Angels on the Water

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Left to right: Nico and Christopher boating life

*One swear word

November 7th, 2012

It was time to break out the boat from the punishment of its solitary confinement after I banished it to the corner of the driveway. I decided to finally take her out for a cruise on the water. She had been left ignored so she could think about what occurred the day my son was hurt in the grips of her boat winch.

His finger being fed into her teeth launched me overboard with guilt. I thought in that moment his finger was lost forever. The pain and sorrow that gripped me because I knew I would have to live with that guilt forever overwhelmed me. It would seep out through my tears of culpability as I ripped off my shirt to comfort his hand by shielding him from the sight that made my own stomach sick. My own pain only surpassed by my sons tears as he struggled in my arms to hold his composure through the immense pain that must have been throbbing through his torn and mangled skin.

After that unremarkable event, I sent my boat off to the shop to have some work done to her so that the accident that occurred to Nico won’t happen again. The boat winch that pulls the boat onto the trailer has been totally enclosed so that now the only thing that will be fed into her will be the long tether that clips on to the hull of the boat to pull her up from the depths of the water.

The cast came off of Nico’s left arm about a week ago and only 4 weeks after his accident. He never flenched when he saw the boat sitting there on the trailer day after day when we would come home, the boat isolated, from the friendly confines of our family. In fact, he called to her, "boat, boat" every time we would park the car in the drive way. You have to fall in love with a child's resiliency.

Being a cop you see a lot of tragic things. But you never truly see it all. Most days are dictated by what you think is the worst thing you have ever seen, but that only lasts until the next day, when you find yourself repeating that same statement again trumped by another event unfolding before your very eyes.

I have been in some personal tragic situations over the last 7 years. Things that I do not wish on anyone. My sons accident is up there in the top things of horrific events that have happen to me, us, in that time frame. I lived through my sons pain because the bond of a parent to a child forces you to emotionally feel their misery and discomfort the moment they shed their first tear. To live with the burden of your child's pain, that you feel that you are at fault somehow, stays with you. And not even a wash in the most fragrance of smells can ever wipe the stench away from your soul as you drown in self-pity and heartache.

You can only feel those emotions for a child if you ever held your own in your arms for the first time. And I knew in that moment, that I held their life in my arms, that nothing else mattered in this world but their comfort and success in life. For me and every other parent, it is to be better then I ever was, when they become men themselves.

I was an utterly fucking mess. I was only as useful as my boisterous voice that could only shout for someone, anyone to, call 9-1-1. It was something that I found myself doing months prior for my wife and I wasn’t prepared to do it again in this lifetime. Life can be so cruel.

So here it is today, I decided I would take the boys out on the boat after I picked them up from school. The weather was glorious as the sun shined down upon us from the heavens as if angels themselves were falling from the sky, turning our world into gold, as they drenched our bodies with their light of life.

There is freedom in the feeling of being uninhibited that frees you from the restraint of the rest of the world. The boat ride was our salvation to be one with nature and God and leave life behind on the docks of self importance and world of distrust. In this moment we had forgiven the boat for the tragic incident of yesterday and we were enjoying life on the water as the angels from up above guided us down the quite calm of the water that seemed to be placed on earth just for us.