Yes, we know that this is a Police Department web site. However, the following can be said for Firefighters, EMTs, and Police….. it’s a long read but it’s such a good read.
Actually written by the wife of a member of our staff.
“People are always asking me how is it that firefighters run into a burning building when everyone else is running out. Courage is the answer.”
– Ladder 49
The film Ladder 49 came out the year I was married and my husband, a volunteer fireman, couldn’t wait to see it. At the time I wasn’t so keen. After all, we lived the life, why would we want to watch a movie about it? Films to me were to entertain and inform, not rehash the everyday realities we faced.
Of course the fireman in the house won the argument in the end and we did see it and bought the DVD when it came out. It’s sat on our bookshelf with a dozen other dusty DVDs never seen again since the plastic came off. We loved the movie; it was a good portrayal of what comes with the territory and what can come with the territory. But I suspect for us, like with many couples and parents and children who saw this film, it was a little too close to home.
It’s a cold hard fact that the wives, husbands and families of firemen and women have to wonder if their beloved is coming back every time the alarm sounds. It’s a cold hard fact that the death rate of volunteer firemen is higher than that of those in paid outfits. It’s a cold hard fact that firemen are extremely prone to heart disease and stress-related deaths that go with the job. And it’s a cold hard fact that no-one knows when the final call maybe issued and who may answer it.
When I was engaged to be married I often resented the fire company’s presence in my fiancé’s life. I think like most women I thought I’d change him, charm him out of it or convince him I was more important than hanging out with those goofballs at the station every Saturday night. I often felt like he wasn’t marrying me, he’d already given the ring to the fire truck (further proof of this was the glow on his face every umpteenth time he spoke about it). His answer was not to quit but to get me to join, reasoning that the more I knew about the process, the more comforted I’d be with the possible prospects.
I don’t think anyone can be comfortable with the prospects, frankly, and I believe that everyone seriously involved with one of these brave men and women take it in stride in their own way. I hope that in opening up about this, someone will know they’re not alone and we all think the same terrifying thoughts. It’s okay, you can’t shut your brain down but you do learn to quiet it.
As I said before, every time the alarm goes off, I contemplate the worst. My husband has always insisted that we exchange an I love you before he runs out of the door no matter what the hour. I wish I could say I’ve always been compliant with this because he reasons if he doesn’t make it home, the last words we’ll have said would be positive. I confess there were many times I shouted something ridiculous out at his back in my anger and times when he didn’t return the I love you back (when we were first married I took this as a bad omen- surely God would snatch him from me because I’d personally pissed him off). I often rallied to him that this was a morbid practice, this acting as if he wouldn’t return anyway rather than assuming the best. But as I think about the death of my mother in law from cancer I realize that he was preparing me from the start; thinking about not just himself but me left behind with my own guilt and grief. It’s like carrying life insurance- that stuff’s not for you, it’s for you who leave behind.
I know millions have cried over the death of Jack Morrison and can quote the excruciating exchange between he and his chief in the final minutes of his life but I remember the more mundane moments of the film most brightly: The hilarious hazing of a junior firefighter calls to mind pranks and hijinx at our own station. The arguments and betrayal Jack’s wife felt when learning of the real danger of his job reminds me of the anger I felt when my husband came home night after night and stared at the television instead of coming to bed only to find out the story on the morning’s news because he was still trying to figure it out himself. The very humanity of young men with high ideals running into the face of death and danger and the numbness that comes after when they realize just how close they were.
For the first year or so that we were together I was on constant tenderhooks every time the pager went off. I threatened to throw it through the window; would purposely turn it down in the middle of the night and turned it off if he wasn’t home; conveniently forgetting to turn it back on when he came back. Whoops... It was too much for me to bear to hear the dispatcher announcing an emergency in those seconds before the tones dropped; it was like a death-knell to me. Better to not know and find out through a filtered account later, one often downplayed by my husband himself. I particularly recall one Wednesday night when my husband went out with the scream of the pager and came back with a bloody forehead. I launched an all-out attack with the ‘proof’ I had that being a fireman was too dangerous, not allowing him to get a word in edgewise as I just knew he’d gotten hurt on a call. Had he been checked out? Didn’t he know he was bleeding? Apparently not! Then I turned to his fellow teammates- had someone allowed this to happen? Did they rough him up for some reason? I was out of bed and on my feet to the door ready to take someone out when he grabbed me and started laughing. In the middle of the night with the intent not to wake me he’d run out in the dark and collided with the doorframe. Not realising in the rush of adrenaline that he’d split the skin on his forehead, he’d donned his heavy helmet which just made it look 10x worse than it was. We fondly call this his ‘Harry Potter’ scar. And I also will never forget the call when nothing could be done and there was no rescue but a community mourning its lost children.
