We Go On...

I didn't notice it until I finally cleared my first call of the day and went into the bathroom to wash my hands.  I was surprised.  I don't know if I would say "shocked", but certainly taken a bit aback when I saw it in my face.  Numerous capillaries, the smallest of the body's blood vessels, had burst underneath my left eye.  They dotted my skin like red freckles.

I had cried the night before.  I mean, I cried.  Cried like I hadn't in many, many years.  Fuck...did I cry.  It was absolutely exhausting.  Like I had just run a marathon.  But I had to.  Like an opened floodgate, my soul needed to let out all of the pain and trauma that had been building up over...years.  I came home after my day shift and I needed to find peace.  I needed to find a safe place to land.  I didn't find it.

For those of you that have heard the former police officer, now counselor and incredible speaker, Jack Harris, mention the hypervigilance cycle (it looks like a sine wave...Google it), you know what I'm talking about when I say that there's a "downslide", that equal, but opposite reaction that our bodies go through after a shift.  We're way up in our hypervigilance mode when we're runnin' and gunnin' call after call, but when we complete our shift and come home, walking through the threshold of the front door, we're still there.  Yet at some point, while we are in our own sanctuary, our bodies will begin to dump off all of that cortisol we produced during the shift.  And sometimes that dump is a major trainwreck.  Like any careening object, some serious wreckage can occur.  My body...my mind...was in freefall.

And there was wreckage.

My mind, heart, and soul exploded on impact.  I erupted.  Seemingly, inexplicably.  And certainly, unpredictably for the love of my life.  A torrent of yelling and shouting.  All followed by uncontrollable...inconsolable...crying.  It was during that grief-stricken fury that my capillaries burst.

As I started this writing on Monday night, within the last 72 hours...a colleague of mine was dead, another law enforcement officer was killed in my jurisdiction, I had responded to three dead persons calls, and Sunday was the second end of watch anniversary for my first line of duty death call.  Death, death, and more death.

The colleague, a lieutenant with the local fire department and a deputy chief state fire marshal with the Maryland State Police, was struck and killed on a section of interstate where I have conducted many car stops.  He was a beloved member of our local fire station and a friend to many on my department.  That was Friday night.  I got the notification early Saturday morning.

The first of my three deaths was the worst.  A working code.  A six week old baby.  I was the first car on scene as I rushed in on the heels of the paramedic engine crew.  They spent mere minutes pumping on his fragile, little chest before racing out the door to the hospital.  I stayed on scene and conducted business.  The officer that followed the ambulance to the medical center, where the baby was pronounced shortly after arriving, said the docs found some head trauma.  Fucking awesome.  That was Sunday.

Sunday was the tenth of December.  The tenth of December was...and will always be...the end of watch anniversary for my first line of duty death scene.  I briefly wrote about this incident in an earlier post (Bittersweet).  I was the second car on location of that horrific scene and I conducted the investigation on the striking driver who killed young and enthusiastic Officer Noah Leotta.  I will simply never forget it.

Sunday was hard.  The infant call sent me flashbacks of when my own child, at 12 weeks old, was deathly ill.  She had lost 50% of her body weight.  Her eyes were sinking into her head.  And she was in pain.  Crying and crying.  She was taken to the local hospital, who said her medical care was beyond their capabilities.  She was transferred a week later to a Northern Virginia hospital where she spent the next month getting stuck by a needle - over 30 times - for blood draw after blood draw.  She would eventually recover after an aggressive treatment program.  But the cause of her rapid decline would never be known.  It was that night that I cried and cried my ass off.

But.  After Sunday, comes Monday.

My first call for service on Monday was a dead person call.  A staff member, at one of our many assisted living facilities, went to go check on a tenant who had not been heard from in a week or so.  He had been homeless and was placed in this facility almost four years ago, but was still disconnected from his family.  He was dead.  Probably for a day or two.  Long enough for bodily fluids to secrete out of him and discoloration to envelope his skin.  And he was still gassing off through his mouth even after that time.  Every once in a while, I'd hear something sputtering out from his lips.  After finally getting a hold of his elderly mother and telling her over the phone that her son was deceased (I'm never a big fan of the phone call notification), I cleared.

