Integrity

Dear Amanda,

Okay, so let me just start with Death Sucks. Not the most profound statement I've ever made, but let's start there. It does. It sucks. It sucks when a teacher down the hall, whom you barely know, loses a parent. It sucks when one of your students loses a grandparent. It sucks when one of your children has a friend who loses a grandparent. Responding appropriately, in any of those cases, is challenging. Sometimes guesswork. Sometimes better--or easiest (if you're me)--just avoided. And since the connections to said departed are tenuous enough, not necessarily inappropriate. Moreover, they--deaths of those once, twice, three times removed--are the ones to which we are accustomed.

The death that your husband, and you, and your community, and the brotherhood of fire service (and police, no?) are dealing with is a completely different animal. It's a death people even six times removed feel affected by, and moved to respond to, on some level. Yet here you are, the wife of the chief's successor who has never been here. And since you are the wife of the successor, you are unable to respond in that once, twice, thrice-removed token way, showing respect by standing on the road as the procession passes, or leaving flowers in front of the firehouse. Rather, your are expected to do and be so much more. Without any warning or training or guidance. Meantime, you've rallied, you've fielded some calls, set up a meal schedule, and have been there to support your husband, which includes supporting your son JJ, who was really freaked out by this. So cut yourself, and --not to be disloyal--J some slack. Tell him, I don't know what you want me to do, tell me what I can do for you, or what I'm supposed to do for the chief's wife. I don't know the protocol. And that's where things get even stickier for you. Because you have integrity.

I think you have done what is expected as J's wife in terms of protocol. But as a person who can smell bullsh*t a mile away, you are not able to plop yourself into this woman's yard and pose as her best friend. And because you have faith in grown ups to have the same scent-sitivity as you, you know that the chief's widow would sniff out such a conversation as obligatory rather than sincere.

And maybe you can't say to J, hey, if GOD FORBID you die in the line of duty (knock on wood and anything that resembles it!!!!!) I want to hear from my family and friends, not people who are supposed to blow sunshine up my a*s. But maybe you can say Tell me how I can help you. Because YOU are my priority right now. And I am so so sorry....

Hang in there, A, you'll all be okay.

Love and light, B