I’m not sure why it’s taken me so long to write about this. Maybe because I didn’t know what to say about it. Maybe because I didn’t like what it said about me at the time.
Several years ago I was not doing very well.
I was drinking too much, making a lot of poor decisions, and mostly just trying to get through the week without thinking too far ahead. Work had already been wearing me down for a long time and I was pretty burned out, whether I admitted that to anyone or not. An important relationship had ended and I handled that about as poorly as a person can while still technically going to work and occasionally answering their phone. I was tired all the time and didn’t really care about much of anything. I think I knew I was slipping long before that night.
The call came in late. Overtime. I remember being annoyed when the tones went off. That part is still embarrassing to admit.
Then the dispatch information came over the radio and the whole tone of the truck changed. It was for a very young girl involved in a farm accident. The drive was tough after that. Not much talking. Just long roads through farm country and an aggressively ignored speed limit.
When we got there it was quiet in a way that didn’t feel right. Usually on calls like that there’s noise. Crying, yelling, people talking too fast, someone trying to explain what happened. Here there was just a dog barking somewhere outside and nobody telling it to be quiet. The dog was the only thing making any noise at all.
There was nothing for us to do for her. It didn’t matter how fast we drove.
I checked once because you always check, even when you already know. Training makes you do that. Hope makes you do that too. But I knew.
I put a blanket over her and then I went outside to talk to the others so they didn’t have to come in and see. It was a Mennonite family. They grieve differently. No yelling, no screaming. Just people standing close together and not saying very much. The father didn’t say much at all. He looked like someone who had already gone somewhere else and just left his body behind.
We stayed on scene for a while even though there was nothing left for us to do. A lot was happening outside, people talking, police arriving, paperwork, all the things that happen after something like that. Inside the barn it was just long and empty and cold.
I remember feeling like I should have stayed with her instead of walking outside, with everyone else. Like she shouldn’t have been left alone in that big cold building. I know that’s not really how it works and I know she wasn’t really there anymore, but it still felt wrong to leave her alone.
Eventually we left. That part always feels strange on calls where there was never anything you could do. You just get back in the truck and drive away and the place gets smaller behind you and then it’s just another road again.
For a while after that I remember thinking why did that have to be my call. Why did I have to see that. It took me a long time to realize how messed up that way of thinking was. It wasn’t about me. I just didn’t want to carry it.
I didn’t get PTSD because of that call. If I’m honest, that was already there in pieces from a lot of other things over a lot of years. That call was just one of the ones that made it harder to pretend I was fine.
I did not get better right after that. I got worse for a while. Drank more. Slept less. Avoided thinking about things that mattered. Eventually I went off work and started trying to fix parts of my life, but that took a long time and most of it was slow and unimpressive.
I hate that something that terrible is one of the things that pushed my life in a better direction. I wish I had changed earlier. I wish I had done it for my own sake, or for the people who cared about me, or for any better reason than that.
Sometimes now I’ll drive past a farm at night or hear a dog barking in the cold and I’m right back in that barn for a minute. Long empty building, cold concrete floor, blanket pulled up, and me walking outside thinking I should have stayed.
I don’t think about it every day, but I don’t think I’ll ever completely forget that night either.
Sometimes I still find myself drifting back toward the person I was back then, and when I notice that happening I think about that farm and that barn and that little girl and I try to turn things around before I get too far gone again. I don’t know exactly why. It just feels like I should.
If I find myself back where I started, I hope it doesn’t take the worst for me to hope for the best.
Ghosts of the Navigator 