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My Wife's Speech at my Retirement Party

 

Hello, I’m RD's wife. My name is H.

I want to give some backstory as to how we got here.
We met in college. I was seventeen. He was nineteen.

Fourth of July weekend, 1993. RD and I were students at the U of O. We were in our apartment in Eugene. I heard a woman scream. We stepped out onto our little fenced in patio and could see a woman struggling with a man on the second floor entry of the apartment building next door. He and I both yelled. The man started to walk away as if nothing had happened, and then he began to run. RD started to chase the man, while I went to be with the woman. The woman said he had followed her home and tried to force his way inside her apartment. She’d been terrified that no one would hear because all of her neighbors were out of town for the holiday.

RD ran after the man for blocks and blocks. He started out in flip flops, then continued in his bare feet. Along the way, he yelled at people BBQing in their front yards to call the cops. He watched the man shed his outer layer of clothes in an alley as they both kept running.

The trail of calls left in RD’s wake helped the police track the man’s location. Eventually a uniformed officer coming from the opposing direction tackled the man. Eric gave a statement, reported the location of the dumped clothes, and then limped back to the apartment with cut and blistered feet.

Two years later, when he was a graduate student in English, he applied to be a cop. When I asked him why, he said “I want to be there on people’s worst day.”

He kept thinking about the officer who made the arrest back in Eugene. He wanted to do a job that made a difference in people’s lives. For the record, I wanted him to be high school teacher, but this is what he chose to do with his life.

I wasn’t happy, we fought for months about it. But in the end, I said, “If this is what you want to do, I’ll help you do it.”

It’s been a long journey, from then to now. RD and I have been together for 33 years, and for 27 years and 10 months of that (yes, I’ve been counting) he was a  police officer.

He was a street officer that entire time. That means that I’ve been the partner of a beat cop for almost 28 years.

I was there when he drove home from the basic academy with double pneumonia. The country doctor said he’d “Never seen a man still on his feet with lungs so bad.” Then the doctor let him drive alone all the way back to the city. RD was convinced he was going to be fired for getting sick. (Spoiler, he wasn’t.)

Before we had kids, I worked at the front desk of the old South Precinct for three and a half years, so I was there when arrived at the end of his trainee rotation. We worked the same shift, same days off. So, I listened to him take calls, give commands, get into fights and car chases. I heard him say shots fired, when someone shot at his car during a pursuit. My supervisor stood at my shoulder, holding his breath, hating every moment of my being there. I also took the phone call when another police wife found her husband dead in the bathtub after a police funeral. I’ve never had any illusions about the cost of this job. During the time I worked at South Precinct, the bureau lost three officers to the job, we knew all of them. But the truth was, I preferred knowing. Being in the dark, the not knowing, was always the hardest part of the job.

This job shaped our lives. It dictated when we got married. (We had a secret courthouse ceremony a year before our public wedding so that I’d be assured full death benefits if he died on duty.) The job shaped when we had our children and how we raised them. RD spent 27 years on Afternoon shift. For our daughters entire lives he was home for bedtime three days a week.

I’ve had two “Knocks on my door”, once when he was shot and once for a dog attack. I can put “gunshot wound care” on my resume. Additionally, in the very early morning hours of my 33rd birthday, he called to tell me he was in a meeting with homicide detectives. Someone had tried to beat him to death in a shrubbery, and he needed to cancel our plans for my birthday. We’ve also had our phone number flagged with dispatch for immediate response when death threats were graffitied in his district.

Less direly, I was once woken at 1 am by my husband’s voice projected from the loudspeaker of his car. He stopped a drunk driver on our street, and did a take down with all of our neighbors watching.

Have I mentioned that this has been a long journey?

We are that rare police marriage that lasted from hire to retire.

Our work/marriage arrangement has three iron clad rules.

 

One. Call.

Call if you’re going to be late. Call if you’re involved in something big. Don’t ever leave me wondering.

Two. Talk to me.

If you come home amped up or shaken, wake me up and talk to me. I don’t care what the time is, wake me up and talk. Don’t isolate. Share the load.

Three. Come home.

This is the most important one. At the end of the night, everyone goes home.

To those of you still on the job, and especially to those of you who are at the beginning of your careers, find your support systems. Find people in your lives to talk to. Share your lives with your partners and loved ones. Don’t insulate them or yourselves. It’s the not knowing, the not understanding that breaks us. This is hard, ugly work, and you only get through it if you lean on others. Find hobbies and outlets that aren’t adrenalin based. Have non-cop friends and communities to remind you of what the outside world looks like. Get therapy. Take the meds. Ask for help. Make art. Invest in little, stupid things that bring you joy.

Above all, Go home at the end of shift. Everyone goes home.

Thank you so much for being here for RD.

 

Harpers Ferry

Remnants

 

 

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