The passengers fell silent, waiting for the pronouncement.
"Kumbayaaaaa . . .," he sang, painfully off-key.
Everyone roared with laughter.
"Keep it up and your name will be on that wall next year!" cracked some member of the police brass in a Southern drawl.
When an officer is killed on duty, the survivors are promised that they and their loved ones will never be forgotten.
City officials, the police force, friends, and neighbors all keep that promise, holding formal memorial ceremonies, dedicating plaques, performing tributes in schools, and organizing fund-raising runs and bike rides and dinners.
The result, survivors say, is a mixed blessing.
The generosity, kindness, and respect they're shown humble them, they say, and make their loss easier to bear. But the constant attention also becomes an obligation, and closure is all the more elusive.
Earnest ceremonies seem almost designed to elicit tears. "If they want to make me cry, it isn't hard to do," said one survivor who didn't want to be named for fear of sounding ungrateful. "But haven't we cried enough?"
Gratitude often competes with guilt as families have to choose which events to attend and which to decline.
"I almost didn't go to this one," Judy Cassidy said recently of an assembly that schoolchildren had prepared in honor of her husband. Philadelphia Officer Chuck Cassidy died Nov. 1, 2007, after he was shot in the head during an attempted robbery at a Dunkin' Donuts. "The kids put so much work into this. I'm so glad I went."
Even small events, she said, require thought, planning, and care, so she feels terrible any time she has to say no to an invitation.
"You can't go to everything," she said. But none of the events are trivial enough to pass up. "I've come to realize everything is big."
A public affair
