Dear Scott,
Two weeks ago today, you left us behind. All of us: your daughters, your family, your friends, your co-workers, even us, your ex-fiance and my kids. It supersedes reason and it makes no sense and we're all here wondering what the fuck.
For days after I found out, I was in a daze of shock and sadness. Those two feelings curled up inside of me and nested way deep inside of me, making me vulnerable to tearful outbursts at the slightest provocation. Like how you loved flowers and I cried at the store when I saw the cheerful bouquets of daisies and roses--oh, how the roses were your favorite. You loved to go for long bike rides wearing that god-awful neon green/yellow sleeveless shirt, so when I saw a guy biking the other day in a similar get-up, I laughed before I sobbed. Last Monday, I went to that Bonfire Grill by your house and talked with the bartender, just like we used to. But the emotions hit me like a ton of bricks and even though I tried desperately to hide my tears, Todd the Bartender gave me a glass of red, on the house. You'd remember Todd if you saw him - we'd had him before as a server. And PS - it was a really good glass of cab.
A week of this went on - these painful memories pecking away at my beat-up old heart - and I decided I had to Get.It.Together. Set the jaw, get to work, and make life move forward. For next week, I busted my ass at work and put in long days, pulling together projects and people and pieces of paper like a goddamn champ. The more I worked, the more normal I started to feel. I know I used to bitch about how much you worked, but maybe now I understand it a little better: how work can be such a tool to avoid real life and how burying your face in your computer is far preferable to facing life.
And now, somehow despite the set jaw and the hard work, I'm right back to where I was the first week: emotional, rundown, grieving. Only this time, I'm both sad and angry. I'm angry at me and I'm angry at you and I'm angry at God (ya hear me, dude?!). Your friends keep messaging me on Facebook - bless them for reaching out, for searching for something that makes sense, for offering condolences and prayers. Friends of yours that I had never met are finding me somehow and it's both touching and agonizing. I didn't know how many people in your life even knew my name.
Grieving has got to be one of the loneliest processes for humans to go through. No one wants to talk about my deceased ex-fiance - this guy that I once loved and shared a home and a family with, broke up with, and who now is no longer here. I mean, that's awkward on 101 levels, and I get it. There aren't too many people in my life now that know what we went through, that know your beautiful daughters and how much I love them, that know how hard we worked to build a family in spite of some pretty big obstacles. And no one at all really knows how we sorta succeeded and, if we're being honest, also how we mostly failed. I know I said it then, but it bears repeating that I'm sorry for my part in all of it.
Since you left, a tangled ball of emotion lives in my chest. My therapist calls it anxiety, but that sounds too narrow right now. It's anxiety, but it's also anger, hurt, disgust, sadness, worry, guilt, and sorrow. This tangled ball accompanies me to Starbucks each morning, hangs out while I'm in meetings at work, pokes me when I'm out for a long walk in the evening. Its weight grows more heavy as the day wears on until I fall, exhausted, into bed...and then we start over in the morning.
I'm trying hard to let the sun shine on our good times and dim the lights on the rough times as much as I can, but I don't know if that's even the right response or not? Remember when you taught me to garden and how I was most thrilled when the pea pods and six-foot tall sunflowers grew? So cool that they actually grew from seeds - I mean, SEEDS! - oh and how you teased me for being a city girl. How we binge-watched Dexter in the first few months we were dating--we ate pizza on the living room floor so that we didn't miss a single minute of a single episode. I think about these moments and smile...and then my mind inevitably turns to the darker moments of arguments and sleeping on the far edge of the bed, avoiding each other even in our slumber. Did I try hard enough? Is there anything I should've done differently? I lay awake and second-guess myself now.
I'm trying to be tough on the outside, but I can feel myself withdrawing on the inside. It's a lot of fake smiles these days (yeah, you would TOTALLY be calling me out on that!) because my thoughts race sometimes about all of this and more stuff that I can't write about here. I feel guilty about being so sad because we broke up, right? I feel guilty about being so upset because your girls and your family must be feeling it 10x worse. I feel guilty about the sorrow because I don't feel like I have a right to it. And I can't expect anyone to listen to me about it...except the therapist who makes $150/hour to listen, so I guess he kinda has to.
You're missing the Republican and Democratic Party Conventions now- I know you'd be following them closely and ready to argue with me over the dinner table. I'm trying to ready myself for moments like this - things that you would've loved that will sneak up on me as memories. It's going to take time to build up that sort of fortitude.
At the end of the day, you were a guy who wore his heart on his military-pressed sleeve and who had stories to tell but no words with which to share them. Things between us ended terribly and I carry that weight in my heart now.
I'll keep an eye on your girls as much as I can; they are your legacy in this world and their successes, even at these young ages, are a testament to you. Rest now.
Leah
Showing posts with label grief. Show all posts
Showing posts with label grief. Show all posts
Monday, July 25, 2016
Saturday, December 1, 2012
Emotional Kevlar
With a heavy heart, I've been thinking all day about the recent line-of-duty death of Officer Tom Decker of the Cold Spring (MN) Police Department. Officer Decker was just 31 years old and leaves behind a wife and children. By all accounts, he was a fine man and a good cop.
