On my way to work this morning, someone jumped in front of a train.

At least I think that's what happened. All I know is that when I transfered from the L to the N/R/Q/Whatever at Union Square there was a train sitting in the station full of people with the doors shut and tons of cops firmly directing all those who weren't witnesses to either get on the incoming Q on the opposite track or go back up the stairs and get gone. I assumed their was an investigation of some kind, a robbery on the train or something. Maybe, horribly, someone hurt someone in one of the cars.

Then when I got on the Q and we took off, all the men around me started talking to each other, the way people who have nothing to do with one another do when something horrible or amazing or amazingly horrible happens.

"That really woke me up." one man said.

"That's just sad. Nothing in life is that bad that you have to go that route," another man said.

"I saw the whole thing," a third said. And then he said something about there being nothing left but a watch.

I don't know what the heck happened, but I feel like I need to know. It may not even get reported anywhere, unless the man — was it even a man? Why do I think it was a man? — ended up being pushed or jumped down to retrieve something (a lesson to be learned) or magically survived (everyone loves a survival story.) And it happened at 5:30 in the morning, so there isn't a lot of buzz about it as there would be if it happened at 8:30. Someone just died on that same station, that same line on July 22, I found when I was looking for news on this. How strange. How terrible.

It's at least my third subway death — I've been on two trains that hit people that I know of, which seems disproportionately awful given my age — and I don't know a thing about any one of them. I don't know that knowing would make me feel any better, and I suppose it makes me sound morbid and odd, but I want to know something. There's something unfinished and disrespectful about not knowing, in my mind. I can't explain it, but it's just not right.