Last Thursday evening I handed a Love Note to a police officer ... not long after this heart-shaped sun sank into the sea. He carefully opened up the note with his thick hands and quietly read it to himself, and then after a deliberate breath or two, he read it out loud for his beautiful wife and the rest of us to hear. It was written by a woman whose life had once been saved by a cop. She said as much in the handwritten note.
The room went quiet for a spell and then this officer opened up about his service, sharing stories that were hard to hear, like giving life-saving chest compressions to a baby who had stopped breathing just moments after he responded to the bloody scene where the baby’s mother had been brutally murdered. He told how he once pulled a small child out of a pool and administered CPR ... only to realize that it was too late. There was the time he was nearly run down while throwing stop sticks during a felony vehicle pursuit and the time he got caught in the crossfire of a taser while apprehending a fleeing man with a felony warrant. And that was just for starters.
These Love Notes tend to draw out our heroes, men and women who don’t always talk about the horrors they see or the heartbreak they feel. It is a good thing when they do. And while there aren’t always obvious words of comfort to add after hearing such stories, I would be hard-pressed to believe that a simple handwritten “thank you” isn’t enough.
One Love Note that took this woman less time to write than it takes to order a cup of coffee these days will never know what her words did for this one officer ... and for those who he opened up to. That, my friends, is why the sun is encouraged to rise again tomorrow. #nothingbutlovenotes #sunset #police #love #blueline #thinblueline
#nothingbutlovenotes #sunset #police #love #blueline #thinblueline
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