The Toughest Job In the WorldAbout 13 years ago, a very close friend of mine died of a massive heart attack at age 37. His wife came home from work to find him sitting on the couch; he had passed away about four hours earlier.
The ambulance came and whisked him away, and she didn't know how to drive, so she called me and I drove her to the hospital where they told us that he'd died.
We went back to their house and she started making the telephone calls. But of course the moment anybody got on the line she'd start sobbing and hand the phone to me, so I had to tell his parents and his brothers and various other friends and relatives that he'd died.
It was, by a large margin, the worst day of my life.
Major Steve Beck has gone through that
five times.
Each door is different. But once they're open, Beck said, some of the scenes inside are inevitably the same.
"The curtains pull away. They come to the door. And they know. They always know," he said.
"You can almost see the blood run out of their body and their heart hit the floor. It's not the blood as much as their soul. Something sinks. I've never seen that except when someone dies. And I've seen a lot of death.
"They're falling - either literally or figuratively - and you have to catch them.
"In this business, I can't save his life. All I can do is catch the family while they're falling."This is not a fun little story. But it's extremely moving and well-written. Thanks to our buddy Chris from
Lucky Dawg for pointing this one out.
