I have heard it said that death comes in three’s. Although through my own observation, I realize, it comes in a steady stream never stopping until death finds us all. Every moment lived is but a prelude to an inevitable ending. What lies beyond our human existence will not be known until our fate finds us.
On a beautiful Sunday afternoon, a distraught man strolls along a grassy path that parallels train tracks. He is carrying a guitar, a pack of generic cigarettes and a 40 oz bottle of Schlitz malt liquor. He is a fairly tall man, yet extremely thin, for he has not eaten or slept properly in a long time. At forty five he appears much older than his years. His face tanned by the sun, brings out his crystalline blue eyes to starkness. He has no teeth and when he smiles his gums show just as if he were an old man.
His heart is breaking as he picks his guitar with jumbled fingers, not knowing how to play. He always dreamt of this talent for instruments that somehow eluded him. Deep inside, his sorrow unbearable, he knows that to die would matter not to the world around him.
He has no children, and his family tired from trying to save him from himself has distanced themselves from his destructive path. He is an only child. His mother dreams that someday he will change. He sees her dreams too, and they serve only to remind him of what he will never be.
Some say that suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem, but he knows better. He has lived with his demons forever it seems. They follow him relentlessly, whispering wordlessly into his conscious thoughts. When looking into a mirror, or looking back at his past, the evidence of his jaded self is more than he can bare.
Hopelessness, finds him weary this day.
He walks off the grassy path and up the rocks that line the railroad. He stops for a moment and looks both ways. In the distance he can hear the roaring of the train as it lays on its horn and begins passing through town. Calmly, the man lowers his body, perching himself on one of the tracks.
He lifts his guitar and begins to play.
Around the bend the train barrels forward, sending a continuous vibration through the slats of metal in which he is sitting. The man continues to play, humming softly to the tuneless jumble of notes and cords. At peace with his choice, he sits, playing, humming, ignoring the rumbling earth beneath him. The train is chugging forward, laying on its horn loudly.
The man refuses to look up, refuses to move.
Screeching breaks throw sparks as the train slides down the track. The man never looks up. Metal scraping metal, sliding, the loud whistle blaring.
In a instant his life is over.
His body thrown a football fields length, the guitar shatters, splinters shower down the tracks as the train continues another quarter mile before coming to a complete stop. The mans lifeless form lays unnaturally crumpled along the path.
It was a painless death. Immediate.
This day, people will take notice of the fiasco of ambulances, police cars and the county coroner loading his limp broken body into a blue plastic bag that zips over his face. His death will be announced over the six O’ clock news, and will even be on the front page of the news paper tomorrow.
But who will remember this day, after tomorrow?
No one, but his broken hearted mother and his disgraced father who had washed his hands of him years ago. Their pain comes not for the loss of him because they rarely saw him.
Their pain spawns from the knowledge that thier only child and little boy's life was needlessly wasted.
Train kills pedestrian north of West Sacramento Avenue crossing
By CHRIS GULLICK - Staff Writer
Article Launched: 04/07/2008 12:16:40 AM PDT
CHICO -- A man died Sunday when a southbound Union Pacific train hit him several hundred yards north of the Sacramento Avenue crossing about 1:30 p.m.
Butte County Sheriff’s Department declined to release the man’s name until his family could be located and notified.
Steve Kinross, the train’s conductor, said as the train rounded a slight curve after the Eighth Avenue crossing, he saw someone sitting on the tracks. The person, wearing a white ball cap and sunglasses, appeared to be playing a guitar.
"He didn’t even look up," Kinross said.
Kinross pulled emergency brakes to stop the train, but it didn’t come to a full stop until five or six train cars had passed Sacramento Avenue.
The train’s speed when he began attempting to stop was 49 miles per hour, Kinross added. The train was en route from Dunsmuir to Roseville. He said he followed Union Pacific protocol in walking back to the site as soon as the train could be stopped.
Sgt. Scott Ruppel, of Chico Police Department, said he understood the railroad’s policy is to call in a new crew to take over so the involved crew can be debriefed and counseled.
The victim was thrown or pushed more than 100 yards from where the train hit him.
Several people in the neighborhood of the incident said they recognized the man as a local who had lived in one of the apartments operated as a clean and sober facility on Columbus Avenue.
Sophia Peteet, 16, said she had seen him sitting on the tracks and playing his guitar
before.
Larry Lambert, director of the facility, said the victim had lived in one of his 15 apartments previously and was scheduled to move back. Just a couple of weeks ago he changed his mind and moved in with a girlfriend instead.
Lambert said the man had struggled with substance abuse and probably still needed some supervision and help.
"He was a gentle heart; he was a gentle soul," Lambert said.
"He was a nice guy who was caught up in his addiction," said Imogean Harlan, the facility’s former director.
The railroad crossing at Sacramento Avenue remained closed for about an hour.
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