Smore Face and Services

This is Mr. T's best smore face. We didn't get to do them the last night of our camping trip this weekend so I promised the kids we could with Daddy on Monday night since he missed the camping trip. 

Peter is at work today attending his third funeral for a firefighter this month. The first one was for a sudden, off-duty death of an active member of the department. Last week he went to the funeral of a retiree as part of the honor guard (for the day). Today his entire crew put on their Class A's again and headed to the service of an active (at the time of his death) member of the department who lost his battle with cancer. His death is considered line-of-duty because he had one of the several types of cancer that are believed to be caused by firefighting work. Even though this was somewhat expected, losing two members of the department has been hard. To put it in perspective, Peter has worked there for almost 10 years. In that amount of time, 3 active-duty firefighters have died. Two of those were this month. It's been a hard month.

I don't know what to say other than it sucks. It sucks thinking of the families of these two young men who are left behind. It sucks thinking of all the firefighters who are putting on their formal uniforms with heavy hearts and venturing to the funerals to pay their last respects. It sucks thinking of the wife and children one of them left behind. Especially since there is always a little voice in the back of my head whispering "that could be you....". I know that voice is 99% likely to be wrong, but still, it's there. It's just heart wrenching.