Rather than the usual story of glittering gold dug from the ground or retrieved from wreckage at the bottom of the sea, this time I'll offer a treasure I found at the Cowtown Cop blog. The blog post is itself worthy, but in the comments field the incomparable Brigid talks about death:
For every way that there is of being here, there's an infinity of ways of not being here. Historical accidents wipe out whole universes with each movement of the clock. Statistics label us ridiculous. Black holes loom, hungry. Thermodynamics prohibit us. Jihad Terrorists want to kill us, if we're not taken out first by hurricane, flood, tainted food,outsourced enginnering or that offer of a lift home from Ted Kennedy. Life, by any reasonable measure, is impossible, and your life — just being there today,able and willing to risk yourself to help a child in danger, even more so.
Dealing with death on a regular basis, sometimes our own mortality brings on the weariness of an unwanted nap, slumbering thoughts of past sorrow and loss. I think of those we came so close to- and those we never truly had a chance to save, and it's as if the color seeped out of our blood. Yet we keep drawing in breath after breath, pulling in precious moments of oxygen with the remnants of our courage, until our blood darkens with strength, slowly filling up some of those empty chambers in our hearts. Giving us strength to go back out in the field, where next time, perhaps the one we reach out to, we can save.
Words written that well are a treasure far more precious than any diamond or gold coin, and unlike those relics, doomed to spend their existence locked away, the words can be shared among many.
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