Liberty

No matter what I say about the person who chose to jump yesterday from the top of this tower of freedom, someone will think me callous.

I was practically at the site at the time of the fall. And I look at it every day.

So, I had some thoughts.

First, if you are or know someone who is thinking and talking about death or suicide, there's a hotline and a bunch of links to local resources:

1-800-SUICIDE (1-800-784-2433) or 1-888-279-8188.

Suicide is bad, sad and detrimental to society, and I will never know what this person was thinking nor how the people who know him must feel.

However, I had to pause and think – at least he didn't kill anyone else in the process.

Yes, that sounds sick, but I'm sick to death, and perhaps he was too, of suicide bombings and stupid kill-everyone-in-sight shootings at schools and businesses and public places.

So, a single experience here can seem as isolated as he apparently felt.

It seems that picking such a patriotic spot for ones half-planned self-inflicted demise should depend on having some political statement about war, suicide, life – something – to make. More may come to light, but it may not, since suicides are kept rather private. Besides, what speaks louder than "I'm out of here?"

I'm sad he chose to do it in front of people. Twenty-odd were there, a "handful" apparently saw. I can't fathom what they heard.

His death, like all suicides, has repercussions that are literally selfish.

Some witnesses who had been up on the tower at the same time he had been said he seemed agitated and was pacing around. (He was alone when he jumped.)

I don't know, it seems from my experience, that being up there makes a lot of people nervous. It's a frighteningly-open view, even though you're surrounded by thick walls that come up to about chest-height.

Being up there makes me dizzy and freaked out. The view makes me nauseous, and the "my life is in my hands" aspect is kind of weird. Standing on top of such things – like a bridge or ledge or rooftop – seems like kind of a test, in fact. There is a tiny itch inside me, at least - the one that flickers sometimes when driving, "All I have to do is turn the wheel a little and that semi and I converge…" – that I am going to faux-diagnose as "normal." After all, if it wasn't dangerous, there are a lot of things we humans would never do, because then they wouldn't be "fun."

Talk about thrill-seeking, my husband said he remembered a classmate who got up on that ledge and walked around, ADD-crazy, on a field trip once. (This would have been in the 1980s, before the 1994 jumper.)

They've talked about how to enclose the Liberty Memorial tower top and make it safe, just as on most buildings' observation decks, there is no possible way to access open air space.

For example, I have been to the top decks of the 475-foot Brunswick building in Chicago and the former World Trade Center of NYC, and those were well-protected.

I have peeked out through the Statue of Liberty's crown holes and run around all over the decks of La Tour Eiffel (Paris), and both of these, it seems to my memory, could have served a person determined to be suicidal.

Here, they are closing the tower until further notice, noting that "there really isn’t anything you can do to make the situation better and still allow people to see the view of Kansas City.” A security guard, for example, couldn't necessarily stop anyone "determined to jump," the spokesperson said.

And, really, if you take a look at the photo or know the place yourself, the northern edge of the observation deck poses quite a plunge of its own. It's never been questioned. It's still open. I've even seen someone set their baby/toddler there for a posed photo (walking away and trusting the kid's instincts, I guess, though we all know how much phyical coordination little ones have). It made me stop breathing. I froze in my tracks, ready to jump into super-hero mode, since I was closer to this kid than the photo-priority parent.

Nothing happened. Usually it doesn't.

Our cat doesn't try to jump from the third-floor balcony, either.

The possibility of passing out drunk and then drowning in the Liberty Memorial reflection pool at the south entrance qualifies that as a dangerous place, too, and it's still open, of course.

The world is full of danger; much of it is optional.

I'm sorry another person was so low, so dark, so ___ to feel that not living was the better alternative to a dangerous, yet beautiful world.

Maybe the ticket-sellers for the tower should be trained in psychological profiling.

Yes, we need more profiling in our society, indeed.