Month: July 2023

Please Let Me Wake Up

It happened again this week. While talking with someone I just met, the subject came up and I said my son, David Glasser, had been killed in the line of duty 7 years ago.

7 years ago.

Sometimes the pain feels like yesterday. It’s very hard. And saying it makes it more real.

For weeks after Davey’s death, I would wake up every morning hoping that it was all just a bad dream.

Praying that it was all a nightmare that I could wake up from.

Every morning I would open my eyes and look around my bedroom – hoping I wouldn’t see the frame on my dresser which holds the last Mother’s Day card I’ll ever get from Davey.  The one he signed “I love you”.

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Every morning I would hope I wouldn’t see the box with his picture and a flag and his medal of honor that stood on the counter in my kitchen.

Every morning I hoped I wouldn’t see the memorial handed out at his funeral which I posted in our living room. He had such a great smile!

Every morning I wished that this would be the day that his tall, lanky frame would come back through my front door.

But I saw the card and the flag box and the memorial and Davey never walked through my door again.

Because it wasn’t just a very bad dream. The worst happened.

The nightmare is real.

 There’s a big gaping hole in our lives.  We can’t go back to our old lives because Davey is not there. It’s like a dimmer switch has been turned down on the light and laughter and joy in our world.

If you knew him, feel it, too.

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I don’t know how people can deal with tragedy like this without faith in God. I believe that Davey is in heaven with his Father God.  With my Father God.  He’s there with my mother, father, stepfather, brother and many more of my family and friends who have gone home before him.  I believe that God is in the process of bringing good out of the evil that was done.  I believe that I’ve been left behind because God has a part for me in his plan.

Davey walked into my dream a couple of months after he was killed.  I was sitting at the table with my daughter-in-law and my little granddaughter.  It felt like a regular ‘time to color’ or ‘let’s eat’.  Then Davey walked in and sat down.  He gave us a big smile.  He didn’t say anything.  He just smiled at all of us.

I looked around the table at all of his ‘girls’ and blinked.

Maybe everything else really was all just a dream!!

It felt so real.  The explosion of hope in my heart was so strong that it woke me up.

And the nightmare was back.  Sometimes I just want to live in that dream.

But Davey’s  big smile stays with me.  He’s happy.  He is in a place with no sadness, pain or nightmares.  The battle between good and evil that he committed his adult life to here on earth is over for him.  Where he is, the good guys have won.  Davey has won.

On the day that is already determined for me, I will see him again.  It will not be a dream, it will be my new, eternal reality.

What about you?

I know Davey would like to see you again, too.

Miss you, Davey.

Love you.

On By Judy GlasserIn When the Worst Happens4 Comments

I Want to Go Back

On By Judy GlasserIn When the Worst Happens6 Comments

I have days when I want to go back in time. I would gladly go back to anytime before my son, David Glasser, who was a Phoenix Police Officer, was killed in the line of duty.

So much was lost when he died. So much has changed.

Do you ever want to go back?

God speaks to me – and to you – today through Isaiah when he says, “Forget the former things, do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up, do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.” Isaiah 43: 18-19.

God is doing a new thing in my life and in your’s. He wants our eyes to be focused on today and tomorrow. The past is past.

I have been watching God do an entirely new thing in my life since my son was killed. God has a very different plan than I had for the rest of my life and he is gradually revealing it, one step at a time. I could have never imagined this – it’s totally different than the plans I had.

God is making a way in the wilderness that defined my life after Davey died. He is leading me to streams which feed my soul. He is guiding me out of the wasteland of grief and pain where I found myself 7 years ago.

The past is past. God wants my ‘now’ to count. He wants your ‘now’ to count.

He is doing a new thing.

If You Ever Need Anything

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It happened again this week.

A man came to my front door and introduced himself as David Acunto. He is a police officer in the city where we live and he is running for re-election on the city council. He gave me a flyer which included this picture of him in uniform.

My first thought was – “How great to have a police officer on the city council!”

Then he pointed to the Thin Blue Line Flag we have hanging on our front yard light and said, “Is your son a Police Officer?”

Fortunately, this was not a day where my emotions were running high so no tears started rolling down my face when I told him, ” My son was a Phoenix Police Officer who was killed in the line of duty.”

He immediately said, “I’m so sorry” and reached into his pocket to get his business card.

“Please take this. My cell number is on it – call me if you ever need anything.”

Over these last 7 years since Davey was killed, I have heard these exact words from hundreds of law enforcement officers. They always include their cell phone numbers because they mean it. They would show up. He never asked when my son was killed – because it didn’t matter that it was 7 years ago.

Fallen but never forgotten.

Last year after my husband had by-pass surgery, a retired law enforcement officer and his wife mowed and trimmed our yard for 12 weeks as my husband went through rehabilitation. I mowed it the first week and – wow – I was glad when they offered. I haven’t mowed grass since I was a kid and I hated it. Our calendars were also filled with doctor’s appointments and more procedures so it was awesome to check mowing the lawn off of our long list of things to do.

Another very special thing about this was, if Davey was living close to us, it would have been him mowing our yard. So this really felt like Davey’s Blue Family was stepping in for him and taking care of us at a time we could use some help.

Davey would have loved that. It was reported in the Phoenix newspapers that, a couple of hours before he was killed, Davey called up one of his Brothers in Blue who was sick to set up a time to mow HIS yard.

If you ever need anything.

Miss you, Davey.

Love you.

The Moment

I remember the moment I realized that everything in my world had changed. All of the horrible things that had happened to me in the last 15 hours connected in my brain for the first time and I knew that my life as I knew it was gone – blown up – smashed.

Nothing would ever be the same.

It was the moment when I was holding my son, David Glasser’s hand in his hospital room early in the morning after he had been shot the day before in the line of duty as a Phoenix Police Officer. The doctors had just announced their final report.

Davey was officially gone. A machine was still making his lungs breath and drugs were making his heart beat so that he could fulfill his wish of being an organ donor.

But the Davey I had loved and cherished from before he was ever born was not in this ravaged body laying in this hospital bed any longer.

I wanted to crawl in a corner and never leave. I didn’t want to know what a world without without Davey felt like. I didn’t want to face the avalanche of pain and loss that had already started to come crashing down on me and my family.

I didn’t want to.

I told God I didn’t want to.

I remember feeling a torrent of tears dripping down off of my face, soaking the front of my shirt. And I didn’t care. It was all too devastating.

Then, as Police Chaplain Bob Fesmire prayed over all of us standing around Davey’s hospital bed that morning, I felt God’s strong arms of love wrap around me. My Abba Father reminded me that, even though Davey was gone, God is always with me and he was going to walk down this very dark road right beside me, all the way to the end. He reminded me that he had always been beside me during all the tough times in my life – loving me and comforting me. He promised me that he was going to do that again.

And I knew he would. He had done it before, he would do it again.

And he has. God has been my Rock and my shelter as this hurricane of pain and loss decimated my life. He has given me strength and confidence as I have watched him put my life back together – piece by piece – making a much different picture than before Davey died. God has given me hope as he reminds me I have been left behind because he has a purpose for me here.

As I remember that moment in the hospital, I am thankful for how faithful God has been in my life these last almost 9 years.

And I know he’ll be walking closely next to me the rest of this journey, until I see Davey again in our forever home.

Miss you, Davey.

Love you.

___________________

If you would like to know more of this story, I have published a book on Amazon, “Then I Looked Up: Losing a Child, Finding His Legacy of Love”

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