Survivor

When a relative dies in the line of duty as a Peace Officer you suddenly have a new title. Survivor. There are varying degrees of this title. Immediate family, extended family, spouse or significant other or fiancé, co-worker. At the funeral, you even get a ribbon by color to designate who was who for all those working and handling the tactics of the funeral.

Survivor previously meant something strong, such as someone who had triumphed over cancer. An individual who had been tested to the limit and come through the other side. Yet we had done nothing except receive one phone call and suddenly our world was shaken upside down as we landed harshly into the  classification of Survivor.

I know. There is a lot of pain and anger and judgment going around right now. Racism and unjust, deathly treatment of minorities have taken the decibels to a new height nationalized over night. The world is saying I should keep my mouth shut. It is telling me to hide away my blue line shirts and flags and stickers. It is shushing our memorials, our ceremonies, even our newly caused funerals from the reaction to outbursts of violence. I shouldn’t be vocal. My skin color should learn how to do better. I should believe cops are the problem and we don’t need them. I should not mourn, because all cops are bad and believed to protect their own (even the ugly few who hold inside them an evil no different than evil walking the same streets many a peace officer walks to protect). I should be silenced.

And i was until today. I have been biting my tongue out of respect for the minority, for those unjustly killed, for my friends and for stranger of color, for doing the right thing because I’m told I don’t know how to do right because I am privileged. And I have bit my tongue so hard, I’m surprised no one has bothered to offer the same empathy back towards me simply by seeing the trailing pool of blood that figuratively follows me everywhere I now go.

You see, I’m a survivor. And my niece was shot and killed because she wore a badge. Unjustly. Cruelly. Harshly.  Because she was on a call to help a woman in a domestic violence situation. Because she believed in her community. Because she was a good cop who wanted to create the very change many are demanding. I am a survivor because her life was cut short at 26 years old, not even a year into her career. I am a survivor because she was never given the chance to get years on the street of her community and bridge the gap, to listen, to help, to learn, to be an ambassador between the force she loved and the community she loved.

And so we missed National Police week due to Covid cancellation. Where her name was etched into stone, forever reminding us that she paid a price for all. We missed the state memorial due to Covid cancellation. We didn’t get to miss protestors defiling that same memorial, shown on the news last week. We don’t get to turn off the anti-cop rhetoric that has taken on like a sound wave crushing every survivor and current family member and friend of living officers who fight for the good they believe this country can be. We can’t get away from this is either or - you are either for those unjustly killed or you are against it and for the police. We can’t speak, share our opinions, or breathe without hearing a nation defile the very life WE lost not even a year ago. We can’t point out the loss of 10 more officers’ lives lost in the past 2 weeks. We can’t mourn or be angry. We cannot care for our country and it’s people of color and care for our police force. Or at least that is what we are hearing.

And so, I know I’m not the only survivor walking around with a silent bloody trail following them. Wondering when the nightmare will end. Not just for survivors. But for PoC. For our country. For its citizens who are being thrown from side to side by media and no real change is coming from it. For our police force. For our world. When we will stop fighting each other and start allowing vulnerability and listen to each other? When will we learn to validate and hear? Because when we learn to do those things is when we start at a place of understanding and being able to build from the ground up. We rebuild. We grow. We hurt together. We change the world.

You see, we aren’t so vastly different in that regard. And I believe the Floyd family survivors have more in common with us than the world would want you to believe. We can hurt for their family and for all racist, unjust, cruel, disgusting deaths done by the hands of evil. Whether those hands be white or of color, badged or civilian. Because we do. We hurt for those deaths too, and feel it ever more closely having been through loving someone who was killed because of who they were. Survivors hurt. And lately our threshold of pain is deeper, more raw, and all encompassing. So we’ve stayed silent and listened to what some are saying we can do. But we aren’t helping anyone by hiding our grief and pain. We aren’t helping anyone by doing nothing. We aren’t helping anything by not talking. History repeats itself if you do not learn from it. And while we don’t speak, we don’t learn.

And so for now, we all are just silently hurting. Where is the sense in that madness?