And the others came too. Big guys in uniform, filling up my living room, bringing food, mowing the lawn, fixing the gutter that had been leaking for two years. My house was full of blue for months.
At the funeral, there were over two hundred officers. Some from other towns, some from other states. They lined the road to the cemetery. They played the bagpipes. They folded the flag into a tight triangle and a young officer I didn’t even know knelt in front of me and handed it to me, and said something I don’t remember.
Caleb sat beside me and watched it all without crying.
And then, afterward, something in me broke.
I can’t explain it any better than that. For sixteen years, those uniforms had meant fear to me. Every shift, every late night, every siren in the distance. For fourteen months, they’d meant sickness. Officers in my living room meant my husband was dying. And on the day of the funeral, a sea of blue meant he was gone.
