An Unexplained Death. Mikita Brottman

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СКАЧАТЬ The Tobin Bridge is a two-level cantilevered structure, and the man, who was killed on impact, landed not in the water, but on the lower, northbound level of the bridge, which is an extension of the Charlestown neighborhood’s Terminal Street. He was later identified as Dr. F., fifty, a brilliant, handsome, and talented MIT professor and scientist. Well loved as a teacher, mentor, and passionate community activist, he was described by friends, family, and colleagues as cheerful, extroverted, and successful. He was married with two young daughters, and according to reports, had never suffered from depression or any mental illness.

      On October 19, 2014, a former BBC journalist, K., fifty, was found hanged by her own bootlaces in a toilet at Istanbul’s Atatürk Airport. K., who had been working in Iraq as the interim director for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, was also working on a Ph.D. at the University of Canberra, and had just submitted the first chapter of her thesis to her supervisor. CCTV footage shows her entering the women’s bathroom alone. There was no sign of a struggle. She had two credit cards in her wallet, along with a large amount of cash. When her death was ruled a suicide, there was an outcry of disbelief. Those who knew her found it impossible to believe that K. would simply abandon her friends, loved ones, colleagues, and pets, and her important humanitarian work in the field of conflict.

      On February 8, 2016, fifty-four-year-old Mrs. H. of Mountlake Terrace in the state of Washington, a systems analyst who worked at a center for HIV/AIDS research and prevention, took a piece of meat out of her freezer for dinner, drove to the overflow lot at the nearby park-and-ride as she did every workday, then texted the driver of her car pool that she had forgotten her workplace identification key, was running late, and would meet her in ten minutes. Then she left her car in the lot, walked a mile and a half, disposed of her work ID and cell phone so well they were never found, crawled into a ditch, taped a plastic bag over her head, and suffocated.

      Friends, family, and coworkers describe Mrs. H. as “full of life.” At least five hundred people attended her funeral. She had been married for over thirty years, had a grown son, enjoyed her job, was active in the community, and had recently adopted a cat. Her car was found locked and secured, and nothing had been taken from it. Her clothes were intact and not in disarray. According to the autopsy report, the cause of death was “asphyxiation and fresh water drowning.” There were no injuries or defensive wounds consistent with an assault, abduction, or struggle. Toxicology tests revealed no unusual substances in Mrs. H.’s system. There was nothing to suggest she had been robbed. All suspects, including her husband, were eliminated. Her death was ruled a suicide.

      These apparently impulsive and spontaneous acts of self-destruction baffled the police and bewildered family and friends, many of whom, as in the cases of K. and Mrs. H., refused to accept the verdict of the medical examiner. And yet we do not know how long any of these people had been contemplating the act; neither, perhaps, did they.

      Consider the case of K., for example: just prior to her death, she had fallen asleep at the airport in Istanbul and missed her flight by fifteen minutes. The next flight was not for another twelve hours. For a seasoned traveler used to working in war zones, this should have been a minor setback, but K.’s sister, who gave interviews with the British press, believes it was the breaking point. Friends and colleagues regarded K. as fearless and resilient, but her sister suspects this was a persona K. worked hard to project. In her sister’s opinion, K. was fragile, vulnerable, and plagued by a sense of incompetence; she took on the problems of other people as a way to escape from her own. We assume that years of living and working in war zones makes a person tough, but K.’s sister thinks it had weakened K. to the breaking point, and that the accumulated trauma may have been just too much for her to bear.

      On this particular night, her sister speculates, K. may have been simply “exhausted” and “emotionally raw.” It was late, K. was tired, she’d missed her flight, and perhaps the person at the desk had been rude or short with her. When told by airline staff she had to buy a new ticket, K. apparently became “tearful.” Surrounded by unfriendly strangers, she may have been feeling unbearably desolate and sad, and the thought of spending another twelve hours at the airport may have simply pushed her over the edge, leaving her unable to think about anything except extinguishing her pain. “I think she just took a snap decision to check out,” said her sister.

      In the case of Mrs. H., we have no idea what could have happened over the weekend that might have sent her into a state of despondency by Monday morning. Had she learned some bad news? Had she been diagnosed with an illness? Had her husband asked for a divorce? Had she discovered an act of betrayal? Had she somehow lost hold of the thread that drew together the fabric of her life? I picture her taking the meat out of the freezer in the morning to defrost for her husband’s dinner, getting ready to go to work as usual, then suddenly realizing: There’s no point.

      In other words, the suicide that appears impulsive to outsiders is often the result of inner preparation that may have been going on for a long time—perhaps even, as Albert Camus suggests in his essay The Myth of Sisyphus, unconsciously: “An act like this is prepared within the silence of the heart, as is a great work of art. The man himself is ignorant of it. One evening he pulls the trigger or jumps.” Survivors of suicide attempts that they themselves describe as “impulsive” may be unaware of how often and how deeply they may have been thinking about the act (which is not to say that such acts are necessarily preceded by any obvious warnings). We are generally unaware of our habitual ruminations, prior notions, and mental rehearsals, and the suicidal in particular often develop habits of secrecy and duplicity. If the survivor of a suicide attempt describes their unsuccessful effort as “impulsive,” this may simply mean that they were not conscious of their motive at the time, or that they are ashamed to tell the truth. As Douglas Kerr remarks in his book Forensic Medicine, “The most unlikely people sometimes take their own lives, and their behavior immediately before the act frequently gives no indication of their intentions.”

      In short, no one can know exactly what goes through the mind of a person who takes his or her own life. They may have been struggling with suicidal feelings for many years for unknown reasons. They may have barely been managing to maintain balance for weeks, perhaps months, before something finally tips them over the edge. It could be anything or nothing: a look, a gesture, a toothache, a headache, an unpleasant word, a fleeting, transient thought.

      After the suicide of Dr. F. from the Tobin Bridge, local residents suggested that antisuicide barriers should be installed, as they have been on other bridges and landmarks known to attract suicidal jumpers. Such arguments are usually overruled on the grounds of expense, the fact that such barriers spoil the “life-enhancing” view (and may themselves even inspire thoughts of suicide), and the “common knowledge” that anybody wanting to kill him or herself will do so in the end, one way or another.

      But every human mind is different, and each case is unique. Some people have a constant and profound desire to die that only grows more intense over time. Others may be genuinely suicidal, but if they have no opportunity to act, their feelings may gradually change. The suicidal impulse may manifest itself again when the chance to act arises, but it may not. It may appear in another form, or it may fade away altogether.

      The idea that “anybody wanting to kill himself will do so in the end” was disproved at least thirty years ago by the British “gas suicide study,” which found evidence that between 1963 and 1975, the annual number of suicides in England and Wales showed a sudden, unexpected drop at a time when suicide was on the rise in most other European countries. This abrupt decline in suicides, it turned out, correlated with the progressive removal of carbon monoxide from the domestic gas supply, as the government had discovered that natural gas was much cheaper to use. The reduced suicide rate was an unanticipated and accidental consequence of this conversion, proving that most of those unable to kill themselves in the kitchen did not, eventually, look for different keys to Death’s private door.

      Rey Rivera may have had good reason to be in the neighborhood of the Belvedere when he went missing, since the offices СКАЧАТЬ