Month: August 2026

Struggling with Adversity

On By Judy GlasserIn When the Worst HappensLeave a comment

Have you struggled with any huge issues in your life?

I have.  I am still struggling with the most extreme adversity I have ever experienced.  On May 18, 2016 my world exploded.  My son, David Glasser, was a Phoenix Police Officer who was killed in the line of duty on that day.

I have experienced quite a lot of death in my life but this is – by far – the hardest.

Davey was a unique young man who was dedicated to serving his community and dedicated to living life to its fullest with fun, going everywhere and anywhere, while collecting a vast number of friends. He did all of this with an obvious devotion and love for God and his family.  My husband and I lived 1 1/2 miles from Davey and his wife and 2 children the last 5 years of his life.  We talked with him daily and saw him almost every day for one reason or another.

I don’t have the words for how painful this last 10 years have been.  It defines adversity.  Living with the reality of my circumstances is a struggle.

As I read the book of Job in the Bible, I can relate to many of the trials Job went through.  Job experiences the shock of getting terrible news that all of his children have been killed.  I know what it feels like to have one of my children die, I can’t imagine being told they were all killed.  Then, after the first horrible news,  painful things just kept happening.  I can relate.  When people around him started saying strange and wrong things to him, I can relate.  Job questioned God and wondered why this was all happening to him.  I can relate.  He was overwhelmed with sorrow.  I can relate.

It’s a huge struggle.

Job was confident that his redeemer lived and he was confident that – in the end – his redeemer wins.  He knew that God was in total control and all-powerful.  I am also confident in my Redeemer, the Creator of the Universe.

Job committed his life to being faithful to God in spite of his circumstances.  He praised God in the middle of all of the pain he was experiencing.  He knew that is was wise to turn from evil and love God.  I can relate to all of this.

Job had a long conversation with God.  I can relate – I have had many long conversations with God about my son’s death.  Job confessed that he did not understand.  I can relate – I will never completely understand this.  Job’s eyes were opened in a new way to the reality that God has a plan and purpose for each of us and that God’s ways are not our ways.  I can relate.

God gave Job peace in the middle of his pain and blessed him.

I can relate.

He’s Not Gone

I love pictures – especially pictures of my family.

Now that we all walk around every day with good cameras on our phones, those of us who love pictures have a lot of great ones of the events and activities of our lives.

But the pictures are on our phones.

Or they are on Facebook for those of us who are into that.  Or in our clouds – where ever that is.  Ten, twenty years from now, when my grandchildren want to look back on family history, where will they look?  Scroll through everybody’s phones? Maybe we’ll have an electronic process that’s easy and convenient by then.  We don’t have anything like that now.

This has motivated me to electronically create family yearbooks and give them to the adult members of my family each year. I have a copy of the books for each grandchild as well – maybe that will be their twenty-first birthday gift. I love pictures, I have a creative side and I’m pretty good on the computer so making the books for everyone was a joy…..

until 2016.

That was the year my son, David Glasser, a Phoenix Police Officer was killed in the line of duty on May 18th.  My world exploded.  The story of our family turned dark and sad and painful.

About 6 months after Davey’s death, I sat down to start our family yearbook for that year and I attempted to make the first page – a dedication page to Davey.  It took me several weeks of struggling to complete just that first page because of my grief.  I would put a box of tissues next to me, determined to get past that first page but I just couldn’t.  Sobs made my hands shake and the anguish in my broken heart would overwhelm me.  Each time I tried, I had to stop.  The emotional fall-out of trying to put together the pictures of the tragedy that happened in our lives in 2016 would follow me around like a dark cloud for several days.

So I stopped working on the 2016 family yearbook.  Whenever I thought about it in 2017, I just ignored it.  Whenever I thought about it in 2018, I would log in and attempt to start working on it, but it hurt.

Too heart wrenching.

Too many tears.

I just couldn’t deal with documenting the year we lost Davey.  I thought about skipping 2016 and going on to 2017 but that was impossible.  There was no way I could skip 2016 – our world had totally changed, we had experienced the worst and our lives had become unrecognizable from what they were the year before.  A 2017 yearbook wouldn’t make any sense without a 2016 book.

