Ours

This is something I wrote in August 2010, following the death of one of our officers. I had the honor and sadness of performing his final call--something I hope I'll never again have to do.

Ours



I never thought I would cry on the radio like I did yesterday.

I don’t think it was bad—I think I managed to get hold of myself enough to answer the fire units we sent for medical assistance after that initial call from one of our units about a fleet, an officer down, and the words “unresponsive” and “CPR in progress”.

I was thinking today about the bigger cities where the dispatchers and the officers may never actually see one another and was so grateful to be here where we have the opportunity to see our guys and gals, talk with them, and get to know them. It makes it hard, though.

We call you our own. Each and every one of us refer to you all as, “my officers, my medics, my firefighters.” Because you are. When you’re on duty, you’re ours. And when you’re in trouble, or scared—we have the same kind of fear in our hearts that we have for our own children.

We’re not just “dispatch”, “city”, “county”, or “radio.” We have faces and names and we have emotions and hearts. And you’re not just a unit number to us. You are ours.

We want to do everything we can for you—sending you help when you need it doesn’t seem like everything to us, especially when we sit in here and keep on answering all the other calls that are still coming in; when we hear the radio traffic on your scene and don’t know how you are or what’s happening.

We have a sense of responsibility towards you, our responders. But more than that, many of us feel a sense of responsibility towards your families: your wives and husbands, boyfriends or girlfriends, your parents, and your babies. It is our responsibility, our duty, to make sure you go home to those people at the end of your shift. And if that doesn't happen, even if we know in our heads that it wasn't something we had any control over, we feel the weight of it in our hearts and in our souls. You can be a heavy burden, but is not one that we would ever willingly give up.

I’d rather have the tears than not have the opportunity to know you, no matter what may happen—even if you’re only my guys every once in a while when I sit a console in the comm. center.

To my dispatchers—thank you for sacrificing a bit of yourselves every day because of your love for this work and for your guys.

Sara E Wright, 08/19/2010