Long after ALS took my husband’s life, his legacy endures
Visiting a memorial helped me feel closer to my late husband, a first responder
Written by |
This week I visited Oklahoma City for the first time. Ever since I met my late husband, Jeff, who died from ALS in 2020, I had wanted to go. It was a meaningful place to him; in 1995, he served as part of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ (ATF) National Response Team (NRT) in the immediate aftermath of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building bombing, in which 168 people were killed.
According to the ATF, the team provides a mobile, expert response to large-scale fire and explosives incidents anywhere in the United States within 24 hours. The NRT works alongside federal, state, and local investigators to reconstruct incident scenes, identify the origin of fires or blasts, and determine causes, while gathering evidence to support criminal prosecutions. Being a part of this team was an incredible honor for Jeff.
I met Jeff many years after he’d deployed to Oklahoma City, but the meaning of that experience was among the first things he shared with me as we got to know each other. Jeff was an innate caretaker. Keeping people safe was absolutely core to his being. It defined his life’s work, and he was by all accounts exceptionally good at it.
Jeff didn’t share deep feelings about his work too often, but he told me that being in Oklahoma City had been particularly emotional and difficult, particularly because 19 victims were children. His daughter, Makelle, was only 7 when the bombing happened, but she remembers her dad leaving immediately upon getting the call that morning. She recalls him coming home from the scene two months later, dropping his bags in the foyer of their home, and gathering her and her younger brother close for a deep, prolonged hug.
“I just remember him holding us and not letting go,” Makelle told me. “At 7, you don’t understand that gravity. It was only much later in life that he shared with me that he still had nightmares about the scene.”
Makelle shared that thinking about what happened is very emotional for her to this day. She has visited the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum several times.
“I think about his homecoming and appreciate much later in life why he felt the way he did, and I understand how much it still affected him,” she said. “My dad was very stoic and wasn’t the type to get emotional. When I stood at the memorial garden and observed the tree that survived, the reflecting pool and the memorial chairs, I realize that he was a young man in his mid-30s, younger than I am today, and I feel the weight and gravity. I understand how precious we were, and life was, to him.”
The investigative and response work that Jeff and his teammates did made a difference. It contributed to the prosecution of those responsible for the crime. The difficult lessons learned from Oklahoma City helped strengthen the response to future explosives crimes. I hope and would like to believe that the work he did also made a difference to the comfort of those who lost loved ones in the bombing, and to survivors, two of whom I had a chance to meet when I toured the memorial this week.
I’d visited the memorial hoping to feel close to Jeff in a place that had so much significance in his life. I did indeed feel connected with him there, but I also got just a small sense of the emotion and weight that he carried as a first responder, and a glimpse of how that may have shaped the person that he was — compassionate, intentional, extremely concerned with the personal safety of others. He was the person I and many others turned to in a crisis.
It also gave me a new perspective on how he approached his life with ALS, and I wonder if it added another layer of difficulty to his diagnosis. Jeff was so used to being the one who took care of things, and ALS, in his estimation, hindered his ability to do so. His other loved ones and I would beg to differ. Jeff took ALS head-on, constantly seeking workarounds to the challenges it presented. He drew on an inner reserve of emotional strength as his physical strength failed. Somehow, he still sought to take care of us.
But more importantly, to me, are the lessons he imparted and the legacy he left. I like to think that people are safer today because he was in the world. I know for sure that our family feels more loved, more cared for, and more compassion for others because he lived. And we surely feel the emptiness of his absence alongside the tremendous love and pride that he was here.
Note: ALS News Today is strictly a news and information website about the disease. It does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. This content is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have read on this website. The opinions expressed in this column are not those of ALS News Today or its parent company, Bionews, and are intended to spark discussion about issues pertaining to ALS.
Leave a comment
Fill in the required fields to post. Your email address will not be published.