Minutes later, I'm getting dispatched to another working code.  A Vietnam vet had discovered his wife of 46 years laying on the floor after she collapsed while working out.  He had called to her from upstairs and when she didn't answer, he went to go check on her.  The two had met in 1966, just before he shipped out to the conflict raging on the Vietnam peninsula, half a world away.  He would return and they would marry in 1971.  Again, I was the first car there.  I could hear him downstairs counting aloud.  He was on the phone with the 9-1-1 call taker and she was giving him instructions on how to perform CPR on his beloved partner of over 50 years.  I moved shit and cleared a space around her as the ambulance crew began dumping their gear and getting to work.  She would die there on their basement floor.  His world changed forever.  We have to make some notifications and wait for phone calls when there's a death.  So, I just stood by quietly in a dark corner of the room and watched as he cried over her lifeless body.  His partner.  Gone.

Well, that was my shitty week.  At least, so far.  I was informed yesterday that I'll be part of my agency's honor guard detail during the funeral services to commemorate Sander Cohen, the deputy chief state fire marshal who was killed while checking on a motor vehicle collision that involved an off-duty FBI agent.  Both officers were killed after being struck by a vehicle, thrown over the jersey wall, and getting struck again by another car.

Now, I'm not here to necessarily spew out all of my trauma and just walk away after having put it out there for everyone.  How do you cope?  What does one do to manage all of this shit and be able to still be healthy - mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually?  Well, here are some things I have done as well as key messages from trauma recovery experts.

• The traumatic event is over.  Although you may still be feeling the overwhelming effects of that moment, you are no longer in it.  It is in the past.  If there's one thing that I have tried to do more than anything else, it's follow this philosophy...live in the present.  The past is behind you.  Learn from it, of course, but do not dwell in it.  And the future.  Not yet written.  But, the present.  Well, that's a gift...which is why it's called "present".
• Whatever crazy ass, roller coaster thoughts, feelings or emotions you are going through are totally normal.  You have just been trough a traumatic incident.  Your mind is going to hit the extremes as it tries to process what just happened, move out of the flight-fight-freeze stages, and return to a normal state.
• That event does not have to define you.  At your core, you are still who you were before it happened.  You just might need some help navigating back and it may not be exactly the same. But you are who you are.
• Talk.  Period.  End of story.  Talking is therapeutic and will allow you to vent out the shit that wants to build up inside of you.  Talking helps let it go, so it doesn't stick and stay with you like a bad cologne.
• Stow that pride and reach out to a professional healer.  Now, you may not have to.  But, if one of your buds or your better half calls you out over and over about how off you have been since the event, suck it up.  That doesn't mean laying on a couch as Yanni plays in the background.  There are anonymous hotlines and even texting available now.  But you'll be better off and you might pick up a few things that you can use again when the next hellishness occurs because, believe me...it will.
• Finally, get up and move.  There are too many studies out there by people far smarter than us cops that have show that exercise helps healing.  Of course, it's physically healing, but mentally and emotionally as well as it aids the body in processing that adrenaline and cortisol.  You do not want to maintain an excess amount of either one of those hormones in your body for an extended period of time.  That is bad juju.

As I get ready for tomorrow's funeral services, I am at the tail end of my "super shitty" stretch.  There always is.  An ending, that is.  But those few steps above can help you move through the trauma and get to that end hopefully a little quicker, a little stronger, and a little healthier.  Of course, everyone moves through differently, but those recommendations are tried and true.  Here's the bottom line for me...my week or whatever might have sucked, but Sander's parents will be forever without their only son.  So, the lesson is to live, laugh, and love while we're here.  And, of course, help one another.

And here's the deal, despite all of that shit, tomorrow, I'll wake up, take a shower, put on my uniform, tell my love "I love you", go 10-8, and get right back into it.  That's what we do.  For as it ends in the fantastic film, Fallen, by retired Sergeant Thomas Marchese, "we go on"...

Touching the Void

Touching the void.  That phrase is from a book about the Herculean struggle of survival by climber Joe Simpson.  Joe fell into a crevasse while he and another were climbing in the Andes.  He was, understandably, left for dead by his partner after falling 150 feet into the frozen chasm.  But Joe marshalled his strength, despite having already sustained a significant leg break from an earlier mishap, and began the punishing fight for his life.

It was epic.  But Joe survived.  He is alive today and able to share his story.

It's kinda like that for us.  Police officers.  While our struggles don't literally involve some breathtaking landscape, gale force winds, constant hypothermic conditions, or a seemingly endless abyss, in the mind's eye they do.  And they are real.  Just as real as Joe's...only not as dramatic and certainly not so to the point where motion picture producers are giving us a call.

