Suicide in Union Square

Should I have been arrested for taking these pictures? The police officer on site told me I was not allowed to take these photos, but when I told him to arrest me he demurred. One of his arguments: that I shouldn't photograph the scene because he was going to see his grandchildren today.

The incident spoke volumes about our relation to death and personal identity. I snapped these photos for my Blingdom of God and Uncivil Society blogs, to accompany a meditation on life, death and memory--this was a truly moving scene, as a life of despair is marked by what is left on the sidewalk, and then washed away.

The officer's response reflects, on the other hand, our all too human desire not to be confronted with the reality of death in our daily life. This was a street, a sidewalk, a place where people live--we should not remember death here; we should not memorialize the willful end of one's own life; we should not expose our children to all that this scene may imply--not least of all lest they, mimetic as they are, begin to see despair and death as preferential options.