On March 30, 2023 my life  as I knew it fell apart. While driving all four of my precious children and my nephew, my mother was involved in a head on collision from which she did not survive. My 13 month old baby followed her into eternity the next day. As a way to make something positive out of of unimaginable tragedy we began to visit the first responders who were involved that day. We met multiple Air Evac Flight Crews, a state trooper, Lexington Police Chief, Killen Police Chief, and Lauderdale County Deputies. We brought a few thank you gifts but mostly we wanted them to see that their work matters. I had four children in that car and I went home with three, but that was three I still had because of first responders.

Shortly before I was set to return to work I was contacted by a friend who said the dispatchers would like to meet the kids. I called a supervisor to set it up and they said they would get back with me. A week or so later George calls to tell me, the mother who lost her son, the daughter who lost her mother, that my request was denied because they “had no desire to relive that day”. There was no “I’m sorry for your loss”, nothing. I felt hurt, minimized, and disregarded.

I chose to say nothing at first until dispatchers from Lifeguard started reaching out to me to assure me they had never been consulted. I even learned that he overstepped his own duties and these dispatchers that he was denying and lying about didn’t even report to him.

Due to that fact, when their supervisor returned from medical leave she said she would be glad for the visit. We had it today and I believe everyone had a great time and for most it was probably even a healing experience. Meanwhile, under the leadership of George, we have not met 911 dispatchers, and I’m still waiting to hear what could possibly encourage him to be so cruel to a grieving mother and daughter he has never met. No one seems to want to answer that. All I hear is that he is “untouchable” and it would seem that the people I have heard who do have the power to fire him, seem content to let him continue to treat people as if they don’t matter, as if they didn’t just lose not one, but two people, just weeks from Mother’s Day. As if a mother’s grief doesn’t matter, though i just lost a mother with a heart of gold, and the most perfect of baby boys. I continue to ask why- but since I can’t get an answer, I believe anyone that cruel should not be in a position to encounter those in pain- because the last thing we need is to suffer more. 

Update: After a month, George Grabryan finally contacted me to set up a meeting with him. When I told him I could but I may have to bring my children he said, “ohhhh ok! How many kids do you have?”

What is the hardest question to ask a mother who just lost a child? How many kids do you have? Is he just trying to be cruel or does he really care so little that he couldn’t even learn the smallest of details about the worst day of my life- the one HE doesn’t want to relive. How did four life flights, carrying five pediatric patients, take off from your jurisdiction and you don’t know that the mother you told you didn’t want to relive HER day had four children up there in the sky, placed in four different hospital rooms, one that never woke up, and only three that she got to take home. I’m sorry the worst day of my life was so hard on you Mr. Grabryan, that you can’t subtract that my Tahoe arrived at Vanderbilt with four car seats- and went home with three and one quietly tucked in the trunk.