In Memoriam

We said good bye to Keith yesterday, one more step on the road to dissolution in the bond between our world and his. It was a beautiful day in the Keys, warming up under hazy sunshine as a massive crowd gathered outside and in, at the church on William Street, with law enforcement from every agency showing up to help in the process of letting go:It was a slow shuffle into the church, trying to keep one's mind on higher things, allowing the mind to veer away and not to let slip the feelings that have been swirling the past several days. Its a strange way we have of attending these kinds of functions in the western world. I've seen Indian widows on the sidelines of their husbands funeral pyres throwing up their arms in a whirlwind of emotion, casting out the inner demons in shrieks of despair that rend the air. In Latin America I've seen similar volcanic eruptions of feral anger and sorrow. We, on the other hand stand around like mannequins and pretend it's just another sunny day in paradise. If, God forbid, tears start to roll we apologize, embarrassed and turn away. Stupid, I know, but I'm as bad as all the rest and wear my mask of silent indifference.I stood over Keith's mortal remains a moment, marveling at his composure in the face of so much love, so much emotion all through the church as he lay in his final resting place, his dark blue K9 uniform solid in contrast to the clouds of white silk surrounding his body. Then I marched out stoically in proper mannequin style to the sunshine outside.

Make no mistake, the memorial service was good bye but it was also a promise to the young man whose career has ended so prematurely. Keith won't be forgotten and those of us that live on and remember him will be reminded who he was at every turn. That was brought home to me when I showed up for work last night, a little bleary eyed I admit from lack of sleep and surfeit of emotion and I was greeted thusly:Sergeant Brandenberg, his fellow K9 officer caught me admiring the display and asked what I thought. Overwhelming was my response and he smiled. "It took them two days to make that," he said with pride pointing to the particular wreath:"Will you do that for me, when my time comes?" I asked, trying to lighten the tone. "You can't have the K9," said the canine sergeant. "That's ours. But we'll think of something for dispatch." I'll bet they will too. They flew flags across the county at half staff for Keith, making room as is the way, for the flag of Death to fly at the top of the pole:I nearly broke down when I saw Keith's patrol car parked in front of the church, his partner's name Daxo, printed on the side. The older I get the more I prefer dogs to the company of humans which reminded me of the times Keith came into dispatch with Daxo. "Don't do that!"Keith would yell at me when I went to pet Daxo. "I keep telling people not to touch a K9's head. He's going to hurt you!" Bugger off Keith, I said, dogs like me, and Daxo did, nuzzling my crotch offering me his nose and behaving like a pet which perhaps may have pissed off his handler ever so slightly. It was a distraction having a large panting German Shepherd sloping round the computers while we tried to dispatch, and it was all too easy to mind Daxo when it was Keith and one of his stories wanting attention.

It was just another sunset in the Keys the end of another day, the beginning of another work night for me, another round of dispatching, talking on the radio, herding hedgehogs and keeping those youngsters with guns safe. And this morning at the end of the shift when I take off across those same Saddlebunch Keys towards home there won't be the K9 car bounding home ahead of me with Keith and Daxo, like Calvin and Hobbes concluding another night of adventures together. Not today, not anymore.

Staying Safe

The further I got from work this morning, riding home through the crisp air of a developing cold front, the closer to tears I got. Caught up in the business of work it was easier to keep a lid on my emotions but I ran, no exaggeration, from the city this morning. I legged it down the stairs across the lobby and onto the Triumph, grateful for its speed, though it has no horsepower compared to Keith's pride and joy. Police officers part company at the end of each shift with the injunction to "stay safe," an acknowledgement that some days someone somewhere is out to get you, and survival is a thing to be treasured. Other days the gremlins that take up residence in the cold dark places in the back of your mind are the insidious enemy of safety, not the crowds on the streets.

Keith and Daxo featured on Canine Extreme.

When Keith's room mate called at three this morning to tell us the county was sending help because he had tried to take his own life the entire universe shrank to an impossibly tight little dot, for a while, a place of enormous gravity and no action. We sat there in the room and let the planet spin on without us, our own officers on the street unaware and continuing their area checks and traffic stops and arrests. "Is this the police department?" A grating voice said from a long way away. "Get me somebody who knows how to answer the phone!" she screeched in my ear like a badly tuned violin and hung up before I could collect myself. Poor thing, she calls frequently complaining about aliens intruding in her life and we handle her with kid gloves, she is our neighbor and we try to help make sense of her chaotic world by reminding ourselves she knows not what she says. "Keith's dying!" I wanted to say but of course one can't, not in our world, we keep talking and hope no one notices the helicopter landing in the Lower Keys is for one of ours. She was merciless, but she didn't know that his life was slipping away through the fingers of the strangers trying to save him, to bring him back to a world he no longer wanted to be in. They were returning the favor he had done so many times himself to strangers that crossed his young path and demanded his all, which he always gave, as officers do.

There's the rub, twenty eight years old, his only ambition to be a canine officer out of high school in his home town, successful in all ways, cheerful, ironic, lanky and never too tired to exchange a joking word in dispatch. He was trained to work in our tight little room but he hated it. When we were short staffed and begged to be relieved for a short while he could hardly be persuaded to sit in the chair with his dog at his feet and be still. I who have lived most of my life rootless and directionless envied Keith his clear path, his inner certainty that being here and living this way were right for him. His path was working the streets of his city at night, grumbling, joking and sighing as officers, the world over, seem to be trained to do. I sat in the periphery of his world happy those nights he acknowledged my essential brevity by not calling up and sighing how much he hated wordy people on the radio. When Keith worked, I struggled to keep it brief. Now I wish, too late, I had blathered on and had one more chance to hear him vent, exasperated, how much he hated endless dispatches on the radio and too much talk, talk, talk. "Kilo Thirty Three, Signal Thirty One, Chapman and Petronia" was all he needed. One more talk from Keith on the value of brevity would mean the world to me. But it's too late for that.

Tonight we go back to work and do it all over again, and as they keep doing what they have to do that platitude will roll around my head all night long. "Stay safe" indeed. The greatest dangers are those that sneak up and grab you by the throat when your friends and colleagues are turned away and thinking you are safe, at home, living the life you were meant to live.

Stay safe Keith, and I hope dispatchers in the Great Beyond know how to keep it brief.