The funeral for Ryan Russell, Toronto police office, was held in Toronto yesterday and was it was an incredibly moving event of unparalleled magnitude. It was many hours long, but we watched where we could in between various lessons.
The rituals behind police funerals explained - The Globe and Mail
Watch
In the line of duty on CBC, Connect with Mark Kelly
Kelley: "... the officers I rode with tried to fit themselves into Sgt Russell's story. As if his death were a kind of mirror to stare in on the dangers of the job."
Unidentified police officer: "It's one of those things that allows you to put your life and your career in perspective. You realize that these things can happen very quickly. It is a very sobering moment to come in contact with your own mortality. I have a young family as well so you can easily put yourself in his circumstances. It gives you an opportunity to see the easily lets you see the devestation left behind when you come across one of these senseless acts."
Kelley: "The death of an officer brings it to the forefront for you, but at the same time, it's always there. You don't put it aside. You don't ignore it. You know that the job has inherent dangers to it." [unidentified police officer]
Interview with David Kessler, renowned grief specialist
Kelley: Why do displays of grief need to be so public?
Kessler: "From early times, there is something beyond our explanation that we've seen over and over: that grief must be witnessed. We've seen that publicly as well as our own families. There's certain way when death occurrs, we need to make people know this death mattered because this life mattered. When it's a police officer, we want to really understand who it is we lost who was trying to protect us in the line of duty."
Kelley: Has grief lost scale? Is this the expectation now?
Kessler: "Our convention centres become our town halls in a lot of ways. And we don't go to the corner policeman anymore and thank him for keeping our neighbourhoods safe for us and our children. So what we end up doing is that we end up using these moments to show our gratitude, and to kind of get in touch with our respect for the police, our respect for human life, the loss that we feel privately and publicly, and this person becomes symbolic for that."
Kelley: We don't have funerals like this for firefighters and soldiers. Have big public displays like this become part of the police culture?
Kessler: "Sometimes it's just how things line up. that sort of touches the public or touches their heart. A police officer, tragic, a young child. Those kind of events. Police officers are symbolic. They are the archetype of our protectors, which equates to our fathers, our brothers. This could have been our father, our brother. Did it have to happen this way? So it's our way of examining a tragic situation that's not really in our family, which makes it a little more comfortable, sometimes to let these emotions out."
Kelley: Have the size of the ceremony and the use of the word "hero" got too big for its own good? Does this delegitimize a good man?
Kessler: "... I think if anything there is a message here. And I know a number of officers and people on the street have said it, to take all these huge feelings we have and just give them to our kids in simple ways or to our neighbour or to the police officer on the corner, rather than to keep it all inside and then throw it all out on one person and they become our ultimate hero because really it is the people all around us in everyday who are the true heros. Ryan was just clearly an example of what happens everyday in every city around Canada, US and continents around the world.""
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