Half a Lifetime of Love

From the day I first became a police officer, I was prepared to die in the line of duty at any moment. For those of us in the police force, life and death can be separated by only an instant. Sometimes, when I watched the brothers who worked cases alongside me fall, I felt the pain of losing them, but I knew this was our fate as police officers. I remember a drug-trafficking case we handled once. The gangster we arrested refused to admit who was behind him until he saw his own mother, now white-haired with age. Only then did he come to his senses and, in tears, name the man pulling the strings. As he confessed, he said, “From the day I joined the organization, I was ready to live by the knife and to fight the police to the death at any moment. But now I realize that a person can't live only for himself, because our lives don't belong to us alone. They belong to our loved ones, too.”