Never In My Wildest

I have no words. I’m just amazed. At the power of the internet to connect.

It’ll be 14 years or so this next October when I wrote a column for the Pierce College Roundup about a lady who died after throwing herself off the Mulholland bridge over the 405 Freeway. That column went on to win a first-place award at the state journalism conference the next spring and even long after this whole internest thing came along it remained just an aging clip in an aging box in a series of closets.

I can’t remember when I finally transcribed it and tossed it online here, but it’s been linked by the “Forgive Me Evelyn” headline over there on the far right column under “Other Pages” for over a year. Maybe two. Maybe you’ve read it or maybe you will or won’t.

A person who did read it yesterday submitted the following comment signed only with the first name of Don to what I posted last October on the anniversary of the column’s publication and like I said, I have no words. I’m just amazed. At the power of the internet to connect:

I also remember that day, but as a family member who lived a continent away at the time, but who was affected far more than any morning commuter.  For most of them, it was a morning’s inconvenience.  For us, it is a lifetime’s sorrow.  I live in San Diego these days, but say my own silent prayer (to whom I don’t even know) on the now-rare occasions that I pass under that damn bridge.

Thank you for having written so sensitively about someone who was kind and gentle and might, just might have made it through a dark period.  We knew her as Ruth.

Never could I imagine that someone from the woman’s family would ever read what I wrote. While I’m proud of that piece and humbled by Don’s appreciation, it makes me wish all the more that Ruth had made it through those dark times.