A man was found dead in a friend’s car this morning.
Caused lots of excitement, generated a few sick jokes, gave the cops something to do, and made you wonder – things go along just fine and then it’s like something falls out of the sky.
I talked to her tonight for a long time, guessing about what might have happened.
She didn’t know the man. Her husband discovered him when he was leaving for work. DCI identified him within a couple of hours and said he’d only been in the area for a couple of days. Young Hispanic man, no shirt, lots of tattoos.
The garage door was closed, the car was running, lights and wipers on. He wasn’t trying to take the car, because there was another car behind the one he was in.
The man was laying on the floor of the car with his head on the seat. She thinks this is because the leather car seat might have felt cold on his skin.
The worst part of this (for me anyway, lord knows what this man’s family is going through) is that my friend feels responsible, because she had left the keys in the car.
She’d been crying, and nothing I said seemed to help. She thinks it’s her fault. Whether it was an accident or a suicide, if her keys hadn’t been in the car, he’d be alive.
I’m pretty sure she’ll feel better as time passes. How do you get past something like that? I’d feel the same way, I think. Would you?
Before I was born, my fathers oldest brother (my uncle Howard) was driving home at night. A woman jumped infront of his car to kill herself. Howard might have had some of his 8 kids in the car too, I cant remember… but he was very fucked up for a long time.
In this area, there have been a few suicides in the last ten years like that, jumping in front of trains, transport trucks etc - those always leave a victim behind…the driver. They have a terrible burden to carry.
Your friend is NOT alone. She is NOT responsible for his death, her property was merely chosen as the weapon he turned on herself.
You might want to look into this from the emergency services in your area - they might know of others who have been sucked into another suicide. Its a long shot, but she has to talk to someone.
The way i see suicide is that if a person is so bad off that he/she wants to die then let them do it. Seriously, im not trying to sound cold hearted but keeping them from ending their suffering seems like punishment to me. A grown person should be able to make their own choice to live or die. Death is a part of life, were all going to die, so if someone wants to speed up the process because they’ve been delt a bad hand or whatever other reason then who the fuck are we to stop them? Or even feel bad for them for that matter? I think we should be happy that its over for them.
Thanks again, kellibelli. Your uncle’s situation reminded me of an uncle of mine who was an engineer on a train – he retired (early) after an accident that wasn’t his fault. (Trains can’t stop on a dime.)
My friend’s normally a pretty pragmatic person. I’m hoping she’ll be ready for sick jokes about the incident in a few days. Her husband’s already telling them – and he was the one who found the body. Isn’t it funny, how people react differently to the same thing?
Maybe we should be thankful for every day that goes by that we don’t cause someone harm. ?? Or is that going too far?
Cisco, I understand that in the absract, but in practice, one should do it, if one is going to do it at all, in a way that doesn’t leave a mess for someone else to clean up, and that isn’t traumatic for anyone else.
It sounds like the car was in the garage with another car behind it. She probably figured it was pretty well locked up and didn’t think anything of leaving the keys in it.
Montfort – this is Iowa. Small town Iowa. People will go out of town for two weeks and leave their house unlocked.
I don’t even know where my garage keys are, and the lock on the front door of the house hasn’t been operable in five years.
I won’t say everybody leaves keys in the car, but from what I’ve heard since this happened, lots of people do. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s so they’ll never have to look for the keys. ??
