On May Day, just after leaving her fiancé, 23-year-old Evelyn McHale wrote a note.

'He is much better off without me ... I wouldn't make a good wife for anybody,' she wrote.

Then she crossed it out. She went to the observation platform of the Empire State Building. Through the mist she gazed at the street, 86 floors below. Then she jumped.
In her desperate determination she leaped clear of the setbacks and hit a United Nations limousine parked at the curb.
Across the street photography student Robert Wiles heard an explosive crash. Just four minutes after Evelyn McHale's death Wiles took a picture of death's violence and its composure.
I sometimes find myself wondering what went through her mind just before she jumped. Whether or not the memory of herself and her fiance during happy times was quickly stabbed by zen-flash strobes of him and another woman. Life is a disease.