Today is not a good day to die

(This is an old post from my flickr account on 21st March 2006 which inspired a lot of my flickr contacts and raised a few interesting thoughts so I wanted to share it again here.)

Really, I wasn’t meant to be there. So why was I there? Driving up the road this morning, bound for Newton by the Sea, I was thinking about old friends, friends who I had lost contact with and I was wondering what had become of them. Pulling off the A1, I felt an urge to go to elsewhere rather than Newton, something about the sky above my new intended area. A ripe sense of drama just waiting for me to commit to a vision. A dark brooding sky it is.

Passing a man, something strikes me as odd, not the time of day that he is out, but something about him. I see him a few more times, and each time I feel a little unsettled by him. Partly I felt odd because I thought he may be the landowner for the area I was in, and possibly shouldn’t have been, and was expecting a telling off, but there was something else. To put my mind at rest I set off in the direction that I last saw him. Finding him, atop the cliffs, all is not well, the whiskey, the knife, the crying, the threat to jump off the cliff into the sea.
So, I am his new friend for a while, talking to him, trying to calm him, relaying my own experiences of depression and doubt hoping to give him hope, trying to understand him so that I can say or do something that will bring him back from the edge, both in his mind and the the cliff.

I left him just once, to call the police. The policeman on the end of the line was helpful and calming, but very concerned for my safety he was very non-commital about what I should do till the police and coastguard arrive, which given our remote location could be a while. (It has only just struck me now, as I write this that I have never been thankful for owning a mobile phone before, this is the first time it has shown any real use to me.)

What should I do, sit and wait for the police or return to the man and continue talking to him? Despite the knife, I couldn’t leave him there, alone.
So we talk for a while, both now freezing having been out in the rain atop the cliffs for well over an hour.
Fortunately the police aren’t too long, quickly getting there in their 4x4s.
He gives up easily now, the drama, the madness has gone out of him. Despite their apparent brusqueness, they are ever so gentle with him.

Would he have jumped or did he just want to be noticed? It’s an odd place to go, so very lonely, to get help.
I can’t quite get my head around the whole thing. I couldn’t quite believe it at the time. I couldn’t believe how stupid I had been to follow him, but what if I hadn’t? For some reason, I don’t really feel any need to answer these questions, possibly because there is not a definite answer. Mainly what I am aware of is that I am emotionally wide open when I am out in the wilderness talking photographs, looking for inspiration. This event hit me full in the chest, I felt so tuned in to it, all I could do after the police had left was cry.
I’ve spoken to the police this afternoon and they tell me he is in hospital, being treated physically for exposure, but mentally, time will tell.

The photograph is one that I took first thing, before all this happened, somehow that sense of foreboding in the sky seems all to relevant now. (The title comes from something he kept saying, that ‘today is a good day to die.’ I didn’t feel that the print really expressed any of the pain involved, so I have scratched into the print with a sharp edge the words. The print shouldn’t be perfect, damaged like people who self harm, cut like people do to themselves.)

Just how tuned into the landscape am I? Was this coincidence, fate, synchronicity? The thoughts of friendship, old and new. The inspiration to go elsewhere despite having made firm plans to go somewhere else. These are my questions.

I stopped for a while afterwards, with the sun shining down from a blue grey sky, and took some photos of the sandy beach. Nothing special, just a little sun and sand. Always special.

(In case anyone wonders I have left out some details like his name and the location, just to avoid any possible embarrasments.)

Note added 22 March 2006I got a call from the coastguard last night, just to say thanks for my help. How nice of them was that? Overall I was so impressed with the police and coastguard. When all we get from the news/media is reports of bad policing, I was almost surprised that the police who attended were prompt, kind, efficient, courteous ... Well done guys, I for one am impressed.

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