“Skydiving is expensive, fun, and can kill you, just like drugs. You may get away unscathed, or with a limp from titanium intrusion, or scarred by the thoughts of all your dead or maimed friends.”
– Eric “tonto” Stephenson
The first time I witnessed a skydiving fatality a few decades ago, I approached the scene and saw my friend Elle’s leg. Her brain was nearby. I don’t bring this up just to be lurid: it taught me something very important. Our bodies are fragile; and we are not our bodies. The person I confided in and who lovingly spoke to her dogs in Afrikaans while she cooked me dinner existed, in my memory at least, separately from the leg and the brain. The body was broken but the memories remained whole.
That day, I defied protocol to run out to the scene because my partner, Eric, was the Chief Instructor at the club and he was out there all alone. I couldn’t bear for him to be out there without support.
After the paperwork was filled out and the body collected, we were sitting in a bubble bath together at home when I realized that both of us were trying to thaw out of a numb survival state. He struggled with the guilt of whether he had somehow failed her as a teacher.
We talked about what we would do if we ever had to witness each other’s death like that. Mostly, we agreed that we would keep jumping. And we did, until I got the call in October of 2007 that Eric had died from blunt force trauma on a hard landing.
I stayed true to our long conversations sitting out on the runway tarmac after sunset. I kept jumping. Not only that, but I made it my life. Then, in 2011, I started BASE jumping.
As the years passed, I was witness to many more deaths, and walked other people’s partners and parents through loss. For a while, the fiery, passionate connections I found while risking my life for pleasure saved me.
Every single time I exited an airplane or pushed off a cliff, I set into motion a chain of events that would result in my death – unless I did something. It made me feel invincible. Once in a while, I thought I could see Eric flying alongside me. It was a reminder that I was choosing life, but it always separated me from him.
By 2016, the bodies of my friends and acquaintances were piling up. I made it twelve days into that year before experiencing the awkward pause on the other end of the line. No matter how many times I picked up that phone, I never got used to it. There are no shortcuts when someone dies. Not if you want to remain fully human on the inside.
That day, I ran through the list of people it could be. Mat wasn’t my closest friend, but he was close enough within my circles to be family. And yet, the fatality routine had created a creeping, double-sided sense of complacency and denial that made me want to scream until the sky broke open and returned all of my dead friends to earth. I saw and heard variations of:
“God, another one?”
“This is going to keep happening, so hug each other while you still can.”
That year, Facebook was our superficial bonfire. Screens filled up with platitudes about a short life well-lived being better than a long and boring life. I thought, “What a false choice.”
Here was my weakness: I wanted every death to mean something, and I started to understand that maybe that’s not the way this works.
Loss after loss after loss, I had felt compelled to continue. I kept running up against an existential wall because by sheer volume, it had become difficult to honor and meditate on each life.
Within my community, the aftermath felt like it was turning dark. Someone kicked in my team room door one night after news of a death.
I started to feel like I was standing in a virtual mass grave. For the first time, the thing that had always given me freedom felt claustrophobic. I was ready for something to change.
Part of that change was a planned comeback truncated by the Covid pandemic. I got back into traditional therapy to help me grieve my way through selling my gear and accepting that one of the greatest chapters of my life was over.
I started to feel like I was standing in a virtual mass grave. For the first time, the thing that had always given me freedom felt claustrophobic.
A few months ago, I met up with an old and dear friend at a bar. He was there to deliver ashes to a family. Someone had recently died in Europe on a wingsuit BASE jump and he had flown the cremated remains back to the US in a small box.
Sitting there next to him, it hit me. I was aware of being outside the circle. I wasn’t carrying the box. I wasn’t receiving the box. And I wasn’t in the box.
I’ve concluded that there’s just no easy way out. I’m still working out how to create a life that feels meaningful without the stimulation, connections, and feelings of invincibility that jumping gave me. It will forever be the most interesting thing I can say about myself at a cocktail party. But I’m still happy to be alive, and that’s a currency with a lot of potential.
Taya Weiss is a writer, speaker, and retired world-record-holding skydiver.
