anybody else in the group. I was on an island, but I did not feel alone. 

The young lady in black noticed me. She had her left arm around the pole and as she was leaning out over the river she briefly glanced my way, made eye contact with me and held it for a few seconds before she looked away. Even though our eyes only met for a few seconds, I felt like she allowed me to glance all the way into her soul. In her eyes I saw grief. In her eyes I saw sadness. In her eyes I saw fear, hopelessness and loneliness. In truth, I saw many of the same things I see in my own eyes on a day to day basis. 

The next thing that little voice inside my head told me to do was to open my mouth and without forethought or planning, I said: 

"Hey beautiful... Can I give you a hug?" 

Her head snapped around and looked at me again. Since the words that I was directed to speak seemed to have landed, I repeated myself:

"I'd like to offer you a hug. If you come over to this side of the rail, I'd like to give you a hug. May I give you a hug?" 

The young lady in black with the soft pink lips continued to sob softly as she sat back down on the rail. Through the periphery of my right eye I saw the hook and ladder fire engine pull up and I knew that the young lady in black was going to be safe. Within seconds an entire team of firefighters were on the sidewalk. They somehow seemed to get from the fire engine both swiftly and gently at the same time. I couldn't help but notice how seamlessly they handled the situation compared to those of us who were called to stop even though we had no idea what we were doing. 

One of the firemen took the lead. He glided in and as quickly as he said, "What can we do for you today ma'am?" he had lifted her up and over the rail and swept her off to the fire engine for additional care. Just like that it was over. I thought about sticking around to see what happened next. Perhaps I should talk to the fireman and tell them what I saw? Maybe the group of people who chose to stop should share a few minutes unpacking the experience and I would be needed to take the lead in that situation? 

Those thoughts quickly faded and all I wanted to do was go home to my wife and daughter. I no longer cared about watching the Bears vs. the Lions. I just wanted to be home. I said goodbye to the lady on the phone, I gave a bro hug to the man who wanted to go up and grab her and then I jumped in my car and started to cry. 

My tears came as a release of the multitude of emotions I was feeling in the moment, but they also came because I couldn't help but notice how many times in my own life I have felt overwhelmed by grief, sadness, hopelessness and fear. I have never consciously or actively thought about taking my own life, but I would be lying if I didn't admit that at times in my life it has seemed impossible to figure out how or why to even try to overcome the challenges. I have lost a fair number of people in my circle of life to suicide and  have seen first hand the generational trauma it can perpetuate. It sure can be pretty easy to feel overwhelmed in the complex world we live in these days and more and more people wrestle with the idea of checking out. That is the why I am so passionate about the therapeutic process, coaching and the men's community work I am involved in. It saves lives, most notably my own! 

Four days later I still have not fully unpacked the experience. I have talked about it with a few friends. I brought it up in a men's group I participated in on Monday night which then precipitated a powerful conversation about death and dying. Now I have written the story and I get to use my free will to decide whether this story is merely a journal post or whether it might be a blog, a chapter of a book or perhaps even another Toastmasters speech even though I haven't been to a Toastmasters meeting in many years. 

If I do ever use this story as a speech I would need to figure out what the overarching lesson is so that it would powerfully connect with the audience. I like my stories to be precious little gifts with a neat and tidy bow on them. There is no bow that I can put on this story yet; It is way too soon for me to be able to distill the piece of wisdom within. If I had to take a guess right now though, I think my main take away would be related to the idea of helping. Many years ago I heard Fred Rogers of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood talking about how he deals with the things he sees in the world that are disturbing or unsettling. In what has become one of his most famous quotes, Mr. Rogers said: 

"When I was a boy and I saw scary things in the news or in the world, my mother would say to me 'Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.'"

Over the years this quote has become a bit controversial because it tends to get floated out there as a meme in tragic times like mass shootings or other terrorist attacks. I honor the fact that a quippy line should probably not be used in attempt to gloss over or any other way bypass the pain of tragedy. That being said, I walk away from my experience last Sunday feeling honored and humbled by the fact that over a period of a few minutes, more than two dozen people took notice and stopped to see what the could do to help a fellow human in a time of great need. These days I sometimes feel like our whole world of humans are running around with blinders on focused only on their own individual needs and wants. The freneticism of the pace of life can at times make me feel extremely isolated.

My experiences on Sunday, while brimming with heavy emotions, at the same time gave me a renewed sense of hope. In this 3D world that can sometimes feel overrun by fear, sadness and loneliness, knowing how many people are ready to help reminds me to keep that hope alive within me. I would like to close by taking a moment to thank all the strangers who stopped to help. Maybe it's time to grab that book idea off the someday shelf after all? You all remind me to keep my eyes open and look for the best in all situations. As a father, husband, friend, I realize I am a better version of myself when I go through life with my eyes - and my heart - wide open.