We sustain injuries.  Posttraumatic stress is an injury and there's a shit ton of us that have it.  It's like a shattered leg.  We need our minds in order to react quickly, reason properly, and experience compassion.  Without healthy minds, we are limping around.

So, how does that play out when we step into a "crevasse"?...a call for service where an infant is not breathing, a woman's face is smashed in, or a young man's head is blewn apart?  Do we rise up and begin that exhausting journey up and out?  The vast majority of us do.  Every single day, sometimes many times a day, we have to, but we do it.  It can be painstaking.  "Can be"!  Ha...who the hell am I kidding...it is.  It always is.  Some just robotically move through it quicker.  They're able to process the event expeditiously and they have good internal - and external, when needed - coping skills.  Yet, many others need time.  And help.  We struggle with the oftentimes relentless pounding to our mental and emotional spirits.

This past year or so has been a blessing for me.  I have had the great privilege of speaking to some incredible leaders, pioneers, and heroes within my profession.  Last year, I presented about the work I have done developing my department's wellness program (feel free to check out and share www.BodyArmorWellness.com) at a C.O.P.S. national conference.  This year, I spoke at two more conferences and, in 2018, God willing, hopefully even more.  After each session, I am met with individuals, members of my brotherhood, who felt a link with me after I shared my own story of tragedy and triumph.

During one of the law enforcement wellness conferences this year, I was sitting at a table in the hotel restaurant just passing the time and watching some baseball.  (You know I have nothing else to do when I gotta watch baseball.  Don't get me wrong...I love America's game as I used to play it for almost 14 years when I was a kid, but it's just a hair above golf when it comes to watching the game on the telly and its excitement level.)  I'm just quietly sitting when this patch lands in front of me and onto the table.  I immediately turn around and see him walking away, turning his head slightly to smile and give a quick wave.  I get up and mildly jog over to him, so as to not seem to overly zealous to show my gratitude.  I mean, come on, we're still cops.  I catch up to him.  He had talked to me following my session the day before.  He didn't come over after I was done presenting.  Instead, we had ran into each other in the lobby of the hotel and recognized one another.  We began talking.  Well, he did most of the talking.  I listened.  When a brother starts talking to you and opening up and sharing his demons, that's what you do.  Don't interject.  Don't interrupt.  Don't offer advice or your opinion.  Just listen.

To say I was honored, that he would share with me, is an absolute understatement.  I was blessed.  I had connected with him and he needed to feel that connection.  Afterward, we gave a "guy" hug and went our separate ways.  Yet, the next day he gave me his patch.  What does that mean?  That means he purposefully pocketed that thing in the hopes of seeing me again.  The giving of a patch is time honored and a significant gesture within our law enforcement community.  But this was a little different.  It was an indication of his gratefulness that I had shared my story, that it had connected with him so he knew he was not alone or weak for having his own story or stories, and that it had helped him, however slight or however temporary.  That is pure gold for me.

During these past twelve months, I have had many encounters like this.  Each one is a connection.  Each time, I'm listening.  And each moment, a brother or sister rises up a little higher out of their own crevasse.

We - police officers, the peacemakers - touch the void every day.  Every single day.  For years.  Most of us make it out.  Some stumble and need our aid.  But there are those that never make it, simply because they have fallen one too many times and can no longer rise up.  It is for those heroes that struggle or are on the edge of the abyss that I persist on this path.  Talk to each other.  Listen.  And connect.  You never know whose hand you'll reach out and grab.

Excuse Me Little 3-year old Boy...What Did You Say?!

So, I just got home from an evening shift.  It's a Sunday.  Yes, I know, statistically Sundays have the greatest number of use of force incidents.  At least here.  But that's because anything 00:00 hours or later is the next day, so when something happens Saturday "night", it's probably really Sunday morning.  I digress.  My point is, it's a Sunday and people, or should I say the general public, think that Sundays only involve church and football.

Anyway, to the story...I was cruising around, er, patrolling, when a car just pulls away from the curb directly in front of me.  No signal, no nothing.  Well, you gotta signal.  It's the law, right?  Yes, it is.  I conduct a stop and begin to walk up on the car (always passenger side, always) when I notice the driver stroking the head or body or something of the passenger.  I can't see what it is.  The passenger seat is completely reclined back, so my first thought is that it's this dude's woman.  But it could be a dog.  It's neither.  It's a boy.  A small, cute-as-hell little man in his Spidey shirt.

