Short Story: A young boy changed an old lady’s mind about her intended suicide

An old lady had lost her husband to cancer a few years ago, and now she had just lost her only son in a car crash as well.

She could not see any reason for herself to keep on living, and so she left her house, and she walked to a footbridge that went over a nearby railway line there.

Her intention was to jump off of the bridge as a train came, and went under it. She looked out abysmally outwards now at the tracks, wondering how long it would be for a train to arrive there.

Then a young man walked past her on the bridge. He stopped a few footsteps past her, turned on his heels, and came back beside her and looked out to see what she was looking for too. This young lad must have only been all of 15 years of age.

He said to her that he used to be a train enthusiast once, he lived nearby, and every chance he got, he used to come here to do some train-spotting. To observe the trains as they came past this point.

He then told her that he never did this anymore, as a driver had told him that this bridge was used many times over by those people who wanted to commit suicide, and jump off the bridge, just as the train came past that point.

The driver told him that he was always very nervous as he approached the bridge and saw someone standing there peering out blankly, as maybe this was their intention.

The young man had stopped train watching from here after that, as he really didn’t want to upset the train drivers by his doing this. He seemed to be a thoughtfully polite, decent type of a teenager then.

“What are you doing here, ” the young man asked the old lady, “Are you a train spotter too?”

“No,” she told him, ” My son was just killed in a car-accident, and I had intended to jump off of here when the next train came along, but I will not do that now, as I too, would not really like to cause such heartache and extreme trauma for a poor train driver either.”

“I will go on home again now. Would you like to walk home with me, and we can have a cup of tea together? I would like that, as you seem such a nice young boy to me.”

“Yes,” the boy said, “I would love that. My own Nan just died a few weeks ago, and I would love to spend some time with you.”

After that chance meeting, the boy, and the old lady often met in her house for tea and biscuits, and became friends.

What message can we take from a story like this, then?

The love reaches out from anyone when it needs to, to reach a particular person.

We feel this and if we are open to it, we follow this love, and so a new opening of love enters our lives, and helps everyone around us, and in it, to feel more loved then too.

Photo Credit:

The photos used here were freely sourced from the free media site: pixabay.com