I know I haven't posted in a long time...I feel bad about that. I've been waiting, trying to finish my thoughts on Chris's death and all the ceremonies and feelings surrounding it...and it's hard to write. It's harder than it was with Charlotte. It's not a series of events I feel like I can write chronologically. I got through writing about the vigil on New Year's Day, but then after that I just have a huge bullet point list of my thoughts and things I wanted to remember. It think I just have to post it as is. I don't know that I have the ability to turn my abstract list into prose...at least not now. Still, here was my description of the candle light vigil...
We learned about the candlelight vigil on Tuesday around
3:30. I was again rabidly checking
facebook, desperate for signs that people cared. I saw it on the Fire and
Rescue page first, though it was a reposting of the PWCPD posting. We called my parents, and they easily agreed
to watch Mia while we were gone. I think
they were relatively desperate to help us in any way they could. I’m glad of this, because I had to lean
heavily throughout the week.
I’d only been to one other candlelight vigil before, at
Mary Washington for the victims of 9/11 soon after the attacks. As horrible and sad and awful as that
experience was, this was my friend. This
was Mike’s friend. This was a person
everyone knew and liked. This wasn’t a
symbol of a country’s loss and of condolences for families somewhere else. This was for a man we knew, a man who was
taken too soon. This was different.
Mike was relatively frantic. He usually doesn’t care about details. He just assumes I’ll get everything taken
care of and goes with it. This week was
so different. He asked me at least six
or seven times if I knew where we were going.
He left fifteen minutes early so that we couldn’t possibly be late. He discussed types of candles to consider
bringing. I later realized that these
details were all he could do for Chris.
He was craving to be the perfect mourner. He couldn’t say to Chris that he cared,
couldn’t fix it, couldn’t help. All he
could do was mourn his death with as much perfection and dignity as he possibly
could.
They held the vigil in the parking lot of the target
right next to the place he died. I tried
hard not to visualize the accident from the pictures I’d seen. I tried hard not to think of the violent
chaos on that street just one day earlier. I, of course, failed miserably.
I cried as soon as I got out of the car. This made me feel foolish. Really, I knew him so little compared to
others there. I saw him a few times a
year, that’s all. A few handfuls of
time. Still, my heart ached with his
loss. A woman who could have been me
lost her husband. Three children that
could have been mine lost their father.
So many men like my husband lost their friend. He didn’t deserve to die. I know that so few people deserve to
die. Still, more than that, he deserved
to live. To be happy. To see his positivity and generosity make the
world better.
It seemed so strange to me that so few people were
crying. I couldn’t understand. I still don’t. Many of the people at the vigil didn’t know
him well. Some came out just to support
and remember a fallen officer. He wasn’t
a person to some people, he was a symbol.
I appreciate that, but he was more than that, of course. Others, who did know him but didn't cry, were officers. Officers are stoic. They have to be. I understand that. Still, as Mike said, it doesn’t make them
less of a man to mourn a friend. Chris
deserved tears. I shed many.
Target had provided baskets full of candles. The posts about the vigil asked us to bring
our own, but many didn’t have them. I
had brought two jar candles, thinking that they would stay lit in the wind, but
I asked Mike to pick up two tapers as well.
As Mike had worried, I also wanted to honor him properly. I wondered if my scented jar candles were
appropriate. They smelled of
honeysuckle.
There were bagpipers there. They plated “Going Home”, a song I had associated
with movies: The Departed and Clear and Present Danger. They play it at the funerals of the fallen
officers and soldiers in those movies.
It always made me cry. Songs are
like that. I’d never heard it played in
real life before. It cut me to the core.
When we were asked to light our candles, the wind seemed
to pick up. I had brought an Aim and
Flame, familiar with trying to light fireworks on the beach. I lit my taper from the bin, with a Dixie cup
around the flame to protect it from the wind. The man next to me, an officer whose name I
don’t know, had no cup around his flame.
It kept blowing out. I handed him
mine, thinking it was important for him, an officer, to have a candle that would stay
lit. I pulled out my honeysuckle
jar. He later got his other candle lit
as well, so he held two. I felt a little
guilty for not taking back the first candle, but he didn’t offer and I didn’t
want to ask.
Most of the speeches from the vigil are a blur. I was surrounded by the scent of
honeysuckle. I remember Chris’s brother,
Dale, also an officer, getting up to speak.
I don’t remember what he said. I
remember thinking he was brave and strong for doing it, and I realize now that
he was soaking in the support from his friends and brothers in blue. Dale's friend spoke after that, apparently at
his request. All I remember him saying
was something about Chris’s mom making him sandwiches. I thought he was an odd choice of speaker,
but I think now that he was there more for Dale and the family than to actually
remember Chris. They needed that. Chris’s other brother spoke as well. I don’t remember anything that he said, but I
remember the tears in his voice. Maybe
that was more important.
After the appointed people had spoken, they opened the
microphone to anyone who wanted to talk about Chris. They do this at weddings sometimes, usually
with disastrous results. I wish more
people had spoken that night. An older
woman from the citizens’ academy spoke about doing a ride along with
Chris. She talked about how he was
driving, reading a map, on the computer, and talking on his cell phone all at
once on the way to a call. I could
picture Mike doing that. Katie got up to
speak about Chris being her FTO. The
part of her speech that stuck with me was when she talked about how Chris asked
to have a copy of her positive evaluation after she was cut loose, like a proud
father. I could imagine that pride: the
puffed up chest, big smile, and twinkling eyes.
A little girl went up with her mother to talk about how Chris used to be
her neighbor. All she said was that
she’d miss him. It was lovely. I imagine this little girl was probably
friends with Paige, Chris's daugher.
I wished some of his friends would have spoken. I wish some of his friends there had gotten
up and told more stories about him.
After the vigil ended, they stood around in the parking lot telling each
other those stories. Things like going
out to get Chinese food, forgetting your wallet, and Chris not letting you pay
him back. Things like driving in a car
with him and having him show off his driving skills like he was in the Indy
500, throwing you back in your seat.
Things like him always finding the person in a crowd who felt lonely, or
out of place, and starting a conversation with them. This was the story I knew so well. And caring.
Always caring. I wished more of
those stories were told at the vigil that night, but I suppose they got shared in the way they were meant to be shared.
When the microphone was empty, the chaplain asked us to
raise our candles as he said a quick prayer.
Somehow, through the wind, almost all the candles stayed lit. I don’t remember the prayer, but I remember
seeing Mike’s head bowed from the corner of my eye. The man who never prays.
And then they said it was over. Mike turned to me and asked if we should blow
our candles out. I remember saying that
I didn’t want to. The scent of honeysuckle
was all around me. I thought briefly of
the stupid Nora Roberts book I just read, in which a ghost’s presence was
always accompanied with the strong smell of honeysuckle. I hoped that Chris’s spirit knew that we
cared. It was freezing cold that night,
but somehow the scent and flame of the candle made me feel protected. I didn’t want to let it go.
After the ceremony of the vigil, people milled around
the parking lot. These are strange
circumstances, these post-memorial social hours. It seems strange to say things like, “Nice to
meet you” at gatherings like this, and yet I found myself meeting many people I
didn’t know. Mike hugged each person he
saw. Mike is not a hugger. It was touching, really, to see him looking
to connect with all of these people, who knew Chris as he had.
Some hugged back hard, others did the one armed man hug.
We were reluctant to leave. We milled around the parking lot as it started to clear out. The cars of the family had long departed. The tables of coffee and doughnuts provided by the community, so rife with irony, had long ago been picked over. We just kept looking for one more person to talk to, one more hug to force, one more story to tell. When does the vigil end?