So each time I sat down to work on the 2016 book, I would end up staring at the dedication page with tears rolling down my face.  Then I would quit and close my computer.  I did this every 3 to 4 months….

until 2019.ο»Ώ

After 3 years of trying and failing, I opened up my computer in 2019 to see if I could get past Davey’s dedication page in our family yearbook for 2016 and, somehow, suddenly, it felt very right to be documenting my family’s extremely tough journey through that year.  I treasured the pictures and memories of the days before May 18th, 2016.  I loved fitting the pictures on the pages – remembering special moments of Davey’s last months.

And the pictures we took after May 18th actually filled some gaps in my memory caused by the fog of grief and the swirling in my head.  They are important memories of how we struggled and loved each other through the pain.

I realized that I had turned a corner on this road of loss. With God walking closely beside me, my memories had now become more precious than painful.

I have finished the book for 2017. We had a super busy year in 2017 with memorials and Police Week in Washington, DC.  So many people and organizations did great things to remember Davey and show that they cared about us. It felt good to review it all as I put the pictures in order. Our 2017 family book is a really big book full of special memories. 

And Davey is there with us.

I started doing 2 or 3 books a year and now I am officially caught up. I am working on the 2026 book. My daughter’s children who were born after Davey was killed are still getting the 2016 book and all of the books following because Davey’s life and death continue to have a big impact on our family. I’m so glad God showed us how to take Davey with us in a positive way.

And I’m very grateful that my memories have become more precious than painful.

Miss you, Davey.

Love you.

On By Judy GlasserIn When the Worst Happens2 Comments

I’m Not a Screamer

Normally I am not a screamer.

But on this day, I screamed.  And I didn’t stop for a long time.

It was several months after my son, David Glasser, who was a Phoenix Police Officer, was killed in the line of duty.  I remember sitting, staring off into the distance with my mind swirling with pain and grief and anger and confusion.  I don’t know how long I sat there but I know I gradually realized that I had been sitting there a significant amount of time.  And I didn’t feel like what I was doing was helping me deal with my shattered life and my broken heart.

So I thought about an article on grief that I had wanted to read and I eventually found it in a pile.  I am usually an organized person but those months right after Davey died were the most unorganized months of my life.  Nothing seemed to fit anywhere anymore so everything went into a pile.

I’m sorry I can’t tell you the title of this article or the author or where I found it.  This just shows you how well my brain was functioning back then.

One of the suggestions in the article for dealing with extreme grief was to try screaming.  After surviving a tragedy, we often have a lot of emotions that we keep all bottled up inside of us because everyone around us is also hurting and we don’t want to add to their struggle.

So we keep it inside where it fills us with pain, roars in our ears and keeps us awake at night.

The article suggested that screaming might help me get out my emotions and feel better.  I was ready to try just about anything.

They mentioned finding a time when I was alone – for obvious reasons.  I also needed to find a place where I could scream and not end up with the neighbors calling the cops.

Wow- I definitely needed to avoid that scenario.

I went in my closet but it was too small.  Don’t ask my why but I wanted to lay face down somewhere and scream into the floor.

So I laid down on the living room rug, closed my eyes and started screaming.  And I kept screaming.  I had the biggest pity party of my life – screaming my head of as I went through every negative and painful thought and feeling that was rolling around in my head.

I screamed a long time.  When I finally stopped I was exhausted and I had a sore throat.

And I felt lighter.  It felt good.

I got up on the couch and decided that this needed to be a turning point for me.  From then on, I was going to focus on life, not death.  From then on, I was going to be grateful for all I had while Davey was alive and all I still had.  My life was not going to be about what I had lost.

Davey was gone but, for some reason, I was still here.  So I needed to figure out what purpose God still had for me here and do it.

I have cried a million tears between then and now but no more screaming.  The swirling in my head gradually stopped, the stuff in the piles around my house found their place and I have slowly gotten used to the hole – some days are harder than others.

