End one day with the knowledge that a colleague died last week, Christmas Eve, in a car accident. You heard his name, didn't know it, couldn't place him. You told someone else about it. The person that you told called you back within a couple of hours to say he had to leave work due to the sudden and tragic death of his sister. Weird day. Your girl, who feels like she is not your girl at all again, agrees to see you, suggests dinner. At some point after the meal the conversation gets tense. She's got a lot on her mind, big decisions to make, and she gets out of your car in silence and disappears into the darkness. Sleep isn't in your bed when you get there and you wait for it until 2:00 am when they call you to go and see a suicidal former Marine.
Begin the next day with him who is here because his friend - who saved his life in Afghanistan - killed himself without a word. This is the third suicide he's been too close to since he joined the Marines. He said suicide has been so much a part of him that it wouldn't even be an event, just an unremarkable way to put an end to stress and anxiety. He is grateful for the hospital. When you leave there, the roads have turned to shit with the first snow-ice mix falling all around. You worry a little for the girl who's not speaking to you now, hoping she will take it slow and leave herself enough time to get to work without having to rush, but you know she won't.
You go by her house intent on helping, scraping her windshield and cleaning her car off, but it must be in the garage, so you feel useless and go for a coffee and then on to the next response where you find yourself at 7 am spitting mouthwash on the slippery parking lot then addressing a room of more than 50 machine operators, whose co-worker was torn apart by one of the machines on Christmas Eve just before they broke for the holiday, about the effects of traumatic events on a person and how to take care of yourself and of each other in the aftermath. Some come and talk to you after, one at a time, and they tell you what they saw and how they can't stop seeing it still - five days later. They don't know how to get back to normal. They don't know if normal is ever coming back.
Begin the next day with him who is here because his friend - who saved his life in Afghanistan - killed himself without a word. This is the third suicide he's been too close to since he joined the Marines. He said suicide has been so much a part of him that it wouldn't even be an event, just an unremarkable way to put an end to stress and anxiety. He is grateful for the hospital. When you leave there, the roads have turned to shit with the first snow-ice mix falling all around. You worry a little for the girl who's not speaking to you now, hoping she will take it slow and leave herself enough time to get to work without having to rush, but you know she won't.
You go by her house intent on helping, scraping her windshield and cleaning her car off, but it must be in the garage, so you feel useless and go for a coffee and then on to the next response where you find yourself at 7 am spitting mouthwash on the slippery parking lot then addressing a room of more than 50 machine operators, whose co-worker was torn apart by one of the machines on Christmas Eve just before they broke for the holiday, about the effects of traumatic events on a person and how to take care of yourself and of each other in the aftermath. Some come and talk to you after, one at a time, and they tell you what they saw and how they can't stop seeing it still - five days later. They don't know how to get back to normal. They don't know if normal is ever coming back.
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