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At first, I could not talk about it. I was stunned, shocked, at a loss for understanding what felt like a senseless act. Then I thought I shouldn’t talk about it out of respect, privacy, feeling this wasn’t my story. I have since changed my mind, because I was or I am a part of this story. I am a witness to a very intimate moment of a family’s life. A family I will never know, yet a family I will never forget.

There is a train station where I used to live in the suburbs, far from the city and traffic. The platform is little more than a slab of cement. The train stops just before the cross walk, a safety bar in place until it leaves the station, allowing us to then cross the two sets of tracks.

At the end of a long day last October, my train pulled into this station. Like me, most of the commuters were at the front, eager to get off and get home. It was the time of year when for some, the temperature called for a winter jacket, while others hung on to the hope that fall was not over, bracing themselves against the chill with a sweater. There was a nip and a breeze as we stepped onto the platform and in a clump we started to shuffle towards the front of the train. The sound and the speed of an oncoming train added to the rush of the wind, and as we walked along the side of our train we heard a loud noise. Thud or bang seem like such inadequate words. I don’t know how to describe it, this sound I knew was not good. 

Then another noise, a whooshing, not a breeze, something more substantial. I remember feet – my feet – looking down, footsteps slowed to a stop. A swirling tube of wind churned and twisted in front of my feet, funneling like a horizontal tornado, picking up feathers and some other debris as it shot right past my feet, down into the ditch beside me then disappeared. This tube of wind was dense, with weight, unnatural. It felt as if it had substance.

Then there was no sound, or there was too much sound as time slowed down. Everything became like a frame in a lens. I blink and the picture changes. People are in the ditch, convinced they saw something. A piece of metal they say. I don’t understand. Why does it matter?  That sound. What was that sound?  I look at my feet. There are feathers sprinkled across my shoes. I look up. I blink again. A bird. It was a bird. But that sound was too loud. It was a bird. Don’t think, just walk. It was a bird. I’m at the safety bar. We are all at the safety bar, except those strange people in the ditch. The train isn’t moving. We wait some more. No one is talking. We are starting to stamp our feet from the cold and to shake off the feathers. Such little feathers for such a great sound.

Then I blink again, a blink I wished I didn’t have to blink. I see a shoe, just one shoe. A shoe that looks just like the kind my son wears. I look up, and I see a knapsack stuck up in the front grill of the train. I nudge the lady next to me. Look. I point. I can’t say anything more. She doesn’t understand. Look, I say again. I point to the shoe and then the knapsack. She thinks the knapsack is attached to the train, intentional, holding supplies. This doesn’t make sense to me. I recognize the knapsack. My son has the same one. It’s a school bag. The shoe is the shoe of a teenager. I blink back to the tiny little feathers sprinkling the ground, caught in the fence, and I know they are the feathers of a down filled jacket. The kind of jacket you wear when the weather can’t decide if it is fall or winter.

Time just stops. No one moves as the realization of what we are a witness to slowly creeps through the crowd. The people in the ditch have given up, there is nothing there, or what was there has gone. They have that moment of realization too. That moment when everything freezes and whirls into fast-forward at the same time. Suddenly the conductor and railroad workers are running, calling on their radios. People are asking questions they are not allowed to answer. One by one, we duck under or walk around the safety bar to creep across the tracks. We look up as we cross the second track and see that the train that was passing in the other direction is also stopped further ahead. We see clearly now. We know. We are witness to a tragedy that should never have happened.

Safely on the other side of the tracks, I am still beside the same lady, this stranger who is instantly my friend, but who I will never see again. We feel we should stay, but we don’t know what to do. We feel like we should look, but we don’t want to see. I blink and look back to the other side. There is a young girl frozen and unmoving at the safety bar, too scared to cross. I can’t understand why she didn’t follow us. Why didn’t I look around before leaving? Why didn’t I notice and help?  I blink and her mother is running up the stairs to the platform. The moment they lock eyes both are crying. Scared and relieved, the mother rushes to her daughter and brings her down from the platform. This seems to break the spell and I walk to my car.

At home, the silence is deafening. I can’t think, but I can’t stop thinking. Why? Why did this have to happen? Where?  Where is the mother who is about to hear the unimaginable?  Pain. How much pain this poor boy must have been in to feel he had no other choice.

That night, the days that followed, and the weeks that came and went, I prayed for his mother. I prayed for his father. I prayed for the brothers or sisters he may have had. I prayed for that scared girl on the platform. I prayed for the railroad crew, and all the other railroad crews in the city. I prayed for the subway workers. I prayed for them all, but I did not pray for the boy.

In the weeks following the incident it was hard to block it out. Every night as I headed home on the train, I knew I was going back, back to where it happened. I wanted to forget. As time went on it did get easier, but then the memories would creep up on me. It seemed as if they would slide up from behind and over my shoulder. It was unsettling. I hated it, but at the same time I felt like I should remember, like a duty. It shouldn’t be forgotten. He was a someone, a life. How could I just move on with mine? But I just wanted those memories to go away.

As I walked toward church for the late-night Christmas eve service, the sound of the snow crunching under my boots made me smile as I hurried up the drive, filled with the joy of the season. I heard a whisper in my soul. Pray for the boy. I only slowed for a moment, just enough to cock my head and listen. Finally I prayed. You were loved. You were loved. You were loved. Those three little words were all I could say, and it felt good. Not a ‘good, I feel better now’ or a ‘good I’m healing’, but a ‘good, this is what I should have been doing all along’, a ‘good, this is what he needs’.

I don’t think of this boy every day anymore, but every now and then those memories come up from behind and slide over my shoulder again. But instead of being afraid or nervous, I embrace it and I am happy because I know what I can do, and I know what he needs. I pray for the boy. I remind him over and over he is loved. Your mother loves you. Your father loves you. Your friends love you. You are missed. You are loved. I love you. I pray that this boy, who I have never met but feel I know intimately is at peace.

I don’t want to forget anymore. I want to remember this boy, who was a somebody.

love,