I am so extremely grateful for the 34 years we had Davey.

Miss you, Davey.

Love you.

On By Judy GlasserIn When the Worst HappensLeave a comment

You’ll Get Through This

On By Judy GlasserIn When the Worst HappensLeave a comment

No, I won’t.

One of the many things people have said to me since the death of my son, David Glasser, is ‘you’ll get through this’. Davey was a Phoenix Police Officer who was killed in the line of duty on May 18, 2016.

A friend I was talking to this week said that it was great that I had God walking beside me to help me get through this. The first part of that comment is very true- God has been awesome- he is my Rock and Comforter. But the last words in that statement are not correct. I replied, “I have realized that I’m not ‘getting through’ this.”

I have figured out that we don’t ‘get through’ the death of one of our children. There is no ‘other side’ of this situation where we breathe a sigh of relief because we are ‘through’ it.

When our child dies, we never move out of it. We have to move forward but we take our broken hearts with us. We live in it. Every day.

Why is this so different from when my mother and father passed away?

I know what it is.

I always knew that there would be a time in my life when my parents would pass away. I expected a portion of my life would be without my parents.

Not so with Davey.

Davey is supposed to be here, right now. He was supposed to be making my husband and me smile as we grow old. He should be filling our calendars with the next fun thing. Making jokes. Surrounding himself with friends and family – helping everyone have a good time.

There were times in Davey’s life where I felt like his social director. I would be organizing and helping with details in the background while Davey was the front man – gathering people together and having a great time with them. He always appreciated my help and I loved seeing him living life to the full. He was such a great person to be around.

I know you feel like this if you have lost a child – I should have gone first. That’s the right order. What happened is not the right order. And the pain of this reality does not go away. I’m not going to ‘get over’ this because the fact that he is gone from this earth when he should be here is not going to change.

The hole he left doesn’t get smaller, it actually gets bigger as he misses more Mother’s Days, Father’s days, birthdays and more Christmases.

Davey was a huge family man. He was always a part of what was going on. He flew to Maryland for his sister’s graduation with her masters degree, he flew to Pennsylvania several times to spend time with his last living grandmother and grandfather. He flew to Denver when his sister moved there to check out her new place. He kept track of his dad and I, making sure we were taken care of. If something was happening with our family, he was right in the middle of it.

All of that was lost the day a bullet took his life. Wiped away. It isn’t happening, it’s not going to happen, it will never happen again.

So, no….

I’m not going to ‘get through’ this.

Miss you, Davey.

Love you.

They Were Wrong

They were wrong.

I cannot tell you how many people told me “The first year is the hardest” after my son, David Glasser, who was a Phoenix Police Officer, was killed in the line of duty on May 18, 2016.

They were all wrong.

At that time, I had already lost my mom and my dad and my oldest brother along with all of my grandparents and all of my aunts and uncles….and yes, with those deaths, the first year was the hardest. Now it’s ten years later and I have lost my last two brothers and more friends and cousins and it’s true- the first year was the toughest.

But it has not been true with the death of my son.  The first year was the most confusing and unpredictable and foggy.  But each year since then, the hole in my life has grown and all I have lost keeps accumulating as Davey continues to miss his children growing up, he misses getting to know new little members of our family, and misses Christmases and birthdays and Mother’s Days.  Every year there is more.

I’m gradually getting used to the growing hole and the lengthening list of things I have lost.  But it’s not easier.

I think the big difference between my older loved ones dying and Davey being killed is I had expected that there would be a time in my life where my father and mother and older brothers and others would not be here.  That is the correct order.  It was going to happen.

But Davey was always supposed to be here.  Every thought of my future included him.  Pictures in my mind of me growing old all included Davey and his smile.  Every future celebration, every milestone, every fun family get together and trip included Davey.  Now he’s not here…..and all that I have lost grows.

So, do me a favor.  Don’t tell a parent who has lost a child that the first year is the hardest.  It’s just not true.

Miss you, Davey.

Love you.

On By Judy GlasserIn When the Worst HappensLeave a comment