You're Not Alone

Last Monday was anything but a routine day in our Uturn community.  In the middle of the afternoon I received a phone call from one of our tenants at our apartment building on 5th St.  He wanted to let me know that there was a significant incident ("Some really f***ed up s**t has gone down...") involving another tenant who lived at the building but wasn't a part of the Uturn program.  The events were documented in the media: a 51 year old man was violently assaulted by his former common-law spouse and died.

What happened to our tenants was much more involved.  Two of our tenants and two of their friends were upstairs in an apartment when they heard some shouting and a few minutes later they heard someone calling for help.  They ran down to find Bradley cornered by a women wielding a large knife and she started stabbing him.  The four young men tried to call her off, tried to intervene but she held them at bay.  One of our tenants called 911 and the police and ambulance response was lightning fast, about two minutes the guys thought.  In that time, Bradley was partially conscious and our young tenants and their friends talked to him saying, "You're going to be ok.  Hang in there.  We're here.  Stay with us.  Can you look at us?"  The entire time they were doing what they could the woman stood between them and Bradley with the knife, keeping anyone from coming in contact with him.

I debriefed with the guys and a couple of their friends later that evening after they were finished with the police over pizza.  Pizza is a wonderful common denominator.  It's as pastoral as anything I know. As they told their stories I commented on how proud I was of them, of what they did was nothing short of heroic and the fact that they stayed with Bradley as he died was very, very significant.

I remember (as we all do) when the reservist was shot and killed at the National War Memorial on Ottawa Hill. After he was shot one of the people who came to his side was a nurse who had been involved in palliative care during her career.  In a newspaper article she reported that she talked to the young soldier, telling him that he was loved, that he was a brave man and that he wasn't alone, that his family was very proud of him.  In the article she remarked that when people die they should know that they are loved and cared for and not alone.

I recalled that article when I listened to our youth tell their stories.  They all said that they wished they had done more, wished they had gone down to see what the problem was when they first heard yelling.  That's the trauma talking.  If only...

We focused on what they did do, what they were able to offer Bradley which was the possibility of not being alone with his attacker when he died.  They offered themselves, making themselves tremendously vulnerable both physically and emotionally.

Our youth went from talking about what to do that afternoon to being in the middle of a murder scene, to being with a man as he died and they stayed with it until professionals arrived.

Bradley wasn't alone when he died and our youth made sure of that.