The Story of a Lifetime: Life with Him: 20 Years Later

"Twenty years ago I thought I would do this job forever. I had a dream: work until I was 60 and they threw me out, and then move somewhere else where they have a volunteer department and I could put my experience to good use.

The department offered a 50 percent pension after 20 years, we contribute 9.5 percent of our pay toward the fund, and the city contributes the rest. “That‘s nice,” I thought, never considering that I would actually leave after 20.

Time marches on, and 20 years passed in the blink of an eye. The person I was when I started is long gone; a different, more somber, at times cynical person has taken his place.

People who walked in my shoes fought for the 20-year pension deal, knowing from experience that 20 years in firefighter time is a long, long time. They knew, as only one who lived the life will ever know, that for some, 20 years is enough. They knew that at 45 or 50, starting a new career is not that easy, or starting a business when everybody else had a 20-year head start is challenging, to say the least.

I remember sitting in at a critical incident debriefing a few hours after I held two dead infants in my arms. My latex gloves melted into their skin their bodies were so hot as I tried unsuccessfully to revive them with my new CPR skills. I bagged the 1-year-old — Savannah was her name I found out later — while doing compressions on the other, John. It was rough, but it was what I had signed on for.

The guy who brought the babies from the fire to me was a 20-year veteran firefighter, a tough guy by all accounts. When it was his turn to speak he filled with tears, and couldn‘t. He hung his head and valiantly tried to express his feelings, but couldn‘t. He left the room.

A few months later he was gone. Retired. He told me much later that it wasn‘t necessarily that call that did it; it was all the calls leading up to and including that one that finished him. He simply could not do it again.

I should have learned a lesson that day, but mired in the arrogance of youth I hadn‘t lived enough to sense my own frailty. I was invincible. I thought of him the other day, as I drove home from what I thought was an unremarkable tour.

As I neared my street, I thought of the little girl who claimed to have injured her knee and refused to move from the gymnasium floor. Her mother looked on from a distance, annoyed as I tried to figure out what was wrong. No bleeding or deformity, swelling or anything really. She showed me her other knee as a comparison, and I noticed bruises, weeks old on both legs, and both arms, and a haunted look on her face.

I let it go. We can‘t save everybody, and she probably is just an active kid who bruises easily. Or not.

I turned onto my street, and had to stop the car. Where was the little girl now? Was she home, in her room, reading or watching TV, or was she being punished for being a crybaby, like the kid a few weeks ago whose mother called us because her son “fell” from his bed — fell and had severe head trauma and curling iron burns on his legs.

It took 10 minutes for me to pull myself together before I could walk in my door and not bring 20 years worth of memories with me.

I haven‘t been sleeping well. It‘s been going on for months now. Every night that I‘m home I‘ll go into a fitful slumber around midnight, only to be fully awake at around 2 a.m. I toss and turn for hours, finally getting some relief from my spinning mind at sunrise, only to be back up an hour later. I grab an hour here and there as time permits but have no idea what a full night‘s sleep feels like, unless it is drug-induced, but I try to avoid that.

What runs through my mind is probably similar to every other person my age — are the kids really OK, will the bills get paid, am I truly happy or is this just an illusion, is that spot on my back the cancer that will kill me or just a mole. Then I get the ghosts.

The baby run over by the 18-wheeler as it turned the corner on North Main and Doyle, dead in the middle of the street, the baby carriage twisted and crushed 100 feet from the body.
The guy buried alive at sunset on Dorothy, and his lifeless arm that was the first thing we dug up.
The 20-year-old guy and his 20-year-old friend dead in the front seat of their Mustang at the Atwells Avenue off-ramp.
The 55-year-old guy who was new at motorcycle riding who tapped a rear view mirror, lost control on 195, flipped over the Jersey barrier and was crushed by a Toyota Camry full of kids. We found his foot later, still in his boot
The 18-year-old tattoo artist found hanging in his basement by his roommate.
My friend‘s brother found hanging in his bedroom closet.
A RISD student found hanging from the wrought iron fence at Prospect Park.
The kid found hanging off the side of his house on New Year‘s Eve.
The 55-year-old who told his wife he was going golfing, started his car, didn‘t open the garage door and died next to his clubs.
The 40-year-old who held up traffic while he considered jumping from the overpass, then did as the crowd that had formed cheered.
The college kid who fell 80 feet to his death the week before Christmas.
The baby who rolled himself into his blanket and suffocated, while his dad was napping on the couch.
My friend Kenny who had a heart attack at his third building fire of the day, and had to be defibrillated, and came back to life but not the job.
The 17-year-old girl who bled to death in the front seat of a car that had struck a tree while eluding police as her friends picked her pockets of the crack vials they were selling.
The baby born dead and put into a hefty bag.
The woman dead in her kitchen with a bullet hole in her forehead and her three children sitting on a couch in the next room.
The two babies that broke the veteran firefighter.
The eight-year-old deaf girl who broke my heart when I learned she had been prostituting for her foster parents.
The 20-year-old dancer dead in her car after taking all of her pills, and the vomit-covered note on her lap.
The family dead behind the front door as the fire burned out of control behind them.
Delivering a baby in the back of the rescue and having the mother yell get that thing away from me when I handed it to her.

There are dozens, hundreds more, all waiting for that delicate twilight between sleep and consciousness to come uninvited into my mind. More join the parade every day that I come to work. Just the other week a 23-year-old hit and killed while walking home from a nightclub, a 30-year-old guy shot in the head, back and legs who walked to the rescue and then collapsed.

