The stories are too old for anyone to care. The grief has been masked so long that no one believes it. Behind the walls stays the truth that you’ve protected the rest of your world from.
The relief you should feel doesn’t quite fill the places where contentment should dwell. The memories of victory don’t claim the same attention as the injustices and mistakes. Were there any victories? There are no late night coffee shops to share your stories with other cops.
Your far-away look couldn’t match their fresh adrenaline-fueled stories anyway. Because you were a small agency cop, the idea that you had a Barney Fife in Mayberry kind of life denies the reality you lived. I don’t think Barney has memories of the hollow sound of his breath filling a dead man’s lungs in a futile attempt to bring life back...
• Or of being behind a tree for hours wincing at the thought of taking a bullet from a barricaded suspect...
• Or of seeing gaping wounds from a machete...
• Or touching the shoulder of a crash victim as he travels from life to death...
• Or waiting with a roadblock at the bottom of the mountain to intercept a murderer...
• Or needing to shoot the man with the knife but his two-year-old kid is too close for the shot...
• Or dealing with the uncomfortable feeling of gladness that another man is dead instead of him...
• Or comforting a child whose father shot himself in the head while he and his brother watched...
• Or watching a young man on LSD writhe and curse in satanic hallucination...
I’d go on, but I’d just be accused of being melodramatic.
I shouldn’t miss a life like that.
But I do.
