Earlier this week, after the last of the funerals for the Baton Rouge police officers murdered on July 18, a colleague and I were removing the mourning bands from our badges. “I’m afraid we should keep them handy,” I said.
And now the news that two police officers in San Diego were shot last night, one of whom has died. He has not been identified as of this writing, but we are told he was married with two children.
With this officer’s family in mind, I commend to your attention a piece I wrote for City Journal following the assassination of the five police officers in Dallas. “The Policeman’s Wife” is a fictionalized account of one young mother who, after putting her children to bed, sits down to watch television unaware of what is about to appear on her screen. A sample:
Near the television set are family photographs, some featuring her husband in his uniform: this one on his police academy graduation day; another of the two of them, younger and still childless; others of him and the kids as they grow. She occasionally may glance at the pictures as she watches television, but only rarely does she pause to consider what that uniform means and the danger it signifies. She has done so more often lately, but she has shared this only with her closest friends, not with her husband. She trusts—for she must trust—that he will go off to work in the afternoon and come home sometime after midnight, often to rise early the next day to appear in court. It sometimes seems to her that she is a single mother. Her friends sometimes ask if she worries. Not often, she tells them. Yes, it can be difficult at times, but this is who, and what, she married.
And now we have yet another widow and two more children who will forever miss their father. Please keep them in your prayers.