I am not a machine. I am a simple person who signed on to do a job, and have done it well. If I choose to leave this year, I will do so with my head held high and hope that the pension that didn‘t matter to me 20 years ago, but has become my lifeline, is still there."

By Michael Morse

I don't talk a lot about our relationship because it is one of the most sacred things in life to me and I feel it's not an area of our life for the public. We've seen a LOT of life in our almost 20 years together. And for all that we've seen in our personal life, he's seen even more riding the truck. We've seen relationships around us come and go, other marriages falter and/or fail, we've known temptation, and we know intimately how money has the ability to destroy families. We've been judged, condemned, and we've known what it is to have religion used to control and manipulate. We've been places where we had no other choice but to ask for help. We've lived through the death of his brother and we've seen one of our own children suffer because of all the life we never saw coming. We've survived...barely....the multitude of injustices, evil, and wickedness of others. But 20 years into this we are finally able to see the fruits of our labor and the reward for the many, many years of what we have invested into our marriage, our family, our kids, our time in government service and public safety, and the way we have chosen to commit ourselves to freedom and living true to ourselves. It's taken years to overcome what religion, family conflict, and public safety have done and the toll each have taken on both of us personally as we seek to understand the road we have walked just in the past 8 years alone. It sears the heart and etches scars so deep that each tell a story of all the places we've been and things we've seen. Neither of us are the people we were...doe eyed, fresh, and naive as we stood on that church stage repeating age old vows.

Today I look at where we are, what we are accomplishing despite the cards that were dealt in the heat of the past 8 years and all the life we've seen together in the past 20, and I see a man that has chosen and continues to choose love. I see a daddy that cries when he speaks of the integrity and kindness of his kids, the road they have walked with us, and his devotion to raising them to live in color, full throttle, with eyes to see the beauty of life and people and their unique stories.....to see the person and not the act. A man that has taught them to flee the world of criticism, waiting with baited breath to accuse, determining what the world deems as "socially" or even "spiritually" acceptable. A man that lives the song "Humble and Kind" to his children. I see a man so compassionate that he stops to place highway-crossing turtles safely out of harm's way.

I see a husband that would die for me and does not take a day that we're together for granted. Years and years of working 24 hrs shifts and taking every overtime shift he could just to make ends meet has taught us to value the nights we're not apart. Though his shift days have ended it's something that has been burned into us....a part of us that is not easily forgotten. I see a man broken by all that he has seen.....a man whose medical diagnosis of "Career Induced PTSD" stems from his love for people and his desire to take care of them.....his brokenness of not being able to fix the world. A diagnosis shunned and shamed by his profession in a world where you've gotta be tough, men don't cry, and it's cheaper and easier for departments to hide and cover it all than to address it. I see a man that sat in the dr's office with tears streaming down his face as he was told his career has ended and to go back meant a potentially catastrophic end.

It's not that "worst call". It never really is. It's the 20 years that went before.

I see a man who's skill, integrity, and love for people has carried him through his entire career as a flight medic, an elite tactical paramedic, one of the few that are chosen for these positions, who held a job on one of the most renowned and progressive depts in the nation.

I see a man who opened our doors to care for and provide for our daughter in love while they establish themselves when the rest of the world would've turned the whole situation, and all that went with it, away. A man willing to open our doors to my mom and care for her too when so many spouses would've laughed and walked away or made it the center of marital conflict. I see a man who has been given an innate gift to see the bigger picture and, because of it, not once has he ever lost the heart of any of his kids. When so many blows and experiences in life could've shattered him and made him cynical and bitter he's chosen love every. single. time. He is a daddy most could only hope for. A husband that most women can only yearn for. His wisdom and discernment to handle tough situations rivals all that I have ever known....his ability to be quiet and forgive when my impulse is to seek justice and want retribution is unprecedented. His intelligence and creativity as he thinks outside of the box and the level of responsibility he possesses to manage all that we have been given...it's unrivaled.

All the days I couldn't even crawl out of bed in our rent house he just loved me. All the tears that have been shed as we have dug our way out of all the hopeless, the screaming and yelling as I have reached the end of myself time and time again through this process and these years of growth....and he just loves. I see his desire to give our children a sustainable income and way of life so they never have to worry about money. Teaching and living by example for our kids that it's in giving that you prosper and thrive in life. It's in helping each other up that we all win and everyone succeeds. Our own little hive.

This week the past year's worth of non stop work, little sleep, and LONG days revealed our tangible rewards. At the age of almost 45 he defied the odds and started a new business despite the 20 year head start his peers had. Together, we did this. We sign papers on the 13th. Together the two of us...working completely from home, with bad credit, faced with angry, resentful family grown weary of the struggles we have known, one vehicle, no phones, 14 kids....6 of them 5 and under at one point, and all the sacrifice and prioritizing to live the dream and make our vision a reality....have proven that there is hope to change the entire rest of your life and it's possible to live your dream. We have worked tirelessly side by side to build 3 businesses as he works alongside our kids and we all do this together. We are ALL tired but he has earned their respect and love and admiration and has given us the ability as a family to pull together, draw closer, and make it a reality....to keep morale boosted while we grow, overcome, and build something that gives back as much as we have been given. I am in awe of him. He is my world and my entire heart. Never have I known a kinder, more compassionate, honorable, humbled heart than the one I get to sleep with every night. He is a man that truly has the best interest of the people at heart and is raising up a generation different than all the ones that have gone before. The years....they've made him beautiful and all the people he has encountered are better for having known him.

"Success is liking yourself, liking what you do and liking how you do it."

Maya Angelou

The best is yet to bee.

One of our three businesses. What work looks like these days.

LoneStar WoodWorks