May 17, 2009

Walking through the Valley of the Shadow- Part 1 ¹

by Wendy • featured, Firehouse Jargen, Notes From A Fire Chaplain • Tags: casualty assistance officer, fallen firefighter, Final Salute

I have been wanting to write a post for a while now about the work that I do, the work that I do with the families of the fallen.  I have received emails asking about details, wondering about the obscurity in some of the posts that I have written after I have come back from a detail.  I have pondered the words that I would write, pinching them and molding them into some sort of shape that would do justice and give honor to the names that I know too well.  Names that belong to faces that I will never see in person.  Names that roll off of the tongues of family members so easily but get caught up in the back of my throat even easier.

I haven’t been able to bring myself to write anything until this point because I have had a difficult time trying to find the words that would describe my feelings, my experiences, my thoughts poignantly. And then I was told about the book Final Salute by Jim Sheeler and that I needed to read it for a future class discussion. The book is written about US Marine casualty assistance officer, Major Steve Beck and several of the families he has assisted. I couldn’t get through the first chapter without thinking that if there were to be a book written about the work that I do, this would pretty much be the book, only insert firefighter instead of marine.

While the book was a page turner, I had to put it down several times because I felt as if I were too close. It was hard seeing my own life and my own work mirrored in a man that was beautifully quoted throughout the pages. What I see and experience first hand is incredibly painful, only I have gotten too good at squelching and shoving down the pain after nearly 10 years. The easiest way I can describe my work is by using the same terminology as the military, 80% of my job I’m a casualty assistance officer. My job is to give a death notification when necessary, ensure that the body of the fallen firefighter is cared for with dignity and honor (and many times that means I have to help ‘dress the body’ or stand by as the funeral director makes final preparations), I arrange and orchestrate visitations and funerals (sometimes small but most of the time elaborate) and I standby and stand guard of the families with my honor guardsman that come to help me. The other part of my work goes beyond the initial week or so after the death. I also ‘counsel’ the family, provide social services to them when extra resources are needed, and file for the financial benefits. My work doesn’t end on the others side of that knock on the door. Many times I walk side by side with a family for years. Only when they decide they no longer need to hear my voice do I say goodbye.

I would like to begin this series with several quotes from the book that I feel best describe this work that I have found myself doing and the emotions that go along with it. Unless otherwise noted, they are all quotes from Major Steve Beck.

“The curtains pull away. They come to the door. And they know. They always know. You can almost see the blood run out of their body and their heart hit the floor. It’s not the blood as much as their soul. Something sinks. I’ve never seen that except when someone dies. And I’ve seen a lot of death.”

“”They’re falling — either literally or figuratively — and you have to catch them. In this business, I can’t save his life. All I can do is catch the family while they’re falling.”

When he wants something done with precision, he’ll require his troops to get it “down to the gnat’s ass.” The problem is that sometimes, even his friends say, he’s the only one who knows where to find the gnat, never mind the ass. He swears he is not a control freak: he says that would imply he wants to tell other people how to think. He says he just knows when things are done properly. He sees his perfectionism as a plus, especially for the delicate duty that involves dealing with people who want everything yesterday and, he believes, deserve it.

“…but the funerals, they exhaust you. It’s not the physical part. It’s just so exhausting. It makes me feel guilty for saying that . I feel a sense of loss even though I didn’t know the person. But the family members come up and they speak to you, and there’s nothing you can say. Often it’s just a handshake. The standard line is ‘It’s an honor and a privilege to do this.’ But that feels so inadequate. You want to do so much for them and you just don’t know what to do. There’s no way to convey it. There are no words in the English language….I’ll go off for a walk, have a cigarette…to keep from crying like a baby.’ Staff Sergeant Kevin Thomas

“The pain we’re feeling drives us. The pride is bigger. But the pain–you gotta eat it, you gotta live with it, you gotta take it home and cry in the dark. What else are you going to do?”

“That mother, I would suck all her pain away if I could. Every Marine would. They’d take every ounce of pain and just absorb it.”

“It bubbles up. Yeah, it bubbles up, but God helps me with it.”

“One of the things I’ve learned from all this, is that there’s a difference between believing and knowing. Before, there were some things I believed. Now, I just know.”

“To do this right, to do it properly, you have to look at these women as if they were your mother or your wife, and these men as if they were your farther or your brother. And you have to ask, ‘What would I want someone to do if it were me?”

“I actually start thinking about it the moment I wake up. It’s such an important job that I just don’t want to mess it up,” he said. “I just want it to be perfect.”  Sgt. Jeremy Kocher

“This experience has changed me in fundamental ways. I would not wish it on anyone, but at the same time I think it’s important that it happened to me. I know it’s going to have an impact on someone’s life that I’m going to meet years from now….It’s like you’ve got them in inventory. You’ll have them when you need them.”

After one burial, “all I wanted to do was play with my children,” he says. “But all I was thinking about while I was playing, was all those guys out there in harm’s way, making all that possible.”

Quotes Excerpted from FINAL SALUTE: A Story of Unfinished Lives by Jim Sheeler. Reprinted by arrangement with The Penguin Press, a member of Penguin Group (USA), Inc. Copyright (c) May, 2008.

I highly recommend that you buy the book. Stay tuned for part 2.