I go through my thing - license, registration, and insurance card.  As the driver is rifling through the glove box, I'm standing there next to this cute kid.  I smile.  He's absolutely adorable.  And then he says something to me, kinda in a whisper probably because he's so small.  I can't quite make out all of it, so I replay it back in my mind as quickly as I can before I ask the little man to kindly repeat himself.  I got an idea, but I ask him to say again what he just asked me.

He does.  "Are you gonna shoot us?"

What?!  I'm sorry.  I must've missed that or misunderstood you.  You - in all of your three years of life experience - just asked me if I am going to shoot you?  Are you fucking kidding me?!  What in the fuck has this kid been exposed to, lied about, or brainwashed into?  What the fuck has happened to our society where we, the ones who chose this profession - the one that answers your 9-1-1 calls, runs towards the sound of gunfire, rushes to your aid, risks body, and sacrifices mind - have become so vilified that a 3-year old, whose presumably only exposure to "news" and current events are what comes out of the mouth of his pre-released-with-a-GPS-ankle-braclet-and-a-protection-order-against-him-for-domestic-assault-on-that-kid's-mother dad?  Am I gonna shoot them?  What do I say to that?  Seriously?  Help me out.  I was dumbstruck for a moment and then probably blurted out some stupid ass response that I can't even remember now.

Little man, the reason you're sitting in the front - fully reclined - seat of a car is because your dad wanted to pick you up some grow-up-to-be-a-big-boy food at...drum roll...7-11.  And the seat is fully reclined because pops knows that what he's doing is wrong.  Why is it wrong, you-cute-as-hell little thing?  Because you need to be in a child's seat.  A child's seat affords you the greatest protection, if, heaven forbid, you two get into a collision.  So, bottom line, your sperm donor placed your little impressionable life in jeopardy.  That, my friend, is unsat.

Oh...did I forget to mention that dad had a suspended license, I mean, learner's permit for...you guessed it, failing to pay child support.  And I'm the asshole, right?  The kid asks me if I'm going to shoot them because I've been portrayed as evil.  The wrongdoer.  Unreal.

So, I give the dude some paperwork and tow his car.  I tow it because I know he'd just do it again.  He walks away bent.  A few minutes later, he's back and still can't believe that I'm towing his car.  Driving on a suspended license or driving privilege in Maryland is an arrestable offense.  I maybe saved your kid's life.  We'll never know, really.  But you're gonna give me shit about towing your car?!  Go fuck yourself.  You made your bed.  Sleep in it.

This culutral war that we find ourselves in, clearly, does not have a foreseeable end to it.  Not with that narrative.  Just when you think...you hope...that there is a finality to it, somewhere out there, a little boy pushes that horizon back a generation further.

Add that to the others I carry.  Guaranteed that stays with me.  Guaranteed.

My Hiatus

It's been a bit, hasn't it?  I decided to, um, take some time off from the whole blog thing and concentrate on moving forward with my life in a big way.  And I have.  2016 was a monumental year for me on many planes.

But where to start?  I guess logically, it should be chronological.  Starting from where I left off makes sense...without a doubt, experiencing my first on-scene officer death was impactful.  It's simply something I will never forget and something from which all other moments will, most likely, evolve from.  I can still remember looking into his eyes and knowing that life had already left him.

As a member of my agency's honor guard, I have the privilege of paying homage to my brothers and sisters in blue.  In February of 2016, tragedy would strike the tranquil county of Harford, north of Baltimore near the Pennsylvania line.  Deputy sheriff's engaged a person who was causing a disturbance in a Panera Bread...of all places, right?  The first deputy, Senior Deputy Dailey, arrived at the popular restaurant.  A witness would later recall that the deputy walked up to the distraught person and asked him "How was your day?" before being shot in the head.  Right then and there, Dailey was killed, leaving behind two children.  A former United States Marine, he had been with the sheriff's office for 30 years.  Another deputy was also killed in an ensuing gunbattle.  And I was there when they were laid to rest, leaving loved ones, family, and friends behind.

Yes.  I "enjoy" going to funeral services.  Enjoy, as in, I like to eat ice cream or pet kitties?  Fuck no.  But I want to go to them.  I want to go because I want to be the one that pays respect for their service and honors their life.  Deep down, I fucking hate them.  But I want to go.  I simply have to.

