OPHELIA NIAGARA

We will never know her name, and as a matter of fact she doesn’t mind. She probably wanted to remain nameless: this is why I will call her Ophelia Niagara.

I watched that video on YouTube and it was like an uppercut straight to my face. There she was floating on her back, naked, letting the stream cradle her. Nobody could do anything. All happened so quickly and so slowly at the same time… slowly enough to allow our eyes to follow her…

That poor Russian tourist was filming the Niagara Falls, on a beautiful sunny day. He was admiring the stunning beauty and the splendor of Mother Nature: recording both the sight and the sound of these wonderful waterfalls… perfect, amazing, awesome. This was going to be such a nice souvenir, his friends and relatives would be so glad to watch it… and all a sudden his camera catches the sight of something floating on the water. His eyes follow that thing and… there she is…

Ophelia Niagara floating naked on her back, like people float on the sea during holidays, relaxing, enjoying the warmth of the sun… but something tells us that it is not the same, the roaring of the waters is frightening and spine-chilling… how can she be that relaxed, how comes she doesn’t hear that noise… how can she neglect the fact that the falls are on her way…

It is not an accident, no, Ophelia can swim, we can guess it from her body language, she knows how to float, she’s not fighting, she’s not struggling… No, she seems in peace… How can that be possible?

I can’t help trying to imagine how strong her will must be. She does nothing at all; she just keeps her body floating in the stream… and when her ears tell her that the falls are close, she moves her arms and her legs to turn her body in the sense of the stream, feet first, facing the waterfall… and without a single shout let the void swallow her…

Ophelia is now Ophelia. Niagara is now her family name.

Who was she? Why did she do that? Those questions will remain like that: no comments, no answers.

I can’t take her out of my mind. According to the images she was a young woman, a beautiful flower blooming on the water. She probably undressed herself without any rush, taking her clothes off, one by one, and probably folding them properly and piling them up on the water side. And then she probably stepped into the water… I don’t know why but I am quite sure she probably didn’t dive… No, she did it peacefully, so confident about herself, she acted like she had planned it. She probably swam a few strokes to go a bit further from the bank, and then the stream took care of her.

Oh God, forgive me but I can’t help admiring her. She was like a bird who forgot her wings… She was so self-confident, so desperate too otherwise why not choose another way? Was she insane? Were her burdens so heavy to carry on? Was her issue the only one left?

Forgive me because I find her so brave, she didn’t want any help, she placed herself far enough from the river bank to avoid any temptation to catch any branch, or rock to reconsider her decision… She had planned it carefully during days and nights. She had probably evaluated any chance, any possibility. She had probably played all her cards…

Ophelia Niagara, please forgive me. You choose anonymity and I am talking about you. The sky has certainly opened its arms to cuddle you and there is certainly a new shining star called Ophelia in Heaven.