http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2015/10/02/police-suicide-second-class-death

I read the above article and it made me wonder what recognition is right for all Police and the duties they undertake….

Everyone gets a Medal for coming to work, yet how we die, or are injured in ‘the line of duty’ provides no guarantee of medals or recognition.

All Police are brave: why?

Because they go to work each day not to face the dangers, but knowing they may be there, and going anyway.

Sometimes those dangers, those horrors and the sadness they encounter hurts them: it breaks their bones, makes them bleed and often breaks their spirit:

Some get better, some struggle on, some die.

It matters not in the end the medals they receive, it only matters that we know, even if that knowing is by a few, in times of silence, and remembrance, that in the line of duty they served others; and the injuries and the pain and the anguish, they took was always for those they served:

and they did it willingly, often eagerly, but always in service, and always in the line of duty.

History will show, often slowly, that medals will be given, and monuments erected, and heroes mourned, only when we understand that the greatest sacrifices were made, without thought of those medals and monuments, but for our fellow man, in the line of duty: no matter how much at the time they hated us, or refused to recognise us, or forgot us, or didn’t live the pain that we felt, or how, what we did, for them, willingly, caused us to lose ourselves.

I want no medals, no monuments:
I want no accolades, or cheers, or parades, or commendations:

I want it to stop:

when the horrors are too much,
the pain to great,
when the sadness wont leave,
the images just wont go away,

when the greatest fear is, being alone.

I want my brother, my sister, my boss, to reach down and extend their hand, to help me up, when I stumble, and if I fall.