The families of police officers are no strangers to worry. They know that during any shift, their loved one could very well come into harm’s way. But it’s not always easy to explain that to a child.
Shannon Pisarek shared her story of a FaceTime call back in 2016 between her 9-year-old son, Eddie, and her husband, Ed.
Ed Pisarek, a police officer, was on duty one night when he got a call from his son.
Eddie needed his father to help him find a certain show on television. But their call quickly turned much more serious than either of them expected.
Ed was alerted via radio that there was an armed shooter nearby. With sirens blaring in the background, he told his son that he needed to go and would call back when he could. Then he hung up, leaving Eddie and his mother terrified.
Shannon realized that it was the first time her son had ever been afraid for his father’s life.
She said she didn’t know what to do to help him. Eddie began to cry and said he was afraid for his father.
“I tried to tell him that this is what Daddy deals with every night, that Daddy always chases bad guys, but doesn’t Daddy always come home?” Shannon wrote in a Facebook post. “But the more I tried to console him, I realized that I had nothing to say to ACTUALLY make him feel better. I realized that it is scary, and that it is real life. And that as the family of a police officer, this is what we have to feel. This is our normal.”
Things quickly spiraled out of control as Eddie’s two sisters came in and heard the news.
Their mother desperately tried to comfort them, but before she knew it, all three children were sobbing in terror and begging her to let their father come home.
“All I could think to say was, ‘You guys know Daddy is Superman,’” Shannon wrote. “‘Daddy always comes home.’”
She tried to comfort her terrified kids, but she was feeling terrified herself. Then, her son’s iPhone received a call. When they answered, all of them were crying, to the surprise of Ed.
Shannon said the sight of his family crying over him made her husband start to laugh.
When they explained the situation, Ed had a simple answer.
“You guys know daddy is Superman,” he said. “I always come home.”
Shannon said that their own story prompted her to think about the families of other police officers, too, and remember that while their parents are making sacrifices, they are worrying.
“They’re really just out there trying to do the right thing and come home every night to their families who love them, and to their kids who probably also think that their daddies are Superman, too,” Shannon wrote.
Her post on Facebook garnered hundreds of responses, many of them from the spouses or children of police officers who described their own fear and worry over their loved ones.
“My dad was a cop,” wrote Facebook user Anita Cook. “I remember laying awake late at night waiting to hear him come home and the sick feeling I would get hearing a siren and being afraid it was an ambulance going for my dad because the bad guy killed him. I grew up, entered law enforcement and then married a cop. I feel for that family.”
Others also shared stories of siblings, parents, friends, spouses, and even children that they worry and pray for on a daily basis. The story also sparked a discussion of police rights and recent issues in police-civilian relations.
Some people expressed concern that police officers don’t receive the respect they deserve.
Others said they believe bad police officers cause problems for good ones. Some posters said they worried about the corruption they saw in their own local police forces and hoped for change. But the respect and gratefulness for the men and women who risk their lives were almost unanimous.
And family members have cause to worry. In 2018 alone, 143 police officers have been killed in the line of duty. Their causes of death range from gunfire to vehicle accidents and more.
The Pisarek family is thankful that their scary FaceTime call ended well and that they are still all together.
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