The Suicide Bridge in Seattle

Below is an article about the Aurora Bridge, known as the suicide bridge of Seattle. This is a bridge that I drive over almost every day. It's hard to imagine people throwing themselves off of that bridge with concrete and water below it. It's hard to imagine life becoming that unbearable.

My brother committed suicide back in 1987 in St. Joseph, Missouri when he was only 19 years old. He thought life would never get any better for him so he just ended it. He didn't have a terminal illness he just couldn't take the stress he was under. It was a temporary problem with a permanent solution. It took me a long time to forgive him and I know that sounds really bad, but I was so angry at him for being so selfish and taking his life away from all of his family and not being able to see him grow up, maybe get married or have some children...although he did have some mental issues, I thought for sure he would have a good chance at life. He was extremely smart and could have figured out anything on the computer, I think he would have had a really great future in the computer industry especial back in the early 1990s. Every day when I drive over that bridge I think of my brother ending his life and I still miss him a bit. I also think of him when I walk through the Cancer Institute at the hospital I work at and see little children that want to live so bad and I think of Doug and what a good life he did have and how he threw it away like it was nothing.

My best friend lives in San Francisco, she has Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome from being horribly, horribly abused as a child by her parents. I know she has some awful issues and is going through a lot of stressful and scary things right now but she talks about killing herself like she is just going to buy some bread at the store. Like it's no big deal to her. IT just infuriates me and I tell her how mad that makes me, if something happened to her it would just kill me. She is such a beautiful person and she doesn't even have a clue how special she is. I know mental illness is a powerful force and is a sickness and I can't blame them for doing what they think is right at the time. But I love life so much and I want these people to be in my life for as long as possible. If her light goes out it will make my life a lot more dim, maybe that is me being selfish.

Anyway, as the song goes, HOLD ON FOR ONE MORE DAY - it is amazing how much better life can be if you just hold on. It may really suck at times but things ALWAYS get better. By permanently closing the book of your life it will be so sad to never see what the next chapter would have held. All the new friends that would have been made, new loves, new adventures, new surroundings, new jobs, maybe a new city - life can be changed for the better, it just takes time and patience to get through all the crap. OKAY, enough of my preaching about it. Here is the article about the Aurora Bridge:

Governor seeks money for suicide fence on Aurora Bridge
By DONNA GORDON BLANKINSHIP
The Associated Press
Gov. Christine Gregoire is hoping to take the Aurora Bridge off the list of most popular bridges for committing suicide, by putting $1.4 million in her supplemental budget proposal to begin building an 8-foot suicide-prevention fence on the historic landmark.
More than 40 people are known to have jumped off the bridge in the past decade. Most years, three or four people jump, although nine leapt to their deaths in 2006, tying 1972 as the worst year on record for known suicides from the Aurora Bridge.
The Seattle bridge has the second-highest rate for bridge suicides in the nation, Gregoire said, but doesn't come close to No. 1, San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge, where about 25 people are known to jump to their deaths each year.
"Installation of an 8-foot suicide-prevention fence with illumination on the Aurora Avenue Bridge will help make the bridge safer and can help prevent suicides," the governor said in budget documents released Tuesday.
She said she plans to put additional dollars in her budget proposal for the 2009-2011 budget period, and estimated the total cost of the project would be $7.5 million.
The half-mile bridge built in 1931 carries state Highway 99 over water at its highest point, 155 feet above the channel connecting Lake Union and the Lake Washington Ship Canal north of downtown. But many jumpers fall on solid ground, sometimes onto a parking lot in a former warehouse district that has morphed into a trendy area full of office buildings, shops and restaurants.
The people who work under the bridge or live in the neighborhood should get the credit for the fence money in the governor's supplemental budget, said Stan Suchan, a spokesman for the Washington Department of Transportation.
"That project largely exists because of community involvement. The community is passionate about this," Suchan said. "I do share their concerns and I'm eager for the project to move forward."
The project is complicated by the bridge's status as a national historic landmark, and by the fact that the steel-truss bridge carries 45,000 vehicles a day on one of the main north-south routes through Seattle and requires careful, frequent safety inspections, he said.
A year ago, his department worked with city officials and suicide-prevention experts to install six emergency phones and 18 signs on the bridge, for suicide deterrence. The signs encourage people to seek help instead of jumping.
Assessing the impact of those measures is not possible, said L.J. Eddy, the head of the Seattle Police Department's hostage negotiation team.
"Nobody can say, 'We saw an increase in calls or a decrease in jumpers,' " Eddy said a month after the phones and signs were installed. "And we can't measure the potential suicide person, who sees the signs and turns around."