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"...