A Salute to Those Who Bear the Emotional Weight of Loss

Ominous is the right word, but it didn’t seem to accurately encapsulate the feeling of dread that filled my stomach when I saw the black smoke floating through the air. It was sinister in nature. The smoke did not billow and fly to the heavens. It hung over the middle of Louisville until it covered the entire city.

Like the smoke, the UPS plane crash touched every corner of the city of Louisville on Tuesday night.

Selfishly, my concerns came first. I live a mile from the airport, if that. The sound of planes from the UPS Worldport consistently echoes through my neighborhood, and on days when the air is particularly thin, my windows rattle as I work. That was my first course of action, locking in to work to share updates on the website. The grim reality of the situation did not settle in until I turned off my furnace, the most paltry form of self-sacrifice during such a dire situation.

The real sacrifice by others around the city, that’s what emptied my emotional tank and left me hallow.

It’s not an unfamiliar feeling. Ten years ago, I was in the final days of my career as a broadcast journalism student at UK. A friend asked for some help behind the camera. “Sure, no problem.” The task was significantly more emotionally taxing than I anticipated, covering the funeral of Richmond police officer Daniel Ellis, a 33-year-old father who was shot and killed while investigating an attempted robbery.

As I watched reporters from WAVE-3, WDRB, and WLKY provide around-the-clock coverage of the scene, memories from that sad day in Richmond returned. Those reporters were doing their jobs, and doing it well. I commend them, and also hurt for them. Once the initial adrenaline rush wears off, how do they feel? What’s left in the tank?

That’s nothing compared to the sacrifices made by those who ran directly toward the smoke and spent the night extinguishing the flames. They dodged debris to make sure it didn’t spread, while nurses and doctors cared for those who were nearly burned to death from the inferno.

How do they do their jobs well, then go home and sleep at night?

The last person I thought of was a politician. Like a lawyer, it’s a profession that is more commonly used as the butt of jokes, but nonetheless, it is a job. These people are real human beings. How does Andy Beshear keep doing it?

The Kentucky Governor has traveled to every single corner of the state after a significant disaster. He was inaugurated just before a worldwide pandemic. He traveled to his family’s old stomping grounds in Western Kentucky after tornadoes ripped through the region. The next year, he was one of the first on the scene following floods in Eastern Kentucky. Beshear returned a few years later to the region after devastating tornadoes blazed a path from Somerset to London. On Tuesday, he was in the state’s largest city following an unprecedented aviation disaster for the city’s largest employer.

I’m overwhelmed just by writing it all. This guy freaking lived through it all. He looked at people in the eyes after they lost their homes, their loved ones, and tried to share some reassurance.

First Responders. Politicians. Journalists. They are the connective tissue on the tertiary of these disasters, the ones who are asked to be at their best when things are at their worst. Thank you, thank you so much. When the city needs a hero, Batman isn’t walking through that door. Someone must have the strength to bear that emotional weight. We couldn’t navigate through that thick, black smoke without you.