It’s been over 6 years since my son, David Glasser, who was a Phoenix Police Officer was killed in the line of duty.
And we have great memories of our lives with him. We laughed, we played and we travelled. We watched Davey play a lot of sports and we went to many games of all kinds in all different cities with him.
So many memories that bring big smiles to our faces.
But all of our dreams for the future with Davey have been snatched away.
Dreams of Davey coaching his son and daughter in baseball, basketball, volleyball and every other sport there is.
Dreams of Davey retiring from the police force and figuring out what he was going to do next.
Dreams of Davey and his, wife, Kristen, growing old together. They were married young so we talked about them the possibility of them celebrating their 70th wedding anniversary.
Dreams of Davey and his son, Micah, playing a mean game of one-on-one basketball as Micah grew taller and taller, eventually passing up Davey. I know that was Davey’s dream when he built a basketball court in his back yard.
Dreams of Davey walking his beautiful daughter, Eden, down the aisle.
It’s 6 years later and one of the hardest parts of surviving this tough, tough, journey is all of the dreams that have been snatched away.
All of the great times and fun with Davey that will never be.
We are so grateful for all of the awesome memories we have.
One of my favorite things to do is share great memories of Davey with people who really knew him. It feels good and I’m pretty amazed at what I hear sometimes. I have learned some very precious things about him from other people.
David Glasser, my son, was a Phoenix Police Officer who was killed in the line of duty May 18, 2016. In the past 6 years, a bunch of family, his squad members, friends and my husband and I have gathered at ‘Davey’s spot” in the Phoenix Memorial cemetery to remember him together on his birthday.
It’s so awesome to get together and talk about Davey. Sometimes when we share stories, I learn something new about Davey. A couple of years ago, I learned something I never knew before about how much Davey cared for all of us.
A little background on this – Davey always took care of my husband and my cell phones. He would tell us it was time to order new ones and then he would order them for us since we were all on the same plan. When the new phones came in, he would transfer our data and then he would sell our old phones for the difference so we never paid anything for our new phones. He would also make sure we kept the boxes and had good covers and cases for our new phones so that he could resell them for top dollar. He was great at it and it was a huge help to us.
These last 6 years, my husband and I have had to take care of our own phones. It is such a hassle!! It takes us at least a week and often a trip or two to Verizon to get everything worked out whenever we change phones. Yuck! We never realized before how great it was to have Davey take care of this for us. Now we know.
So, when we were sharing great memories of Davey a couple of years ago on his birthday at his spot in the cemetery, imagine my amazement when I discovered for the first time that he did all of this for a bunch of the people in his squad. He ordered phones, transferred data and then sold phones so it didn’t cost anything for a whole group of people!
What a unique but important way to show how much he cared for us! It’s like he had his own little new cell phone service going on and I never knew it. He must have realized what a pain it was for many of us and he liked doing it so he did it for all of us.
That is so like him! He loved us and cared for us in any way he could, not making a big deal out of it.
Davey leaves behind a legacy of saying “love you” and this is just one example of how he backed that up with action.
My wedding ring had a loose stone so a major jewelry store sent it in to be fixed.
And my ring disappeared.
Somewhere between the jewelry store and the shop that fixes jewelry, my ring along with a whole box of other people’s jewelry was stolen. Gone!
For almost 40 years, my husband I have had an ‘every 5 years’ anniversary tradition of changing or adding something to my ring. This made my ring very unique with a lot of sentimental memories attached to it. Four years ago we added blue sapphires to my ring after our son, David Glasser, who was a Phoenix Police Officer, was killed in the line of duty. It’s the only piece of jewelry I usually wear other than Davey’s memorial bracelet.
This ring was precious to me so I never took it off. I didn’t want to lose it.
Now the jewelry store lost it. Unbelievable!
Of course I cried. So much has been lost and now I’m adding my ring to that list. The jewelry store tried to do their best to replace it with something comparable. But it’s irreplaceable.
Well, on second thought, my perspective has really changed on what is irreplaceable. There is a new standard in my mind that I measure everything here on earth by to determine whether it’s irreplaceable. And my ring actually isn’t even on that list.
Because, at the top of the irreplaceable list is my son, Davey. In an instant, he was gone. He was a Phoenix Police Officer who was killed in the line of duty on May 18, 2016. He went to work one day and never came back. And he is truly irreplaceable. He defines irreplaceable. He was such a huge personality and so special. Nothing and no one can fill the hole he left on this earth.
When I think about it, it’s people in my life who are irreplaceable. None of the ‘stuff’ in life means much when it’s stacked up against the people that mean the most to me.
One of the things I value about my relationship with God is that he has promised that nothing could make him stop loving me. Nothing. Ever. I don’t have to be concerned about ever losing my relationship with him. My life is built on the Solid Rock. I might lose everything else, but not God.
Having this new standard of irreplaceable has helped me focus on the most precious things in my life – my relationship with God and with people. It has helped me put ‘stuff’ and possessions in the right place on my list of what is important – at the bottom. It has helped me be okay with losing my ring. It was just a thing. It is replaceable.
Because I now clearly understand what is truly irreplaceable.
For the rest of my time here on earth, my life will have a big hole in it. This hole has been getting larger as each year passes since my son, David Glasser, a Phoenix Police Officer, was killed in the line of duty on May 18, 2016. He is missing more and more important events and milestones of his family and our family. He’s not here for first days of school and the start of a new baseball season. He doesn’t get the chance to play with new little members of our family and birthday parties continue to happen without him.
