When a walkway collapsed, the man who rushed to help my mother sustained life-changing injuries. He and Folajimi Olubunmi-Adewole are a reminder of the love that surrounds us
I keep thinking about Folajimi Olubunmi-Adewole, who died trying to save a woman who had fallen into the Thames from London Bridge. Why? God knows, there is enough death to think about. More than 3 million global Covid deaths, the kind of number that is beyond understanding, really. Our appalled attention shifts from here to Brazil to India, unable to process the magnitude of loss. The pandemic vocabulary of “excess deaths” and “confirmed deaths within 28 days” and the coloured lines on charts are numbing. “It’s terrible,” I think, but don’t feel, until something hits home with particular force. The wall of hearts on the Embankment in London, perhaps, or the Guardian’s Lost to the Virus series, which gives some of the deaths the texture, context and respect they all deserve. It has to be this way, I suppose. You can’t feel it all, can’t contemplate or comprehend every loss.
So why do I keep returning to this particular, non-pandemic death? For the obvious reasons: because he was so young, barely older than my sons. You can’t look at his bright, lovely face in the pictures the family have released and not feel how vital he is and how much living he should have had the opportunity to do. Because he died doing something extraordinary, the kind of thing most of us doubt we would be capable of, put to the test. And because his parents’ grief is so raw, proud and luminous with love. “I’m empty without Jimi,” said his mother, hollowed out over his hoodie. “My son is a hero and a very kind boy,” said his father. “He is my friend.”
