By: Paul S. Marchand
Some news you hope never comes.
But sometimes it does. Last night, Cathedral City lost one of our family when CCPD Ofc. Jermaine Gibson died in the line of duty.
The loss of Jermaine Gibson has opened up a void in the Department of which he was a member, but it has also opened a void in the larger city family that includes all of us who have at some time been or currently are a part of that unique and close-knit community. Losing a present or former member of the city family is hard enough. Losing somebody in the line of duty is even more difficult.
During my time of service on the City Council, our extended city family bade final farewells to any of a number of its members who had succumbed to a variety of the ailments that, in due time, must carry us all off, but never in the eight years I had the honor to serve this community, did any of us on the Council ever have to confront the sudden shock of losing one of our officers so unexpectedly. Not since 1988 -almost a generation ago- has Cathedral City lost an officer in the line; the City family has little institutional memory to help it absorb so sudden, shocking, and tragic a loss.
The very suddenness of Ofc. Gibson’s death only intensifies the blow. Usually when one of our members has been facing the end of life, our city family had had some measure of time to prepare, to make ourselves ready for the event we hoped would not come, but which we nonetheless understood had to come. But not this time; things happened too quickly.
One of the suffrages in the Great Litany in the Book of Common Prayer is that we may be delivered “from violence, battle and murder, and from dying suddenly and unprepared.” For when death comes suddenly, without opportunity for farewells, the normal order of the world seems upended, and there is no time for saying or doing what ought to be said and done -for getting ready for the departure, as it were.
There are few words any of us can say to the Gibson family -particularly to an infant son who will never grow up knowing his father- that might, as Abraham Lincoln once wrote in his famous letter to Mrs. Bixby, that “which should attempt to beguile ... from the grief of a loss so overwhelming.” Instead, as Pres. Lincoln did, we can but tender the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the community to whose service Jermaine Gibson dedicated the ultimate offering.
May his soul, and the souls of all the departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace, and may light perpetual shine upon them.
Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine.
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Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, where he served two terms on the City Council. The views expressed herein are his own, and are not intended as, and should not be construed as, legal advice.
