No rest for the wicked, no peace for the good

This week has proved a maxim to me once again that I have held as my personal motto for many, many years.

“No rest for the wicked, no peace for the good.”

I let others decide for themselves their particular feelings on where I fall on that particular divide, since I claim to be neither.

I have experienced a lot of pain over the years, usually as a bystander as others had to go through the depths of loss that I shall never fully imagine. I have been on the sidelines, camera in hand and rushing as close as I can to crime scenes to capture moments that are horrible. I have consoled those who have lost everything in fires. I have watched as bodies are carted away from mangled wrecks. I have flown over devastation of tornadoes and seen the sweeping hand of nature’s fury wipe away lives.

Along the way, I have lost friends and family too. I have felt pain personally, and through that still asked to step up and be the version of Kevin you seek out when you want to know what is going on. When tragedy strikes even in my own circle, I’m still the guy taking phone calls and reporting back. I don’t know who else I could be.

You read, and watch, and share. It is appreciated in a way, because as it was rightly pointed out to me during the last 36 hours, I make my living in part by reporting tragedy.

Make no mistake about it: I do not enjoy this at all. Every body found, every time a child is injured, or when people go missing… every serious incident I have to report on, I have internalized and felt the pain. The weight of it is heavy. I try at times to take it with a grain of salt, but it is not easy being raised among people who have instilled in me a need to care and be helpful.

I know this is a role I chose for myself long ago, and I don’t blame or pretend that I’m some kind of martyr for being the way I am.

Then tragedy hits home, and you realize that emotionally only once you are in the middle of what has happened to you and your family. It changes perspectives and previous notions of who a person was, and then you realize the awful void left behind by the sudden loss of people you love.

Then you see how others outside of the situation react to what is happening, and you don’t really get it unless you’ve seen what I have seen. Felt what I have felt.

You don’t understand the true depth of grief until you see people wailing. The complete physical manifestation of heartbreak. Breakdowns from loss that are almost too hard to bear.

I cry – rarely – and usually in moments of high emotion or intense physical pain, such as when at seven years old I nearly chopped off my left pointer finger. But I find myself, even now, in the depths of family tragedy ready to let out the range of emotions I’m feeling right now.

I want to scream into a pillow. I want to break things into small pieces with a baseball bat. I breathe but feel still as if the air has been sucked out of the room. I float around aimlessly more than usual without focusing on any task in particular but that of trying to tidy up and keep things on an even keel.

I have no clue what to do with what I’m feeling. Maybe this is what is meant by feeling hollow.

Instead of being overwhelmed, I push it down and type the news. Because in the end all the empty platitudes I can offer to others mean nothing to me right now. I know I can do this one thing even in the view of the darkness we face.

Which is why I believe the motto further above. There is no rest for the wicked, nor peace for the good.