The rain fell this hard for a reason. It ground down on us to say, “have some respect”. Something other than temperature, humidity and a front coming in was at the root of it all. The message was relentless and heavy and carried on strong swirling winds. Rain was common here...almost a cliché. This rain felt different. It had more density. Gray c old pudding was flung in the air. The fresh scent of rasped pine needles seemed to be missing. This was a deluge of nothingness conspiring to create a mood more than enrich and replenish the earth. Drains filled up and the murk pooled and flooded into any and every place. The yellows and reds of the fall foliage lay on the ground within an hour of the storm’s commencement. Those leaves would have taken two more weeks to fall but winter grew impatient and started scrubbing up early. The oranges turned to browns as the leaves quickly increased the density of the solution. Trees were left as instantly black glistening skeleton hands reaching twisted to scratch the underbelly of the low lying layer. Radio station traffic reports were a litany of colourful and bizarre accidents. Reports of downed trees and power lines punctuated three car pileups and pedestrians mowed down. Through the pink noise created from the tapping, slapping and sloshing of water there were vehicle sirens moaned from three or four different directions and distances. The highways became twice as loud with the swish and shoosh of hydroplaning tires. Nobody will ever know what made this flash flood any different than all the rest. People knew it felt different but chalked it up to global warming and their regular penance for living in such a beautiful place. “We need this rain to keep it green” should have been “without death there is no transformation” or “we must pay closer attention to others”.
There was a reason. It was a Friday and all workaday moods were being released into the weekend’s hedonism. Then...two people simultaneously dropped themselves gently off the two bridges in town. It was as if they had synchronized their watches. They hadn’t. One was in the middle of the span on the east side of the Iron Worker’s Memorial bridge and 15 miles away facing him, with an unobstructed view, was the other jumper on the west side of the Lions Gate bridge. It was an unseasonably warm and clear day. Even then they couldn’t have seen each other. The reflection of the sun on the expanse of inlet between them had spread that golden dappled glare and made it hard to see detail. This was perhaps a metaphor for the day. The harbour was all blue and white sky over a moving mirror of reflected light. Both had reached the end of their tether and a series of bad breaks and bad decisions made things unbearable. The details are not as important as the act of forgiveness we all must make. In that same afternoon instant they committed their last mortal sin and fell toward a “lover’s fracture” at the hands of the same concrete sea. Their internal clocks were set for the same instant of utter despair. 3:07 pm Friday. Right then there was a huge and uncharacteristic break in traffic. Rush hour took a breather. No drivers stopped on the span. Nobody was there to talk them down. Just as the traffic resumed and closed over on the void so did mother nature. The earth was prodded into action. There must be compensation for a lack of appropriate mourning. Energy is never destroyed but merely displaced. Entropy is transformation and not destruction. Loss is compensated by a gain in another area. The regular rhythm of waves had been broken by the anomaly of true sad simultaneity. One can jump in one city at one time and nobody cares...but not two at once. Suicide pacts are different. That is a decision to act together. Here was a true force of togetherness. This was not spiritual mumbo jumbo or biblical myth making. It was straight science. These were parallel acts precipitated by a cold hard city and some neurochemical imbalances. The math is logarithmic. The sorrow had to come from somewhere and had to rush into the vortex. Exactly simultaneous loss creates its own almost indescribable phenomena. Individuals x and y somehow forced the compensation for souls lost without due respect.
As their rearranged bodies swirled down with the whirlpools that tug at the legs of those wrought iron giants the sky began to close over and the clouds rushed in from the open sea and slammed into the mountains that watched it all go down. Record numbers would be at the funeral without even knowing it. The stage would be set for them to relive the sad spots in their pasts and to grieve and ponder their future losses...but...today nobody would jump. It wouldn’t even cross their minds. Balance was restored.