How close is your death? Morbid, scary, harsh thought, a downer--most likely. Sorry. But, I touched a dead person this week, so forgive me if death is on my mind.
I ride Marta, back and forth each day, and there are countless stories I could tell about these travels. But Wednesday was a new level of weird. From 5 Points two trains depart: the Candler Park train, which is a stubby sucker that only goes four stops before making a loop back to become another short-trip train westbound; and the snaking eastbound train that chases the Candler short hop by about 4 minutes. I never take the Candler one because I'll have to get off and wait for the eastbound, but for some odd reason I jumped on that one on Wednesday.
The Candler short hop train was very nice, clean and full of cold air-conditioned air. There was no shortage of seats and even the windows were clean. We click-clacked along our four stops to Candler Park and all was well. Then, when reaching the last stop the lights were turned off and announcements were made explaining this was the end of the line. We, the myriad riders, gathered near the doors. One guy was slumped motionless in his seat. I went to jostle him to awaken him, thinking him to be hitting the sauce after work or something and passed out. Nope, he was dead. Eyes rolled back in his head-no chest movement-pale skin-dead.
I looked around: folks were freaking out. I walked up to the train conductor's window and told him he had a Medical, a problem; in fact, he has a dead guy on his train who was not deboarding as instructed. The conductor tries to awaken the man and I exit the train, the scene, the station. I walked the two stops onward, a good 5-7 miles, and went for a beer. I thought over how short life is for all of us. I then got back on Marta and went home, talked to my Mom about the random events of my day after 5 hours from my clockout at work, and started on my OT work. That's how I dealt with it.
This guy, this suit and tie guy, this dead person-who started the short hop on the Candler train alive because he had to walk onto the train and find a seat-passed during our short jaunt. I found him. I tried to shake him awake, but he was gone from this plane of existence.
Life is short, your time alive is incalculable, your breaths are not warrantied. I know, I touched death this week.
2 comments:
mark,are you afraid of death?
No, I'm not scared of death. I've seen way to much of it in my life. I think that's why, in the grand scheme of how things work, I was the one chosen to find this dead body.
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