TOO MANY VISITS FROM OUR CONSTANT COMPANION- Why I fell out of the blogosphere
Hey all. I haven't been posting in a while. It is not so much writer's block, as it has been a lack of motivation brought on by external forces beyond my control. A few words by way of explanation...
In April, a career fireman from my firehouse died in the line of duty while attempting to rescue civilians from a house fire. Soon thereafter, the father of our fire chief (who was a fifty-year member of our department himself) died, and both of these men were buried on the same (very difficult) day. In the time since, we lost another life member of our department, who was the father of a close friend of mine and a father to us all. There have been other deaths in and around our fire department family recently, and it has caused my heart to be heavy.
As a consequence of all of this, I haven't really been feeling up to writing war stories about glory days gone by or comedy reviews of situations around the firehouse. The two older men listed above lived full, happy and productive lives and had children of whom they can, and should be, most proud. The LODD has been particularly troubling. He was a young man, a promising firefighter, and on the day he died he did every last thing right. By all accounts, he was precisely where any one of us would have been, doing exactly what any of us would have been doing. When he got into trouble, he continued to do everything right. I don't have any lessons or funny stories to tell about LODD's, as I don't think that there are any. What I can say is that I never thought that I would have to look into the eyes of my brothers and see the anguish that they felt on that day. I started to write a post about it. It wasn't what I wanted to write, and I was unhappy with it, so I stopped. I decided that it could best be summed up as: "I never thought that this could happen to us, or for that matter, to anyone we knew. It did. Now, rather than being a cavalier, my new goal is to make sure that we all go home at the end of the shift." None of us will ever think of the fire department in the same way again. I have been to a handful of fires since April. Things are not the same. As I process all of this, I'll try to get it into the blog, but first I want to be certain that I am not being trite, overly cynical, or just angry. Many positive things happened as a result of this very negative event. Hopefully, that will remain as a legacy, but for now, I don't want to talk about it or write about it.
So, thanks for your patience my readers! I'll be through my funk soon and back at it in full force.
DTXMATT12
In April, a career fireman from my firehouse died in the line of duty while attempting to rescue civilians from a house fire. Soon thereafter, the father of our fire chief (who was a fifty-year member of our department himself) died, and both of these men were buried on the same (very difficult) day. In the time since, we lost another life member of our department, who was the father of a close friend of mine and a father to us all. There have been other deaths in and around our fire department family recently, and it has caused my heart to be heavy.
As a consequence of all of this, I haven't really been feeling up to writing war stories about glory days gone by or comedy reviews of situations around the firehouse. The two older men listed above lived full, happy and productive lives and had children of whom they can, and should be, most proud. The LODD has been particularly troubling. He was a young man, a promising firefighter, and on the day he died he did every last thing right. By all accounts, he was precisely where any one of us would have been, doing exactly what any of us would have been doing. When he got into trouble, he continued to do everything right. I don't have any lessons or funny stories to tell about LODD's, as I don't think that there are any. What I can say is that I never thought that I would have to look into the eyes of my brothers and see the anguish that they felt on that day. I started to write a post about it. It wasn't what I wanted to write, and I was unhappy with it, so I stopped. I decided that it could best be summed up as: "I never thought that this could happen to us, or for that matter, to anyone we knew. It did. Now, rather than being a cavalier, my new goal is to make sure that we all go home at the end of the shift." None of us will ever think of the fire department in the same way again. I have been to a handful of fires since April. Things are not the same. As I process all of this, I'll try to get it into the blog, but first I want to be certain that I am not being trite, overly cynical, or just angry. Many positive things happened as a result of this very negative event. Hopefully, that will remain as a legacy, but for now, I don't want to talk about it or write about it.
So, thanks for your patience my readers! I'll be through my funk soon and back at it in full force.
DTXMATT12
Labels: LODD
posted by DTXMATT12 at 8:46 PM
2 comments
