My husband Michael was an EMT with the Charlotte Fire Department for nineteen years. We met in 1992 at a barbecue at my brother’s house — he was friends with my brother from high school — and we were married fourteen months later, in May of 1993. We had one son, Jacob, born in 1995.
Michael was the kind of man who kept his boots by the door and answered the phone even on days he was supposed to be resting. Wrecks on I-85, house fires, heart attacks, calls nobody wants to talk about after. He carried a lot of it quietly. Too quietly sometimes.
After September 11, something changed in him. He watched those men run into the towers and he said more than once, “That’s the job. You go when people need you.” He did not say it like a hero. He said it like it was just the truth.
Michael passed before he got to see Jacob become a firefighter too. Jacob is thirty now. He has two children of his own — Michael, who is four, and Sarah, who is two. Sometimes when I see him in uniform, I have to look away for a second because he stands just like his father did.
I have lived in North Carolina my entire life. So did Michael. So has Jacob. Three generations now. This hex is for Michael, for the years he gave to strangers, for the family he left behind, and for the country he believed was still worth serving, even on its worst days.