Thank You isn't Nearly Enough

Five weeks ago, a canoe overturned at a lake near where my parents live. One of the men in the boat made it to the shore; the other, sadly, did not. And doing what they do, the Sheriff’s Department and Rescue Squad (along with some help from agencies with cadaver dogs, scuba divers, robots, and SONAR devices) sprang into action and launched an exhaustive search. They searched the lake for over 2,000 hours in the cold and in the wind. They searched in the weeds and in the depths. They searched new places. They searched places they’d already searched. In heavy coats, hats, and gloves, in the miserable freezing cold, they searched. They weren’t giving up. That’s not in their nature.

The news covered this story, as did the local paper. My favorite superhero even made the front page, bundled up like a cross between an abominable snowman and the Michelin man. And the search continued…

And one day this week, after 36 days of continual searching, he was found. As proud as I was of the one who found him, I was also terribly saddened by it. I can only imagine what seeing something like that that does to the finder’s dreams. People trying to help others shouldn’t have to suffer from it but as is often true in the case of rescue, police, and fire, the service providers’ scars are as real as those on the victims.

Granted, there’s not a rescue member, a police officer, or a firefighter that I know who went into that line of work looking for a thank you but that doesn’t change the fact that a thank you is in absolute order today.

THANK YOU first responders, firefighters, rescue squad members, law enforcement officers, and EMS personnel. Thank you for missing ballgames and birthday parties to help strangers. Thank you for giving up your weekends, your vacations, your free time, and the feeling in your fingers and toes to search the lake for someone else’s loved one. Thank you for keeping our communities safe so that we can sleep soundly in our beds. Thank you for saving our homes from disasters. Thank you for holding our hands, for talking us through it, for getting us safely out of mangled cars. Thank you for having compassion for people in their worst moments; thank you for being calm in the midst of chaos. Thank you isn’t enough but there aren’t any words that ever could be.