In talking over the tragic event with a friend, I reflected back on my own marriage to a police officer. When we were dating, I used to make him call me at the end of each shift so that I knew he was okay. After a few months of these 4:00 am wakeup calls, I was exhausted...and hardly consoled with regard to his safety. Finally, I consulted his mom: how did she handle the stress of both her husband (a commander) and her son (an officer) being cops?
"It's in God's hands," she told me.
Although I have never been a religious person, for some reason her words made sense. Worrying wasn't going to keep him any safer. I tucked her advice into my heart and tried to keep calm and carry on. After all, what option did I truly have?
Every day that my husband would put on his bulletproof vest with the extra layers of Kevlar over his physiological heart (called, horrifyingly enough, a "trauma plate"), I would layer another piece of my own Kevlar over my emotional heart. I isolated my fears to keep them from invading the rest of me.
As it turns out, bulletproof vests aren't really bulletproof--they're only bullet-resistant to some forms of ammunition. Some of them won't even repel a knife stick.
And like the myth of the "bulletproof" vest, my emotional Kevlar wasn't fail-proof. Sometimes, the bad news found its way through the woven fibers and straight into my core. I've been to two line-of-duty death police funerals--one of them just days after we returned home from our honeymoon--and I assure you, they are not for the faint of heart. It's soul-numbing to see a grown man in full police uniform with tears running down his cheeks while he stands at attention to honor his friend. On those occasions, you wrap your arms around your husband a little tighter, you cry, and you try to convince yourself that it won't ever be you.
Emotional Kevlar, as a concept, isn't unique to cop spouses/partners. All of us have walls that we've built up to protect our hearts from one reality or another. The trauma plates that protect our emotional centers are the result of fear, whether real or perceived. Sometimes they're based on our own bad experiences--times when we were the target of metaphorical gunshots--and sometimes they're the result of someone else's tragedy that we've internalized.
The question becomes: Is the Kevlar necessary, or should it be retired? And if it is necessary, is it thick enough to prevent tragedy?
My thoughts and prayers go out tonight to Officer Decker's family and loved ones, friends, and fellow officers. I will say another prayer tonight for all of my friends in law enforcement who put their lives on the line every day so that the rest of us may sleep in peace. There will be a third prayer for the family members who support our police officers--those families that give up birthday parties and anniversaries and sometimes even their loved ones so that you and I are safe.
This photo was taken on the chilly November day in 2007 when the Minneapolis Park Police buried Officer Mark Bedard, who was killed in the line of duty while pursuing a drive-by shooter. Officer Bedard touched many lives and his gift to all of us is not forgotten.
It's of my then-husband and I, reunited at the end of a long and terrible day--a day when he was the one standing tall, saluting the casket of a friend, with tears falling on his cheeks.
In talking over the tragic event with a friend, I reflected back on my own marriage to a police officer. When we were dating, I used to make him call me at the end of each shift so that I knew he was okay. After a few months of these 4:00 am wakeup calls, I was exhausted...and hardly consoled with regard to his safety. Finally, I consulted his mom: how did she handle the stress of both her husband (a commander) and her son (an officer) being cops?
"It's in God's hands," she told me.
Although I have never been a religious person, for some reason her words made sense. Worrying wasn't going to keep him any safer. I tucked her advice into my heart and tried to keep calm and carry on. After all, what option did I truly have?
Every day that my husband would put on his bulletproof vest with the extra layers of Kevlar over his physiological heart (called, horrifyingly enough, a "trauma plate"), I would layer another piece of my own Kevlar over my emotional heart. I isolated my fears to keep them from invading the rest of me.
As it turns out, bulletproof vests aren't really bulletproof--they're only bullet-resistant to some forms of ammunition. Some of them won't even repel a knife stick.
And like the myth of the "bulletproof" vest, my emotional Kevlar wasn't fail-proof. Sometimes, the bad news found its way through the woven fibers and straight into my core. I've been to two line-of-duty death police funerals--one of them just days after we returned home from our honeymoon--and I assure you, they are not for the faint of heart. It's soul-numbing to see a grown man in full police uniform with tears running down his cheeks while he stands at attention to honor his friend. On those occasions, you wrap your arms around your husband a little tighter, you cry, and you try to convince yourself that it won't ever be you.
Emotional Kevlar, as a concept, isn't unique to cop spouses/partners. All of us have walls that we've built up to protect our hearts from one reality or another. The trauma plates that protect our emotional centers are the result of fear, whether real or perceived. Sometimes they're based on our own bad experiences--times when we were the target of metaphorical gunshots--and sometimes they're the result of someone else's tragedy that we've internalized.
The question becomes: Is the Kevlar necessary, or should it be retired? And if it is necessary, is it thick enough to prevent tragedy?
My thoughts and prayers go out tonight to Officer Decker's family and loved ones, friends, and fellow officers. I will say another prayer tonight for all of my friends in law enforcement who put their lives on the line every day so that the rest of us may sleep in peace. There will be a third prayer for the family members who support our police officers--those families that give up birthday parties and anniversaries and sometimes even their loved ones so that you and I are safe.
This photo was taken on the chilly November day in 2007 when the Minneapolis Park Police buried Officer Mark Bedard, who was killed in the line of duty while pursuing a drive-by shooter. Officer Bedard touched many lives and his gift to all of us is not forgotten.
It's of my then-husband and I, reunited at the end of a long and terrible day--a day when he was the one standing tall, saluting the casket of a friend, with tears falling on his cheeks.
source: Star Tribune
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