At some point I moved into a different phase where I mentally filtered out the calls and the dispatcher became my best friend. I don’t think many people realize that a very high percentage of fire calls are non-fire related. Firemen are called to assist the police and EMTs, to check on carbon dioxide alarms, to direct traffic, to attend other firemen’s funerals as support, to make a presence in community parades and fundraisers and a host of other things that are tedious and lackluster and must be done. And yes, even rescuing kittens (I called my mother in Louisiana when he’d come home after his first cat rescue, proclaiming him a ‘real fireman now!’). For me, the motor vehicle accident calls were those I could snore through. Old ladies burning their dinners were equally ‘okay’ and assist calls I didn’t even bother turning the pager down for. But anything that mentioned fire, electric or just ‘standby’ kept me up all night with the pager under my pillow. As long as I could hear radio chatter I knew I might at least mentally follow my husband where he was going.
The fights we had over weather standbys were stupid and often. Every summer the men gather at the station at the first crack of thunder to stand by in case of the calls that always seem inevitable in a storm. I felt that was ridiculous– don’t waste your time hanging out at the station until you’re actually called. It was an encroachment on the time we had together that could always be shortened. I’m sure military and police wives go through this as well and it’s not particularly productive. I squabbled at him when he went out to haul water to the old folks several times a summer when the ancient community pipes annually burst. I cursed and whinged and whined that our community didn’t pay our firefighters and would rather take them away from their wives on birthdays and Christmases (it’s inevitable and happens every year without fail) than pony up the funds to replace pipes and stoplights and burglar alarms and every other thing it’s convenient to assemble 20 men in the middle of bloody everything to go fix for free. I felt the same way every other volunteer firefighter’s wife or husband feels when they see their spouse going off to their day job and coming home to go to a second job that doesn’t just stress everyone out and can potentially kill them but doesn’t pay either and often gets community complaints for the darned things. You can never do right!
So how do you get through this constant worry? For my husband and I it was time that tempered all things. Time brought on immediate stresses and situations that focused the worry on other stuff. Time grew him up to not live at the station for the thrill of it and realize the best way to combat death is to spend time in the living. Time brought things in perspective: flashovers are real but not every day. Directing traffic can be just as lethal as running into a burning building. Staying up all night to see him home doesn’t help anyone- you’re cranky as hell when he gets back and you can’t be in two places at once. Silence is your friend- when he’s walked in on the 3rd body in a week it’s perfectly okay to check out for a while and no, there isn’t anything you can say beyond can I get you a drink? It’s ok, you don’t have to say anything- he’s coming home to you. Have faith- in God, in something or you’ll lose your mind. We can’t know why one is called home and another isn’t and the job will never get done if we keep ruminating on it. And besides all this, these men are heroes and heroes are people who listen to their heart’s first call to go and help. They’re not fearless, they’re filled with it and move past it. This is what courage is. They will look after each other and strangers at the drop of a hat. The Bible is spot on when it says, “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. (John 15:13)” And how much more so for those who call out in the night that you’ve never even seen.
Still, when you get the news that someone in the outfit is down, you’ll immediately freak out about your own. It’s almost a natural practice for the real thing. I know a woman who lost her husband on a fire call when their son was a year old. I pray for her often, asking God why her? Why did she have to go on with a small child without him? I look at the photos I took of our own company’s men and women lined up in front of the truck in their dress uniforms and I immediately look at the one who’s missing now. He didn’t die in a fire; in fact he did a tour in the middle east with the military and came home to die in an accident. Why his wife? Why did she get through the double trauma of saying goodbye to a soldier only for his homecoming to be cut short? And then I think of my own husband. We don’t have a red car like they did in Ladder 49 but I know who would deliver the news and I can tell you they’d better have some protection on because I’m a hard hitter. If there’s ever a funeral everyone in the radius had better have some earplugs because I will not stand stately but will unashamedly let the heavens know just what they took from me. And so I apologize in advance (and in passing) to our men at Station 203 who have dropped by our house and will drop by in future- if my husband is not sitting right there with me then I just don’t know and I assume you’re coming to tell me something unpleasant.
It has taken me all of these last eight years with my husband to come to an uneasy acceptance that this is what he does, this is who he is and this is how we deal with it. Recently I was hospitalized with a chronic illness that certainly has the potential to kill me and has taken me to the brink and back more than once. This is something my husband and I know can always come back; a cold hand that can snatch me away from my life with him. But we have come to the place in our marriage that we know we can deal with it in God’s grace. It’s not something I wish away from myself though it chews me up and spits me out every time. Like the ever-present danger a fireman faces, it has taught me to be ever-wary but not consumed by it; to trust that God will get us through rather than over He wills it and that there’s a freedom in not having a hand in these matters because we can’t wallow in self-blame when we realize that life and death are not our direct responsibility. Sometimes I think perhaps because of this is it easier for me to accept firefighting in my life and perhaps the firefighting has taught my husband to accept my illness in his.
I feel for every fireman’s wife out there whether they’re paid or volunteer. I feel for military, EMT and police wives and I pray for you. I would encourage you to find out everything you can about your spouse’s calling. If you’re a fireman’s spouse you can inquire if your community hosts a citizen’s class to learn more. I took one offered by our station a few years ago which allowed me to wear the gear and do scaled down versions of my husband’s every day tasks. It made everything much more real to me and allowed me to sort out what I really needed to put worry into and what I could let go. And it made me appreciate how strong our firefighters are when I could barely tramp around the station under all that gear!
