Whether you want to be a community activist or not, you impact your whole “village” every day. I forget that. I forget how fortunate we are as a family, living in our little village in Collinsville.
October was an unusually difficult month for us, but I’ve been reminded how significant our fellow residents are, and how much more I need to appreciate them.
A couple of weeks ago I made a 911 call at about 1 a.m. I didn’t wake up my family first.
I just got up and dialed because I knew I needed immediate help.
Within five minutes the Collinsville Fire Chief was sitting on the sofa in my living room, checking my vitals from his medical kit while my astonished husband and daughter looked on.
Yes, we live right near downtown but still, he got there before anyone in our house could even get shoes on.
“I got the Big Guy,” I said to my daughter.
And Chief Stewart said, “Well, if it’s my shift, you’re going to get me.”
He evidently works several shifts, because not too long ago he was the first to arrive at our church, attending to a lady in the front row who had almost passed out.
Beyond fire protection, he and his staff are true first responders for so many things.
The Chief is doing his job and doing it so well, but it’s not just about people who have a specific job. Ordinary folks, neighbors you might not even know, will come forward as heroes.
About a week before my EMS incident and hospital stay, we had experienced a terrible accident just after sunup in our backyard.
Hard to talk about, but I’m doing it because we had such incredible help from a man we have lived next door to for nearly eight years.
We had only spoken to Phil a handful of times— probably fewer than five. He’s retired and elderly like us, but we hadn’t gotten to know him at all.
One of our two male puppies, adopted from a rescuer near Lake Kiowa in late May, got his collar caught in his brother’s mouth outside near our backyard chain link fence.
He strangled to death before we could get it cut off.
Our neighbor Phil had come out early in the commotion and, seeing that our snips weren’t working, grabbed a heavier tool to cut through the collar.
He was quick, but we weren’t quick enough. It was an awful scene and Phil stayed with us by the fence through it all.
Back in our house, we decided within an hour to bury our pet on the side front of our yard. Struggling to even dig at all (it needed to be deep), we weren’t getting it done. But Phil came outside with— again, another better tool.
His heavy-duty shovel got a proper grave dug under the trees.
“I used to dig for a living,” he said.
There’s no way to ever appreciate what Phil did in any adequate way. Knowing he lives alone, Stacey later thought of taking over a gift card from El Patron (we couldn’t ever make it enough) with a note saying, “You were our hero.”
It was all we could think of to do.
Heroes are all around us, most of them by just being there. We just need to notice.
Source: Freepik.com