Winds of Change Smash the Stigma of First Responder Suicide

How do I write about an event like the FirstHelp Family Honor Weekend? It feels like I don’t have the words to adequately describe the importance and the impact of this event on our lives.

I’ve been on an emotional hangover since we left Texas on Sunday, and I’ve been slowly decompressing. This year, we were among 150 families who came together in Dallas to honor our loved ones – 150 families who lost a First Responder to suicide. This is the only event of its kind in the nation since most departments and organizations would rather turn a blind eye and bury their heads in the sand whenever there is talk of First Responder Mental Health or suicide. Even the National Fraternal Order of Police, the largest police union in the world, refuses to acknowledge those officers who literally gave everything they had, including their lives, to their jobs.

See, there is this idea that First Responders are ten feet tall and bulletproof, that they are stronger than the average person, that they can rise above the things they see and deal with every day and go on as if nothing happened. Just like we were taught in the Navy, leave your emotions out of it. If the ship is on fire and your buddy dies beside you, you can’t stop fighting that fire. You can’t feel. It is the same way with Law Enforcement and other First Responders.

I worked on some tough cases when I was active duty, and the thing about those cases was that once the case was closed and all court appearances were over, I could file that case away and never look at it again. I didn’t have to remember the victims’ names or faces or their story. I could just roll on… until the next case landed in my lap. I don’t know how or why I was able to do that for so long when others couldn’t. I don’t think of myself as having some superhuman ability to not feel, but somehow, I could detach… until I lost Grubby. When I lost him, every victim began to come back to the surface of my mind… images long since filed away were suddenly spilling out of the file cabinet and all over my mind.

If you feel anything, you are considered “weak” by the societal norms of the job. You’re told to “suck it up” and move on. Law Enforcement and other First Responders see people during the worse moments of their lives, but they are trained not to react to the images they see. They are told that they can’t feel for their subjects.

Several years ago, Grubby responded on his day off to an incident in which a young man brutally murdered three members of his family and the family dog before running from the home. Grubby was just one of many that was called out that day to help locate the suspect, but he saw everything at the home first. I remember watching on Facebook as the suspect was apprehended and placed into that patrol car – the same patrol car that was in my driveway that morning. I remember seeing the Deputy place him into the car and then reach across his own chest with his right arm to use his radio. That was a move I had seen a million times before, and I knew it was Grubby. He was the transport officer for this animal. A few days later, Grubby and Abby flew to Memphis to meet me there to celebrate my parents’ 50^th wedding anniversary. That night, he was just an asshole. There is no other way to describe it. He started an argument with me for no reason whatsoever. I realized later that his attitude had nothing to do with me. He was still processing the events from two days before. It was totally out of character for him to let anything from work show, but I understood it. Later, he told me that that scene haunted him, that it was the worst one he’d ever seen. Somehow, he went back to work, and we went on with our lives, and we never spoke of that case again.

FirstHelp has been instrumental in bringing about the small changes that we are beginning to see in departments around the nation. Nowhere was this more evident than on Friday when officers from the Pinole County Police Department in Pinole, CA, drove up to the hotel to meet us and show us their newest vehicle – a vehicle dedicated to remembering our loved ones, not for how they died but for how they lived. They had driven over 26 hours to be there, and as we stood in awe at the many names on the car, we listened to the Chief speak of losing a friend who he had gone through the academy with some 27 years before to suicide, and how he began to put Mental Health up with the Physical Health of his officers. Instead of seeing those officers as a liability, he began to see them as human beings.

First Responder Mental Health and Suicide should not be treated as taboo subjects. Our heroes should be treated with respect when they ask for help, instead of being benched because someone sees them as a liability. The liability isn’t the one who asks for help; the liability is the one who needs it and doesn’t ask. FirstHelp is doing what so few have been willing to do by stepping up and facing the issues, instead of ostracizing those we’ve lost to suicide and their survivors. Only by talking about it and normalizing Mental Health will we ever bring about the change that is so desperately needed, and hopefully, begin to see a significant reduction in the number of First Responders lost to suicide.

Ghandi is credited with saying, “You must be the change you want to see in the world.” By coming together to share our stories, and all the tears and laughter that come with them, and wearing our FirstHelp t-shirts, we can continue to raise awareness of the need for better Mental Health response for First Responders. Our loved ones were not able to ask for help, but if sharing their stories saves just one person, their deaths won’t be in vain. Change may start with a light breeze across a Texas prairie, but eventually, it will become a force to be reckoned with, and the winds are beginning to blow.

We are their voices now, and I for one, will not shut up. I will continue to address Grubby’s suicide head on, in the hopes that maybe someday, someone will stop and think before going down that road. 150 families walked through the Atrium at the Gaylord Texan proudly as a piper led the way. We did not walk in shame. We held our heads up high, and we made our voices heard. Our loved ones were with us all the way…