That rendezvous

I Have a Rendezvous with Death

                                             Alan Seeger, 1888 - 1916

I have a rendezvous with Death   
At some disputed barricade,   
When Spring comes back with rustling shade   
And apple-blossoms fill the air—   
I have a rendezvous with Death
When Spring brings back blue days and fair.   
   
It may be he shall take my hand   
And lead me into his dark land   
And close my eyes and quench my breath—   
It may be I shall pass him still.
I have a rendezvous with Death   
On some scarred slope of battered hill,   
When Spring comes round again this year   
And the first meadow-flowers appear.   
   
God knows ‘twere better to be deep 
Pillowed in silk and scented down,   
Where love throbs out in blissful sleep,   
Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,   
Where hushed awakenings are dear...   
But I’ve a rendezvous with Death
At midnight in some flaming town,   
When Spring trips north again this year,   
And I to my pledged word am true,   
I shall not fail that rendezvous.


In the summer of 2014, two young women from Baltimore set off on paths of life on which they had wanted to journey for a long time.

One of them is the daughter of friends of ours, who was graduated from high school that summer and was honored by admission to the US Naval Academy. The Navy can afford to be quite selective, and this is where they get most of their officers, so getting the appointment to Annapolis is quite an honor in and of itself. And four years later, after the rigors of academic life and the physical training, she has a degree in Information Technology and ensign's bars. This fall, she will go to Nuclear Power School in Charleston SC, and then will be aboard a nuclear submarine as a junior officer. Her career is off to a spectacular start, and who says she won't be an Admiral one day?

That summer of 2014 saw another young woman from our area start a new venture as well. She had already attained a degree from Towson University, and began a career in law enforcement by being admitted to the Baltimore County Police Academy. Our local police can afford to choose the best among the hundreds of applications they receive for each class as well. Some people are rejected for not coming up to the physical standards required, some for falling short of the other requirements such as having a clean criminal record, having the wrong emotional profile, or any number of reasons. No screening process is perfect, but the county makes every effort before spending thousands of dollars training a person and then giving them a gun, and a badge, and the power to enforce laws, that the person is top notch.

This woman finished the Academy and began her career at the Essex precinct, before transferring to Parkville after several years. She was about to turn thirty this past weekend, and would have celebrated her fourth anniversary on the force in July, but as you have surmised, I am speaking of the valiant officer killed on duty last week by the getaway driver of a group of house burglars.

Her death cast a pall over our community like few I can remember. She was the eleventh county officer killed in the line of duty, and the first female, and yet there was something ever sadder about it than that. Her life and her career had just begun before being cut off in the very early bloom.

Her funeral was held on Friday last, with thousands in attendance from the family she loved, the community she served, and her fellow police from agencies all over the country.

I could not help but be struck by the juxtaposition in time. At the same moment that, down the road in Annapolis, the president of the United States addressed the graduates of the Naval Academy and the newly-minted officers tossed their hats in the air in gleeful jubilation as the Blue Angels flew overhead, news helicopters flew overhead here in Baltimore County, covering a police funeral and the procession from the church to the Garden of Heroes at Dulaney Valley Memorial Gardens.

The two women never met and yet their careers and lives coincided. My happiness for the one cannot be lessened; my sadness for the other cannot be healed soon, or easily. For the first, I pray that her career holds her safe always and continues to bring credit to her and her family. For the second, her legacy lives on; hundreds of others will apply for spaces in the academy this year as always. Some other officer will take her place on her shift, in her patrol car.

I feel that she will protect him or her, from her new post in Heaven.