Fire Wife, Fire Life
Good Evening friends and family. I hope you are well! This week I have really struggled with what I should write about. Okay, almost every week I struggle with what to write about… usually I can’t make up my mind (typical female); but this week my mind was blank. Nothing even sounded remotely interesting. I texted Cameron yesterday and he said “why don’t you write about being the wife of a fireman and all you deal with while I’m not home.” Bingo! I told him that was a great idea and then went on to really put some thought into it. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I don’t do near what people probably think I do.
I am not your typical fireman’s wife. I don’t take my daughter up to the station on the weekends when her daddy works. I have rarely even taken her there on a holiday. I don’t bake cakes or cookies and send them to work with him. I don’t go to a lot of the social gatherings and meet up with his crew and their wives. It’s nothing against them… in fact I love them all like family and enjoy our time together. It’s just not my thing I guess. Okay, so the more I write, I kind of sound like a jerk.
I love Cameron. I honestly think that God called him to be a fireman and for good reason. He’s strong. He’s funny. He can calm down a bad situation. The job has it’s perks… good benefits, ample amounts of time off, a brotherhood and camaraderie that is second to none. Being a fireman can be great I guess. I’m not one obviously, but from the outside it looks like a dream job. Think about it, you are viewed primarily as a hero, never get much back lash from the public. You have an exhilarating job; you get to fight fire for crying out loud! There is nothing boring about that. People bring you treats and goodies and gifts to your station while on duty; restaurants usually give you decent discounts for meals and sometimes even comp your food. Also, girls love to flash their “girls” to a truck full of hot firemen. (Not that I would know)
With that being said, there are things I don’t like about it; like that I never know exactly what he’s dealing with or where he is for 24 hours at a time. Before you get the wrong idea, I could give a rat’s a$$ about what he’s doing socially. I’m not that wife and I don’t feel the need to keep tabs. It’s the nights that he still hasn’t facetimed us goodnight and now that I’m thinking of it, I haven’t heard from him since about 8:00 am. Yeah, it may be another lazy Tuesday afternoon for me, but he and his station fought an apartment fire for 4+ hours. Oh and the ceiling/roof was filled with asbestos, so he’ll be hacking up all sorts of stuff for the next few days. Let’s try not to think about the permanent damage his lungs are receiving.
He might be a hero today because he has pulled someone’s kid out of a burning house, but tomorrow when he is pumping someone else full of Narcan and killing their high, they’ll hate him and try to fight him as soon as they take that first breath. It’s not just fire and rescue. It's medical trauma, car wrecks, the whole nine yards. A lady falls, firemen trudge through roach infested hoards to get to her. Neighbors smell something terrible, they call the fire department. Now they have to suit up in their Hazmat gear because there is a dead body that’s been decomposing for the last month and nobody had bothered to call or check in until now. Child falls in creek, sibling goes in after, they both drown. Firemen are wading through pond wastewater in nothing but work out gear to find their bodies. Finally, bodies are found. One survives, one does not. Water is tested and is HIV positive along with a slew of other things. Yes, these are common occurrences.
Wait, that doesn’t sound so good. Or fun. Or even remotely pleasant. That’s because some parts of Cameron’s job are really ugly. There are things he keeps from me. Things that he buries down deep and tries not to think about. He and his buddies are retelling the gruesome events from the week before and laughing about it. But you know what I always say - “If you don’t laugh, you’ll cry”. I suppose it’s true for them too. As for me, being a fireman’s wife isn’t hard. I’m not fighting to keep someone alive on a weekly basis. I’m not dealing with the very worst of the public. I’m not running into a 4-Alarm fire while everyone else is running out. I’m not knowledgeable in how to cut vent holes in roofs, or how to administer proper CPR. I’m definitely not working my body physically to the point of exhaustion. Hell, I don’t even get my 10,000 steps everyday. As a fireman’s wife, I feel I have it pretty easy. Yes, I go it alone many nights, but so do tons of other people. I am solo to family events and gatherings at times, but I am still surrounded with family in a safe environment. I don’t miss meals. I don’t rush out of bed in the middle of the night scrambling for clothes and shoes. I have it pretty doggone easy.
Cameron is the one who has it rough. Don’t be fooled. Some days it may just be mowing grass, washing trucks, or seeing how may games of pickle ball can be played. But other days it’s watching lives be lost, it’s seeing homes be destroyed, it’s internalizing unimaginable scenarios. I’m not trying to take away from fireman’s wives. It’s not always rainbows and sunshine. We worry. We get scared. We get lonely. But for me, and what I “deal with” - it doesn’t compare.
So - thank you, Cameron for your hard work and the sacrifices you make so that others are safe and well. Thank you, Cameron for giving all of yourself to help save someone’s life and then coming home like nothing ever happened. Thank you, Cameron for working in a field where compassion for people is important even when you see the worst sides of them. Thank you, Cameron for coming to my rescue when I am anxious, when I am falling apart, when I’m having a crappy day, even though you haven’t been able to process or deal with what you saw the night before.
Thank you to my fireman. My hero. My best friend. My lover. (Even though I hate that word because it weirds me out)
Forever and always, your wife.