Where were you? What If No One Showed Up to Your Funeral?
POLICE WEEK 2008
It was as moving, as profound, as beautiful, and as incredible as any have ever been. The Candlelight Vigil is the emotional peak of the Week – maybe of my entire year. There were tens of thousands of cops and survivors there, but I didn’t see you and I wondered: why?
Second, we must never forget.
We stopped and asked if they had lost someone who had been close. They both nodded as they choked back tears. Joe asked who he was to them. The first replied, “We worked together. He was my best friend.” The second followed, “He was my big brother. I miss him so.”
One can witness family after family. Bus after bus is arriving and bringing those who mourn.
But, I still wonder: where were you?
Then there are the kinds of reasons that I hear most of the time:
Joe and I decided that after we’d had a few barley pops at the FOP beer tent, we’d walk by the Memorial one last time before heading back to the hotel for the night. We bumped into a guy who’s a Fed. I forget the agency right now. The
y lost a guy last year and like us, our new friend wanted to stop by the Wall to see and touch that name once more before bed. He began to tell us the story, when tears began to flow.
Dear Daddy,
You loved the band, Rush, so much that you went to a concert and took me. You bought a tee shirt there and you loved to wear it.
Every night you would tuck me in and say, “I love you baby, Goodnight.”
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