Musings on Mortality

Woman on a Subway Platform

My name is Tony Lopresti and I watched a woman die on a New York City subway platform.

Originally published by The Prismatist, an online magazine.

On a summer afternoon many years ago, before cell phones existed, I got off a subway train in the neighborhood not yet known as trendy, wealthy SoHo. A large number of women also got off. Just ahead of me one woman, maybe in her sixties with gray hair and a blue flower print dress, reached the turnstile to exit the platform.

As she touched the turnstile, she arched her back as if being electrocuted. She became stiff and then seemed to be flung backwards into the air. She landed hard on her back with a reverberating thump. I rushed to her side. I think I said something to her. I think I called on someone to tell the clerk in the token booth to call the police and to ask for medical assistance.

Anyone who lived in New York before you could buy a MetroCard from a machine or use the Omni system with your cell phone knows what “the booth” was and who the clerk in “the booth” was. The clerk was the underground link to street level civilization. Ensconced in a booth that was half bullet proof glass and half thick metal and insulation, the clerk would speak with you through a mesh hole in the glass or, later, when the holes were sealed so that no one could spray flammable liquid into the booth, using a microphone connected to a speaker on the outside. The microphone and the speaker often didn’t work so there was a lot of shouting around the booth. You bought your tokens from the clerk to use at the turnstile. Later you bought your MetroCard from the clerk. You’d go to the booth to ask the clerk for directions or for explanations when the trains were delayed. You’d also ask the clerk to suggest restaurants in the neighborhood. 

Now I looked at the face of the older woman in the blue flowered dress lying on the platform in front of me. I heard a rattly breath leave her body. I saw the life draining out of her blue eyes. A curtain seemed to descend inside her eyes just behind her pupils as they transformed in a few seconds from vibrant azure to a deeper, colder cerulean. I had never seen anything like that before. I had never been present at the moment when any living creature stopped living. Her breathing stopped. Her body relaxed. Her eyes remained open never to blink again.

Soon police and emergency medical technicians arrived. The EMTs looked at her and then at each other, subtly acknowledging that she was a DOA – Dead On Arrival. They gently and silently tended to her, dutifully checking for a pulse, using a stethoscope to search for a heart that no longer beat. One of them touched her forehead pretending to check for a fever but using the motion to close her eyes. They put her on a stretcher and covered her with a crisp white sheet up to her neck. The EMTs didn’t want to upset anyone in the sea of people coming and going through the turnstiles by covering her head lest they fear that she may have been the victim of a crime, which would start a wave of rumors that would make people wary to use that station.

They removed her from the scene.

A police officer approached me and asked if I had seen what happened. The officer of course, had to presume that a crime may actually have occurred. I told him what I had seen. He asked a few questions and then asked if I would identify myself and give him contact information. I told him my name and gave him my phone number and my answering service number. Every actor and many small business owners had answering services at the time. If your agent or a casting director or a customer wanted to get in touch they would call your answering service. A live person would answer the phone and write down the caller’s message. Every hour or so you would stop at a public pay phone and call your service to check if any messages had come in. Home answering machines that could be operated remotely using a code through the pay phone put answering services out of business. The phone company started offering a service called voice mail and that put out of business the companies manufacturing the answering machines. And then cell phones came along and blew up the entire communications industry. 

After I gave my statement to the officer the incident was over. People entered and exited the station and went through the turnstiles totally unaware of the fact that a life had just ended right there. That a family would be thrown into paroxysms of grief and shock. That a woman would no longer share a bed with her spouse, a mother would no longer comfort her children, a grandmother would no longer bring joy to little ones eager to see her.

For several days I felt like I should do something. What? I felt like I should offer condolences. To whom?

Then I got a message at my answering service from a detective who was following up on the case. I called him back and he asked me to repeat what I’d seen. He asked me some specific questions about the crowd leaving the subway – was she with anyone, did she speak with anyone. And then he asked some questions to determine whether or not there may have been foul play – did she seem agitated or disheveled, was anyone following her, did anyone look like they were harassing her, and so on. After he finished his questions and thanked me for my time, I asked him if he had any specific information about the cause of death. He spoke in generalities. I asked if he knew where the funeral would be, or if I could speak with the family. I wanted them to know that someone was with this woman in her last moments, that she didn’t die alone on a subway platform with uncaring strangers walking over her body. The detective told me he couldn’t give me any personal information about the deceased or her family. All I could do was to get his assurances that he would convey my condolences to the family and that he would be sure to tell them that someone had been at her side in her final moments. He thanked me again and then ended the call.

I hope to this day that he did tell the family about me. I hope to this day that her family got at least a tiny bit of consolation from my presence at that most unique of moments, the most personal of moments. The moment of death.

The circumstances of each of our births are unique to us. Our lives are unique. Our inner lives are especially unique, much of which remain unknown to anyone but ourselves. And that final moment, that moment just during the last breath and as the curtain is coming down just inside our eyes, that moment is perhaps the most unique, the culmination of every other moment starting with our first breaths.

I read once that the last moment can be perhaps the most pleasurable of all. At last, every muscle of the body relaxes. All tension is released. Nothing more needs to be prepared for or protected against. No more hunger, thirst, digestion, circulation. Everything relaxes. And that is a moment of supreme pleasure.

Maybe. Maybe not.

I wonder if the older lady in the blue flowered dress, in that last moment, may have had a sense that a living person was on one knee next to her caring for her, watching her, accompanying her. Maybe her family found out. Maybe not.

I can never forget that moment. The randomness. The suddenness. The finality. The shared fragility.

A final moment awaits each of us. The ultimate democratizing moment. We cannot escape it. We can only live it.