RIP PC Rathband
Around the web on blogs, newsites, twitter etc. there is an outpouring of tributes to Davy Jones of The Monkees who sadly passed away this week. However sad his parting, and really 66 was too young, spare a thought for PC David Rathband who also was found dead this week. PC Rathband is the man who was shot in the face and blinded by Raul Moat. (Sad isn't it that the person who committed the crime against him is a more known name than the man left so badly injured.)
From reading the reports it looks like PC Rathband took his own life in some way. How very very sad. I read things like that and I instantly feel so sad. This guy went to work one day and just because he was a policeman in the wrong place at the wrong time ended up horrendously injured. Since his injury he had set up a charity to help serviceman like himself injured in the line of duty. However there are documented interviews with him where he stated that he was frustrated by the blindness and having to relearn to live again. He was angry about losing his job through his injury etc. Sadly he had parted from his wife late last year as well - you can only speculate whether that was directly or indirectly related to his injuries - and I mean much more than the physical scars he had to bare.
I cannot begin to get close to the trauma PC Rathband went through both initially with the injury and then subsequently trying to come to terms with his lifelong disability due to a single act by a very dangerous and callous individual. How would I cope if I lost a limb or two, my eyesight or some other significant long term injury like that? To be honest I have no answer - I don't know. It is easy to say you should embrace the life you have and be grateful for that and not resentful for the injury and incident that caused it, easy to say - but just think of you having to say that face to face with someone like PC Rathband ... exactly easy to say when not in that situation or face to face with it.
Makes me stop and think about how bloody good really my life is, how lucky I am not to have been hit by the bloody bus driver who clearly wasn't looking as I crossed at the pedestrian crossing this morning etc. Every day we take risks in our lives, some more than others poor PC Rathband seems to have had to pay far too higher price for his misfortune to my mind.
RIP PC Rathband.
From reading the reports it looks like PC Rathband took his own life in some way. How very very sad. I read things like that and I instantly feel so sad. This guy went to work one day and just because he was a policeman in the wrong place at the wrong time ended up horrendously injured. Since his injury he had set up a charity to help serviceman like himself injured in the line of duty. However there are documented interviews with him where he stated that he was frustrated by the blindness and having to relearn to live again. He was angry about losing his job through his injury etc. Sadly he had parted from his wife late last year as well - you can only speculate whether that was directly or indirectly related to his injuries - and I mean much more than the physical scars he had to bare.
I cannot begin to get close to the trauma PC Rathband went through both initially with the injury and then subsequently trying to come to terms with his lifelong disability due to a single act by a very dangerous and callous individual. How would I cope if I lost a limb or two, my eyesight or some other significant long term injury like that? To be honest I have no answer - I don't know. It is easy to say you should embrace the life you have and be grateful for that and not resentful for the injury and incident that caused it, easy to say - but just think of you having to say that face to face with someone like PC Rathband ... exactly easy to say when not in that situation or face to face with it.
Makes me stop and think about how bloody good really my life is, how lucky I am not to have been hit by the bloody bus driver who clearly wasn't looking as I crossed at the pedestrian crossing this morning etc. Every day we take risks in our lives, some more than others poor PC Rathband seems to have had to pay far too higher price for his misfortune to my mind.
RIP PC Rathband.
Its a real shame and trully sad. Our thoughts are with his family. RIP PC Rathband.
ReplyDeleteBoth stories are sad and incomparable, really, but the PC Rathband story goes to remind us that most people who are suddenly and horribly disabled struggle terribly with the psychological impact. There's almost a pressure to 'be brave and keep smiling' and though a noteworthy minority seem to achieve this - in public anyway - a whole lot more end up devastated.
ReplyDeleteI hope the morons who started those stupid 'Raoul Moat You Legend' pages on Facebook are ashamed of themselves today. But they're probably not.
I heard about that on the news tonight. So very sad. How must he have been feeling?
ReplyDeleteAnd Davy Jones too, a favourite of my teenage years.
I'm a bit behind the times here . . . my "blogs that I read update" thingy has only just alerted me to your Heartsong post. It's done this before. Anyway so I've only just listened to it . . . Made my fingers sore just watching. I could never do bar chords. Ouch. Nice bit of guitar playing. Now I'll go and catch up.
ReplyDeleteI can not even begin to imagine the horror of him trying to cope with never being able to see again. Him, and his entire family must have been, and are going through an absolute hell. And why? No reason, just some seriously fucked-up sociopath happened to be passing by his way, that day. Yes, rest in peace, P.C. Rathband, the world grieves at your loss.
ReplyDeleteAs has been said, Moat has now carried on killing, from the grave.
ReplyDeleteThe celebration of Moat as some sort of individualist anti-authoritarian hero was one of the most odious episodes in Britain for several years, a distillation of a corrupted maleness, concentrated to a destructive violence and selfishness.
I am constantly aware of my own mortality and how fragile is the thread which supports us all. I have started drawing up my will, and have told Fiona that if her Mum's not around she's to be my Executor. Clearly I hope that she won't perform those duties for several decades. But the calm that making such plans gives is quite something.