Call Me Beowulf

THE UGLY SIDE “It’s not like I’m going to erase the things that I’ve seen here, or I’m going to erase the things that people do to each other. But I, at least, need to stop feeding the meter. Right now I just need to think about something else.” Jennifer Esposito’s character, Jackie Curatola Blue Bloods, Season 3, Episode 7 I think we all have a need for death to make sense. A natural human compulsion for it to happen in some way we feel gives it meaning, purpose, or in a way we can sort of wrap our heads around. A firefighter who perishes saving people from a fire, or a police officer attempting to stop a bank robbery dies at the hand of the bank robber. As awful as these may sound, and is of course, we can sort of get our heads around it. Even something more natural seeming, like a heart attack we can understand. We can do the mental math that requires us to go from a point A. to a point B. and accept that it happened. However, when death occurs pointlessly, if you will, when it happens meaninglessly there seems to be the same natural human inability, or difficulty in getting a sort of mental grasp on it. Precisely because it’s an event with such a momentous consequence, a thing of such epic proportion we wrestle with denying it even happened, while cognizantly acknowledging it. None of us wants to truly accept a death has happened, more especially when it’s a loved one. They are there one moment, with a kiss, and a promise to come home. Then they never do. It’s indescribably difficult to deal with even in the “best” of circumstances if you will. But it seems to be doubly, agonizing when that death happens, for lack of a better word, pointlessly. I’ve personally witnessed wives and husbands rail against the fates, or the gods, whatever you want to cosmically believe in, shaking their fists at the heavens demanding an answer to a single word. A single question. Why? While indescribably difficult for a husband or wife, it will be impossible for a child. Like the six year old daughter who screams at the casket of her father, “DADDY, DADDY WAKE UP, IT’S YOUR LAST CHANCE!“, as the casket is being closed. Why? Because she is unable to comprehend how or why he’s not getting up, and how or why people are putting him in the ground. It happened because at around 12:30 a.m. a few nights before, the State Trooper and his partner made a routine traffic stop for a slightly excessive speeder. As the Trooper stepped out of his car to warn the driver to slow down, he was struck by a passing vehicle that didn’t slow down, and then fled the scene. The injured Trooper was pronounced dead shortly after his arrival at the hospital. With the assistance of the suspect's family member who saw the story on the morning news, the suspect was located and arrested at his place of work. The Detectives knew it was him when they found him in the break room showing little remorse for his action. He was spinning the Trooper’s handcuffs on his finger, attempting to sell them to a co-worker. They had fallen off the Trooper’s belt when he almost came through the suspect’s windshield! He was arrested and charged with Operating Under the Influence of Liquor Causing Death, and Manslaughter with a Motor Vehicle, as well as Fleeing the Scene of an Accident Causing Death. Sure, the piece of garbage went to prison, and his future was pretty much canceled, but it’s little consolation. Because of his callous and even flippant disregard for human life, a little girl will be growing up without a father, because one day her daddy didn’t come home and she couldn’t understand why. There was also a wife, whose husband said goodbye, I love you…for the last time. Justice wasn’t served here. There wasn’t any. There couldn’t be any. It just was what it was. That’s it. And none of it made any sense. And that’s the thing, so much of what you experience as a law enforcement officer, just doesn’t make any damn sense. It just doesn’t, and try as you might you will never be able to wrap your head around it. You won’t ever find or make peace with it. You just hope that with time it will slip into the back murky dark corners of the mind and stay there undisturbed so you can keep doing what you have to do. One foot in front of the other, one day to the next. You will have to find your happiness, and sense of justice wherever you can.