E is for Everything
By
Jane Royce
Morning roll call was typically followed by office business and paperwork
for Captain Hank Stanley, and today was to be no different as he settled into
his chair at his desk. He noticed
a letter neatly handwritten on his desk and decided that this was somehow,
more important. He sat back to read;
Dear Captain Stanley and Crew;
How can I thank you for all that you did the night our house burned down?
That night our lives changed so dramatically, we lost everything but
our lives and for that we will be forever grateful.
When my son smelled the smoke, we reacted quickly. My first reaction was to get the things of
value together and throw them out the window.
I worried that our memories, pictures, money, jewellery would all be
lost and never replaced. I stupidly
found myself worrying about objects; I just wanted to get these things out
of the house.
You all arrived with bright lights and sirens blaring, the sound of your
approach really did knock some sense into me and then it hit me, my house
was burning down and we needed to get out!
I shouted at my son who had been crying on my bed after the smoke was
discovered, to lie on the floor. Suddenly
all of the lessons we had learned about what to do in a fire came flooding
back to me. Suddenly, I was scared.
My son was scared. Suddenly it occurred to me that the smoke was
around us. We were trapped.
The sound of the glass breaking in my room was a mixture of good news and
terror to us. We knew you were there,
but fear gripped us all the same. Now
we had to worry about getting out. Your team was so skilled, so calm and explained
their movements to us clearly. We
felt safe with you, in the arms of angels.
After we reached the ground and I sat amid the things that I placed such
a high value upon, I realized that they were so unimportant and that our lives
could have been lost by this act of selfishness. I cried then and grasped my child close to me. We had lost everything, but we had everything left in our lives that were most
important. We had our lives, thanks
to you.
May God bless you in all that you do; all whom you encounter and all you
save.
Conchetta Rodriguez
This letter worth sharing propelled Captain Stanley to move to the dayroom
and simply lay it on the table, tears forming in his eyes at the realization
of the impact that his company had made. Silently the Captain simply allowed each man to read it and watched
for their reaction, which was shared by all – a nod, a smile, a blink of a
tear and the silent knowledge that their job is so much more than just a job,
it was a difference and as a team they made a big difference.
