Wish You Could Know

I felt compelled to find this poem today as there was a post recently on our firewives forum about an article in a paper talking about a couple of MVA’s in a row and then what some people were posting in the comments after the article. Now I know that people will post things online just to start trouble, but it just pushed me to find this poem.

I don’t deal with anyone saying how lazy FF’s are, atleast not them being serious. I know everyone loves to make fun of hubby for his time off. But it’s in jest. Anyway, I thought this was a good one going through so many things they sometimes hit in a single day!

I Wish You Could

I wish you could see the sadness of a businessman as his livelihood goes up
in flames or that of a family returning home, only to find their house and
belongings damaged or destroyed.

I wish you could know what it is like to search a burning bedroom for
trapped children, flames rolling above your head, your palms and knees burning as
you crawl, the floor sagging under your weight as the kitchen beneath you
burns.

I wish you could comprehend a wife’s horror at 3 A.M. as I check her husband
of forty years for a pulse and find none. I start CPR anyway, hoping against
hope to bring him back, knowing intuitively it is too late, but wanting his
wife and family to know everything possible was done.

I wish you could know the unique smell of burning insulation, the taste of
soot-filled sweat and mucus, the feeling of intense heat through your turnout
gear, the sound of flames crackling, and the eeriness of being able to see
absolutely nothing in dense smoke – sensations I am all too familiar with.

I wish you could understand how it feels to go to work in the morning after
having spent most of a December night cold and soaking-wet at a multiple alarm
fire.

I wish you could read my mind as I respond to a building fire: Is this a
false alarm or a working fire? How is the building constructed? What hazards
await us? Is anyone trapped? Or to an EMS call: What is wrong with the patient?
Is it minor or life-threatening? Is the person who called for us really in
distress or is he waiting for us with a 2X4, or a gun?

I wish you could be in the emergency room with me as a doctor pronounces
dead the beautiful little four-year old girl I have tried so hard to save during
the past twenty-five minutes, who will never go on her first date or say,
“Mommy, I love you” again.

i wish you could know the frustration I feel in the cab of an engine – foot
pressing hard on the siren button, arm tugging again and again at the air horn
lanyard, as you fail to yield the right-of-way at an intersection or in
traffic. When you need us, however, your first comment upon our arrival will be,
“It took you forever to get here!”

I wish you could read my thoughts as I extricate a teenage girl from the
mangled remains of her automobile: What if this were my sister? My daughter?
What will her parents reaction be as they open their front door to find a police
officer standing there, hat in hand?

I wish you could know how it feels to walk in the back door and greet your
family, not having the heart to tell them that you nearly didn’t come home from
the alarm you were just on.

I wish you could feel my hurt as people verbally (and sometimes physically)
abuse me or belittle what I do, or as they express their attitude of “It will
never happen to me.”

I wish you could realize the physical, emotional, and mental drain of missed
meals, lost sleep, missed or foregone social activities and intimate
moments, in addition to all the tragedy my eyes have viewed.

I wish you could know the brotherhood and self-satisfaction of helping save
a life or preserving someone’s property, of being there in times of crisis, of
creating order from chaos.

Unless you have lived the life of a firefighter, you will never truly
understand or appreciate who we are, what we do, or what the job we perform really
means to us. I wish you could.

D. Randall Broadwater
Firefighter/EMT
January 31, 1993

For some more reading