Why I Started Writing

By James S. Wynecoop

For nearly 45 years, I worked in law enforcement, firefighting, and emergency medical services. Those jobs became more than careers. They became part of who I was. When you spend that many years responding to emergencies, your body and mind learn to stay ready. The adrenaline rush is always sitting there on idle, even when you are off duty. A phone ringing late at night, a car slowing near your house, or the sound of a siren in the distance can instantly bring that feeling back.

During those years, I witnessed death at every age. I saw people lose their lives suddenly, sometimes violently, and sometimes after a long struggle. I also witnessed the beginning of life and watched children take their first breaths. I saw both ends of life, sometimes during the same shift, and each experience left something behind in me.

There were times when I had to stand in front of a family and tell them someone they loved was not coming home. After the words were spoken, there was often nothing left to do but remain there and hold them while their world fell apart. There is no training that can fully prepare a person for that. You learn how to deliver the message, but nobody teaches you what to do with the pain you carry away afterward.

There was also the constant feeling of being hated simply for doing the job. People did not always see the person behind the badge. They did not see the husband, father, friend, or neighbor. They saw the uniform and everything they believed it represented. One officer’s actions somewhere else could change how an entire community treated every officer. You learned to accept the anger, the insults, and the suspicion, but accepting it did not mean it never hurt.

At home, I tried to keep a balance between the badge and my family. That balance was not always easy. The job did not stay at the station when the shift ended. It followed me home in my thoughts, my silence, my reactions, and sometimes my inability to explain what I had seen. My family lived with the job too, even though they were not the ones wearing the uniform.

Then retirement came.

For years, I had looked forward to the day when the radio would no longer control my life. I thought retirement would bring peace, freedom, and time to finally relax. Instead, I found myself struggling with depression and a deep feeling of abandonment. The brothers and sisters I had worked beside continued with their lives and their careers. The calls stopped. The daily conversations disappeared. The uniform was put away, and it sometimes felt as though the person who had worn it had disappeared too.

I had spent most of my life being needed. Suddenly, nobody was calling.

That was when I started writing.

At first, I wrote only for myself. I needed a reminder of who I was before the uniform, who I became while wearing it, and who I might still be afterward. I began writing about my childhood, the places and people that shaped me, and the events that eventually led me into law enforcement. Then I wrote about the start of my career, how I felt as a young officer, what I witnessed, what I learned, and what the work slowly took from me.

The more I wrote, the more memories returned. Some were good. Some were painful. Some had been buried for years because there had never been time to deal with them. In emergency work, you move from one call to the next. You do not always have time to think about what happened. You clear the scene, answer the radio, and go on to the next person who needs help.

Writing finally gave me time to stop.

It allowed me to look back at the lives I had touched and the people who had touched mine. It helped me understand that the job was only part of my story, even though for many years it had felt like the entire story. It also helped me face what happens when the career ends, the radio goes silent, and the person behind the badge must learn how to live without it.

I did not start writing because I believed I was a great writer. I started writing because I needed to remember. I needed to understand. I needed a place to put the thoughts, memories, sadness, pride, anger, and questions that had followed me into retirement.

Somewhere along the way, writing became more than a reminder of who I was. It became a way of discovering who I still am.

That is why I started writing