I’m sitting here thinking about the amount of times I sat in a dark corner crying the tragedy of a young life lost. Dreams not being fullfilled a life’s purpose not being lived out. Of coming back from a call and having to pull off the road because I cannot see where I’m driving.

In the Emergency Services we have to be hard, or else it will eat us up and spit us out. Sometimes we bring calls home with us, the unseen lives that we tried in vain to save.

I have seen a wife refusing to let go of her dead husband holding on to him as if she was trying to bring him back to life, and in the end having to be sedated that we can load her in the ambulance that she can be taken to the hospital.

Six year old boy whose measels turned in to cerebral menigitis and causing him to become a vegatable for the lack of a better turn of phrase. I asked myself why did this happen? And I cried and I asked God why He allowed this to happen.

I came across a post from a few years back

I wish you could comprehend a wife’s horror at 3:00 in the morning as I check her husband of forty years for a pulse and find none… I start CPR anyway, hoping to bring him back knowing intuitively it is too late but wanting his wife and family to know everything possible was done to try to save his life.

I wish you could understand how it feels to go to home in the morning after having spent most of the night, out on jobs. I wish you could know my thoughts as I help extricate a teenage girl from the remains of her automobile. “What if this was my sister or a friend?” “What are her parents’ reactions going to be when they open the door to find a police officer with hat in hand?”

I wish you could feel the hurt as people verbally and sometimes physically abuse us or belittle what we do or as they express their attitudes of “It will never happen to me.” I wish you could realize the physical, emotional and mental drain of missed meals, lost sleep and forgone social activities in addition to all the tragedy my eyes have seen.

I wish you could know the brotherhood and self-satisfaction of having saved a life or being able to be there in time of crisis. I wish you could understand what it feels like to have a little boy tugging at your arm asking, “Is Mommy okay?” not even being able to look in his eyes without tears from your own and not knowing what to say.

Unless you have lived with this kind of life you will never truly understand or appreciate who I am, who we are, or what our job really means to us …I wish you could though.

Please don’t ever ask us what was the worst call you ever had. It forces us to relive the worst we ever had to experience. Something we try hard to forget

Be kind to First Responders

We remember every time. Every case.