Sounds & Smells...

Do you like the smell of grass?

What about the smell of freshly tilled dirt?

Or the smell of trees, especially the heady smell of freshly cut trees?

Do you like the sound of the silence that you can hear way out in the country?  No noise from cars, no houses with their air-conditioned hum.  Just you and the wind and nature's sounds.

Somewhere in Mississippi, Alabama, or Georgia this weekend, an EMT, a firefighter, or a police officer experienced every one of those sensations that we enjoy.  Our responder, though, didn't get to experience those sensations in a pleasing way.

Arriving first, the paramedic's memories of those comforting smells clashed with the sights her eyes were seeing.  The firefighter's brain sought to fill the void of silence that his ears were telling him existed right then.  Our paramedic's skin felt the warm sunshine, bringing memories of spring childhood days.  The landmarks they shared just hours before while responding to another call, are now gone, vanished with the wind.  These public servants must now bring quick order to this tornado of chaos, holding back fears of the fate of their own families.

In a moment, their world bowed to, and broke under, the demands of nature.  In days, their world will settle into a new routine.  In weeks, they will see renewal.  In years, they will see healing.  The people under their protection will regain their footing, and the community will survive.

Several years from now, on a cold morning, our EMT will be called to the home of a grandmother, wrapped in a blanket and disheveled from her illness, and the EMT's memory will see another grandmother wrapped in a blanket holding her injured grandchild amid the rubble of a home.  On a highway one spring afternoon, the clean smell of pine will trigger our firefighter's memories of that terrible day, as he gently untangles a crumpled car from a teen's broken limbs.  Our police officer on a routine summer night's patrol will be tormented by the flashes of lightning and peals of thunder breaking the night's silence as a summer storm rolls over the land.

The members of this trio are heroes to many.  Yet these heroes carry the memory of many lifetime's worth of tragedy.

To themselves, they are as frail and human as all of us.