Life after injury – What must die to generate more life?
“What should I give more death to today, to generate more life? What do I know should die but hesitate to allow it to?” -Clarissa Pinkola Estes
In the fall of 2010, I gave a presentation titled, Behind the scenes; a deconstructed grief, at a police victim services conference. In this particular presentation, I went into detail about the psychological, emotional, physical, and spiritual components of my grieving experience over the death of my husband, John, a police officer.
After the presentation, a police officer came over and shared his story with me. His teenage daughter had been hit and killed by a car as she was crossing the street at a crosswalk. He was devastated. But he went on to explain how a police chaplain had helped him tremendously in the days and weeks after his daughter’s death.
“I felt like a helpless chicken in the middle of the street,” the officer told me. “I was terrified and didn’t know what to do. Then the chaplain came and, thanks to his kindness, it was almost as if he… gently picked me up and carried me to safety by the side of the road.”
And it struck me: this is also what people who work in victim services do…support strangers during the most horrible times of their lives. And even though they can’t even begin to make anything right again, they can be there for people during their greatest time of need. And this presence can be a very important gift.
During my time of greatest need, I did not meet any victim services volunteers. Instead, I had a phenomenal support network of family, friends, police officers, and chaplains around me. Heck, they didn’t just run me off the road; They picked me up and put me in a safe little nest with dozens of protective mother hens looking after it!
Two of my “chick keepers” in particular stand out. The first was my brother, George. After spending seventeen hours with John in the ICU, it was time to say goodbye when an operating room became available for his organ removal surgery. The medical staff carried John’s hospital bed from the ICU to the operating room, and I followed him through the halls to the operating room.
After saying goodbye for the last time, I left the operating room and returned to the corridor, where dozens of people were waiting for me. I started to thank everyone for sticking around when George shook his head, took my arm and said quietly, “That’s enough for today, Maryanne.”
He was correct.
But when we are in times of crisis, we often don’t KNOW when enough is enough. We have lost all perspective because suddenly there is no normality. And it’s up to the people around us, whether they’re family, friends, colleagues, professionals, or strangers, to have the courage and compassion to get us out of a situation we no longer need to be in.
In the weeks that followed, my brother Doug became the chick’s primary caretaker. He was the mother hen to all other mother hens. Doug fed me, watered me, put me to bed, got me out of bed, listened to me, answered my questions, answered the dozens of phone calls, kept me on track to meet all the lousy new duties the days brought. .. funeral arrangements, choosing a headstone, meeting with lawyers, etc.
So fast forward a decade to me Behind the scenes presentation at victim services conference. The day I delivered that, I knew the time would come when I would no longer be giving those intensely intimate presentations. I was beginning to suspect that by continually bringing up a painful past for the sole benefit of others (because that had long ago ceased to have much therapeutic value for me), I was inadvertently keeping myself in chick mode: supposedly at except. but stuck.
Because even though it may seem safe to stay in a situation that we have overcome but is no longer healthy, instead of finding the courage to change, the reality is that we can actually risk victimizing ourselves.
Unfortunately, he had no idea how successful he was in this.
Thirst me I was no longer going to give the presentations, who would? Well, I asked Jody, one of the people who gives out the John Petropoulos Memorial Fund Officer down; Put yourself in our boots workplace safety presentations, if she might be interested. She said yes! So that’s exactly what she’s doing now. And since educating people about the public’s role and responsibility in ensuring their workplaces are safe for everyone, including first responders, is JPMF’s core message, Jody always incorporates it.
Interestingly, though, when I asked Jody if I could incorporate snippets from the filmed version of my last Behind the scenes presentation at his own presentation, he gave me an amused look and said, “Of course.”
Jody went on to say, “I show several clips from the video, Maryanne, but the most effective one is when you’re obviously having a PTSD reaction right there on the podium.”
“WHAT?!” I said.
“When you talk about being with John in the ICU,” Jody explained, “you’re not giving a presentation anymore. You’re back in the hospital with John. It’s pretty obvious from your body language that your mind can’t tell the difference between sharing a memory and relive the original event”.
And there you have it. Although more than a decade had passed since John’s death, my continued public speaking about the graphic details had kept me a girl on the road. It was definitely time to let that practice die, and by doing so, it not only gave Jody the opportunity to do the work she loves, but she is able to reach a lot more people than I did. Because let’s face it: Giving those presentations was taking time away from my true passion: writing.
Now I remember what my brother, George, said to me all those years ago in the hospital corridor. When the time has come for a change in our own lives or the lives of those around us, sometimes the greatest gift we can offer is advice…as in: “Enough is enough.”
It only took me twelve years to hear it.