We woke up in our hotel room on Wednesday morning and when we peered down from our hotel window we saw police cars blocking off all the small roads around the falls, fire engines coming down the streets and even an ambulance.
Gawker's curiosity set it and it became almost an obsession as we kept looking down trying to figure out what was going on. Anna had some convoluted story about a homicide. I thought there must have been some sort of fire since there were fire trucks and Jim wondered if a car had gone off the road.
After breakfast we ventured down Clifton Hill towards the falls and reached an officer in the park that pointed out a speck of a man in the distance standing over the guard rail on a small piece of land that juts out near the top of the falls and said that he was threatening to jump, had been threatening since around 6 am and it was around 10 at that time.
It was bitter cold and near the falls there's a lot of spray from the water. He must have been miserably freezing and what a tragedy that this was the option that he saw was better than life itself.
I have taught Anna about opportunistic prayer, times to pray for others when you hear about something on the radio, see a car accident or, in this case, hear about someone so desperate, so lost that they feel that jumping to their almost certain death is easier than thinking about heading back to a life that they feel they can no longer continue to live.
So I said a prayer inside my head praying for their peace, that they would realize their life was worth living, that God would show them the strength they needed to get through whatever made them feel that this was the only option. I later found that at noon he had come back from the edge and was safely taken to a hospital. I fear that he was in terribly pain due to inevitable frostbite and whatever else may come from a 6 hour standoff in those conditions.
I continue to pray for his well-being both physically and mentally. I hope he can find a place of peace.
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