Cop Mom

Like so many writers today, I thought I'd wake up and post a profound commentary on the year end/new year continuum.  A perky reflection on my accomplishments of 2017 and a hopeful anticipation of what 2018 may have in store for me and my loved ones.  I stayed up late on the next to last night of 2017, and had every intention of sleeping in, which for me is somewhere around seven am.  Instead of awakening with abundant inspiration and motivation to write, I was roused from my sleep with the steady wail of sirens.  Then a phone notification which was difficult to discern - was it a text?  email?  FB post?   I have a new phone and don't know the nuances of the noises.

The phone notification was a text from a friend  who lives close by telling me we are being instructed to shelter in place.  Cop shot on County Line Road in Douglas County.  This is tough news to process at any time, but before coffee?  My mind was reeling.  Is the deputy OK?  Did they catch or kill the bastard?

I am an NPR kind of morning person, so I tune in.  Shit.  When news like this is the lead on NPR you know it is bad.  Without thinking I open my front door to grab the Denver Post, but it is not there.  I assume the post got the dates of my vacation notice wrong, but no big deal.  I can pick up a paper later on today.  With my first cup in hand, I google 9News and read one deputy down, but when I click again the word changes to multiple.  I am in the red zone of residents being asked to shelter in place.  That is why there is no paper; the roads around the apartment where I am staying are closed due to law enforcement activity.

Cop Mom.  I am the mother of a police officer in Colorado.  I grab my phone and send a 'stay safe' text to my son on his work phone,  He doesn't carry his personal cell on duty and I want him to know I am thinking about him, his colleagues and all law enforcement in Colorado.  Stay safe.  Two short, simple words.  A prayer perhaps that my son will be safe again today,  That the deputies in DougCo are not mortally wounded.  That their families  - their families what?  I don't even know.  That they can 'handle' what comes their way today?

Cop Mom.  I sit and drink my coffee and cry into my cup.  Sometimes I hate living in Colorado.  My son, the cop, was nine when Columbine happened .  He wasn't feeling well and stayed home from school that day.  We were shopping at King Soopers on Wadsworth and Jewell when the non-stop screeching of sirens began.  I kept thinking what the hell is going on?  When we left the store, the police cars were racing down Wadsworth.  Arvada PD, Boulder County Sheriff, Westminster.  I knew it was bad.

Platte High School.  New Life Church.  Aurora Theater. Arapahoe High School.  A street shootout in Colorado Springs.  Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs.  Thornton Wal-Mart...

Was this the reflection I had planned for today?  A chronology of gun violence in Colorado?  Absolutely not.  I was thinking more along the lines of my grandson's milestones.  My daughter's achievements and struggles.  An assessment if I had fully or partially or poorly achieved  my goal of a year of writing.  Reading only memoir and poetry and craft.  Was I on the right path?

Instead I am sad.  Frightened. Empathetic toward the other Cop Mom's out there today.  Wondering if the news will be bright or bleak on this last day of 2017.  I'm in a condo in south suburban Denver, shades drawn, away from outside walls,  That is what the shelter in place instructed.  I am listening to helicopters overhead.  The sirens have stopped.  It is eerie to be here by myself.  No one to hug and tell me 'it' is going to be OK.  No one to share my unknown, but not unfound, grief with.

Cop Mom.  On this brilliant, sunny Colorado day.  Stay Safe Son.