On the worst day of my life will you still hold my hand?

On the worst day

of my life

will you still hold my hand?

I see many people on the worst day of their life because I chose to become an EMT (emergency medical technician). Many people tell me that they could never become an EMT because they couldn't stand to see the things that I sometimes have to see.

I don't love the gore or excitement. I don't love the flashbacks of the sights I've seen that run through my brain. I don't love the smell or the worry. I don't love the pain and the sadness. I don't love being tethered to a pager worrying about if I can go somewhere or if the page will go off. I don't love the surprises when I find out that the victim is someone I know. I don't love meeting new friends with broken bodies and broken hearts as they lay in a pile of rubble that used to be a car.

Hurry

Hurry, hurry, hurry.

Life is running out.

Pieces of your world

lie scattered all about.

Hurry, hurry, hurry,

life is running out.

Baby's small pink shoe,

bits of broken glass...

Photos on the roadway...

scattered in the grass.

Hurry, hurry, hurry,

life is running out.

Rescue's harsh shrill scream...

people all about.

Hurry, hurry, hurry,

life is running out.

Blood and pain and gore.

It's getting hard to remember

what the rush was for.

So why do I do it?

I do it because someone showed up for me on the worst day of my life. Blessed are the ones who show up to hold a hand, to pick up battered bodies and to bandage wounds.

On the worst day of my life my beautiful, funny, full of life eight-year old son was killed in an automobile, pedestrian accident.

Many people showed up to help that day, EMTs, Highway Patrolmen, Sheriff's Deputies, doctors, family, neighbors, friends, and last but nowhere near the least, the mortician. All of these people left what they were doing on that early spring morning in May, to answer the call to help my son and my family. They were there to do the things for us that we could not do for ourselves. Some of them left their children who were getting ready for school that day to be with mine as he crossed from this world into the next. Some of them like my mother, who was an EMT at the time, would expose themselves to the flashbacks of seeing his lifeless body laying in the road only to ask themselves if there was anything more that they could have done. For many of them this was not the first time they had seen this kind of sorrow and it would not be the last.

Why did they do it?That is a question I cannot answer for them, each one has their own story, but for me , I became an EMT because of a profound sense of gratitude I have for the service and sacrifice that each one of these people gave to me on the worst day of my life.

I am so eternally grateful that my son was not alone when he left this world, that someone was there to hold his hand. That is why I choose to be there, so that on the worst day of your life you won't be there alone. I will be there to hold your hand and I'll do everything that I can so that you'll have a better day tomorrow.

Connie Goulding