So, how apropos then, it was that February was the same month I finally began co-instructing the in-service training class on Mental Wellness for Law Enforcement.  It was a course I had written in order to help my brethren survive traumas like Officer Leotta's scene or the one up in Harford County.  This class was one of the cornerstones of the wellness program and I was certainly proud of it.  I had worked my ass off to get this initative, at least partially, accepted by my department.  And I'm not referring to the talking heads of the agency.  Jesus.  You go to them with the kind of stats and information I had about, not only law enforcement in general, but our own men and women, of course they're going to "support" it.  Certainly, though, it needs to go much deeper than that.  But changing the mindset of cops about opening up to mental health is like turning the Titanic.  That shit happens slowly.

By mid-spring, I was, once again, training for the Police Unity Tour.  I had recovered completely from my injuiries suffered the year before and was ready, once again, to ride in honor of those officers that took their own lives.  Goddamn, too many of them do so.  I rode for Christina, of course, and for two law enforcement park rangers with the National Park Service.  My own career started in park law enforcement and I had always aspired to be an NPS ranger.  There was...and still is...something so nostaglic about them.  I mean, your workplaces are some of the most beautiful spots on this planet.  So, I rode for Matthew Werner.  Matt was a ranger in Glen Canyon National Recreation Area when he took his own life.  Only months earlier, Matt received the Department of Interior’s Valor Award for his actions during a technical rescue in 2014 that saved the life of a climber who was dangling 700 feet above the ground.  And there was Nate Knight, who killed himself only a few weeks after Matt. Two suicides within weeks of each other in any agency would shake its foundation. These two rocked the park service's core.  Nate had worked at Point Reyes National Seashore, a gorgeous California central coast park I had been to many times myself. Nate left behind a wife and two very young children.  We'll certainly never know what pain those three experienced to drive them all to their own deaths.  And even with all that I know and do regarding mental health and suicides in law enforcement, there are days when I still don't fucking get it.

Notwithstanding those super shitty events, in June, my personal life was hitting some serious high notes.  The love of my life and I went to Alaska.  It.  Was.  EPIC.  Holy shit.  That trip was a game changer for me.  It recharged long drained batteries and renewed my spirit.  And I simply never thought I could love someone so deeply and completely.  Thank you, God, for that.

Speaking of God...during this time, you were now more apt to regularly find us at church on Sunday mornings than still in bed.  Growing up as a kid, I was compelled by my parents (mainly my mom) into, not only attending, but participating in church!  So, of course, when the time came when I could make my own decision, I swiftly ended that chapter.  At the time, I wanted nothing to do with God or anything else spiritual.  I wasn't ready.  No one really needs something like God until you really need something like God.  It's like when someone calls 9-1-1 and needs us, the police.  They don't want anything to do with us until they need us and when is that?  Yup, when they're in crisis.  Then we show up, handle it (at least, for that moment), then roll out.  And that's the way most people view God.  So when we started looking for a church to settle down in, found it, and then started going when we weren't in crisis, that was kinda awesome and allowed me to begin to appreciate life in ways that I hadn't before.  When you're in a crisis mode, or even in a bit of stress or anxiety (OK, yes, some would say they're in crisis mode when they're experiencing anxiety...and you know who you are), your capacity to take inventory as to what you have and then be grateful for those things...love, friendships, health, understanding, patience and all that...is limited, if not completely shut off.  It's sheveled.  No shit, right?  You're in the classic fight-flight-or freeze mode.  Some, in total Code Black. Complete fucking shutdown.  Who reviews the blessings of their life then?  Um, pretty much nobody.  I liken it to when I used to be so paralyzed by flying.  With sweaty palms and racing pulse, I would "pray" to God to let me live through the takeoff (I hated them the most).  But is that the time to really reach out? No.  He's there.  So, why not, when things are going harmoniously, be appreciative and say thank you?

When I first started this entry to simply recap my time away from here, I had no intention of writing about God.  I usually just start writing.  But why not?  The purpose of this work is to share so I can maybe help others.  To show them that, after hitting the shittiest of lows in life - when you contemplate killing yourself as I did - you can rise up and triumph.  Make no mistake, it will not be without helping hands, but it can be done.

So, I'll leave you with this (I hate long entries, so I'll have to do a part two on this in order to catch up to the here and now)...I got an email recently from the son-in-law of a police officer who killed himself a few days before Father's Day this year.  It hit me hard.  Out of nowhere.  In it, the writer talked about the grief his family was going through and the betrayal they feel from a department still casting a shadow on their own who succumb to their own pain.  It is dark for him and that family.  And they are, right now, asking themselves "Why God?  Why?"  I don't know why and they probably don't either.  But we must still keep the faith.  Be strong.  And continue to help others and honor lives lost.