Grief

        They say that grief comes in 5 stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. As I sit back and mourn the loss of a Lieutenant that I've worked with for 14 years, I think back to all the stages and how my emotions have matched each one.

        I was in denial that anything bad was going to happen to him when the department found out that he was hospitalized with Covid. I mean, I've gone a year and a half through this pandemic and had been so lucky not to lose anyone I know to Covid. So I was in the mind frame that he was going to come out of the hospital stronger then he went in. Boy was I way wrong!

        The morning when I found out he passed away, I became angry. Why was someone so young, and so healthy looking on the outside, taken from this world??? He had a family and teenage daughters who were the center of his world. It was just so unfair to me that someone, who would give the shirt off his back for others, been taken so soon. Obviously I don't and never will know the answer to that question.

        I like to think bargaining more as guilt. I sit with guilt and think, that could be me. We're the same age, both with two daughters, doing the same, stressful job and just making it through everyday life in the middle of a pandemic. I feel even more guilty to because as a lieutenant, he had more of an office job than working directly with inmates. And here, I've been showing up to work everyday, coming face to face with covid positive inmates and have yet to test positive. I don't know if he was vaccinated but could a shot really mean the difference between life and death with this virus?? I also feel guilt because of the fact that I feel like I have no right to feel the way I do because he was strictly a coworker and not someone I spent time with outside of work.

        Today, I've reached depression. I want to hide from the world, not eat anything and lay on the couch all day with some mindless television show on in the back ground. I know though, that's not going to get me back to everyday life. If I don't reach out to someone who understands what I go through when I feel like this, I'll just be digging a deeper, darker hole for myself to eventually work my way out of. So, I've already picked up that "100 pound phone" (cause lets face it, the one thing i've done most of my life was keep my guilt and depression to myself as to not bother anyone else with it) and reached out to a few friends who've become family to me. To put in in the open that I am struggling through this grief and need a bit of help to work towards accepting that he is gone.