My life sentence has no end on this planet. Every hour, every day, every week, every year – he is gone.
I have awesome memories of him, great pictures and two unbelievably precious grandchildren who call him Dad and remind me of him. But he’s not here.
And he will not be here.
Usually I try not to think about the fact that, 20 years from now, he will still be gone. I guess that’s the reality of a life sentence – it doesn’t change. There is no hope of parole. There is no break.
I try to focus on all of the blessings I had before Davey was killed and all of the blessings I have now. But….sometimes… the hole is just too big. The black mountain of grief looms in front of me, making this never-ending path of loss extremely hard to navigate.
This life sentence on earth is a struggle.
So what’s my motivation for getting up in the morning?
Davey is gone but there are so many people still here. God has shown me that he has a purpose for me here on earth. There are still a lot of things he wants me to do. God is very obviously walking beside me down this tough road, giving me strength for the climb and wisdom for the blind curves.
I have also been given the eternal life sentence of being loved and cared for by my good Father God. This life sentence has already started and it will never end. There is no grief or loss in my relationship with God. Nothing can ever separate me from his love.
Unlike you and me, Davey is no longer experiencing any earthly struggles and pain. He’s in a perfect place with his Father God.
And I will be there, too, someday when my purpose on earth is done.
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 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 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 has been 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.
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 have started on the 2018 family photo book. I’m a couple years behind and now that I’m writing a real book, I’m going to get even more behind but I’m confident that I will get caught up someday.
I’m so very grateful that my memories have become more precious than painful.
I would like to write a nice, ‘feel good’ blog for Mother’s Day. But it isn’t happening.
What’s happening is a rollercoaster of bittersweet emotions on this Mother’s Day. Some of the issue for me is the fact that my son, David Glasser, a Phoenix Police Officer, was killed in the line of duty on May 18, 2016 – right after Mother’s Day. The horror of that day has overshadowed my Mother’s Day ever since. The permanent, painful changes in my life emphasize the hole in my heart – especially on this day.
The last Mother’s Day I had with Davey was just 10 days before he was shot and killed. I was told later that he had the opportunity for some off-duty work that day but he turned it down, saying he wanted to spend the day with the ‘mothers’ in his life. That doesn’t surprise me – that’s who he was. He had his priorities straight.
Davey also knew I was alone that day because my husband had taken an emergency flight to Pennsylvania. My husband’s father had just died. Yes, my father-in-law passed away two weeks before our son was killed. Have you ever felt the crushing impact of multiple bombs going off in your life?
When I remember that Mother’s Day, all I can think about is sitting outside at lunch with Davey. I remember what it felt like to hang out with him – to laugh and have fun. I remember how different my world felt with him in it.
My Mother’s Day will never be the same. There is an important person missing.
But then I remember how thankful I am to have my daughter and four gorgeous grand darlings – each one of them is such a blessing in my life! When I focus on them, Mother’s Day starts to sparkle again. All the possibilities! All the new memories to make! Watching my daughter as she does an awesome job being a mother to her two small children brings me joy. Watching my grand darlings grow into their own personalities and strengths is awesome. Watching Davey’s children mature has the added joy of seeing glimpses of him as they exhibit traits they inherited from their dad.
If you have experienced the loss of a child, you know the rollercoaster that I’m describing. Dark days and then the light shines through. Things going smooth….until they don’t. Several days without tears and then a day when it’s hard to stop the waterfall.
Mother’s day – it’s bitter sweet when you have lost a child.
It’s a tall somebody who was always adding a lot of fun and laughs to whatever was going on.
A man of faith whose integrity and character clearly showed through the decisions he made in his life is missing.
He’s missing right this instant as November looms in front of us. My son, David Glasser’s birthday. He’s missing it …. again.
There’s a hole in our lives that will never be filled.
Sometimes people use the word ‘heal’ when they’re talking to me about Davey being killed in the line of duty and I can’t relate. There’s a hole. It’s not going to heal over into a scar and fade away. Not in this lifetime.
So we’re figuring how to move forward with the hole.
My grandson, Davey’s son, is in high school now. He was 5 when Davey was killed. Micah is doing great in school and Davey would be so proud of him. Davey loved learning and figuring things out. He had a double major in college of Psychology and Criminal Justice. I will never forget when he was studying juvenile delinquency – he told me that a working mother was the highest indicator that a kid would become a delinquent. Because I had been working full-time at first getting my degree and then my career since before he was born, I thought this was very interesting. So I asked him with a smile, “Well, what happened to you?”
That led to a in-depth conversation about how it’s not mother’s working that’s the issue – it’s the faith and values and priorities of those mothers along with the fathers that has the biggest influence on the child.
Davey told me many times how frustrated he was with the fact that many parents today use the police as the bad guys with their children. “If you don’t behave, the police will come and arrest you.” Really? What happened to parents disciplining their children and parents teaching their children to respect authority and the rules? Is it just easier to wait until they are 15 or 16 and let the police handle it? Policemen spend a lot of time parenting kids whose parents aren’t do it.
The life of a cop. He was a great cop….and he is missed.
He was a great son and brother…and he is missed.
He was a great husband and father….and he is missed.
He was a great friend and squad member….and he is missed.
My Family Bleeds Blue 