NORRIDGEWOCK (NEWS CENTER Maine) — The wife of Somerset County Deputy Cpl. Eugene Cole, murdered last week in Norridgewock, took to social media Monday writing, "I am not a victim … I am not a widow," saying, with the help of family and friends, she would get through it.
A fallen officer's wife who understands the grief will no doubt help Sheryl Cole move through her grief.
Kate Braestrup lost her husband, a Maine state trooper, in April 1996. He was killed in the line of duty. She has since channeled that grief into her current job: chaplain of the Maine Warden Service.
"Maine is small, so people know, they show up, they come to you, they support you," Braestrup said. "It’s really extraordinary, and that’s, that was my experience and that really helped. That was the sustaining experience."
Braestrup was 32 years old with four young children when Trooper Drew Griffith was killed in an accident on his way to work. Twenty-two years later, she still wears a black band of remembrance.
Through her own grief, she found her purpose: she became a chaplain.
"It was actually why I went into the ministry, was that the experience of loss and the experience of being loved so abundantly that you didn’t know what to do with all of it, those two experiences were locked together," she said.
Braestrup served as keynote speaker at Hospice of Southern Maine’s "Making Space for Grief in Our Lives" conference held at the University of Southern Maine.
"This week, there is a lot of grief in my workplace, grief in the law enforcement community," she said. "It is a privilege to be there with it."
Braestrup shared Cpl. Cole’s story, and the mountain of grief facing his family and police officers who worked with him, and those who had to notify his family. Trust, she said, is crucial.
"I use that language a lot and I tell them you have to trust mourners to know how to grieve, and whatever it is they do after you give them that news, that’s what they need to do," she said. "And all you have to do is be there."
She said love and support, coupled with a chaplain’s guidance, will help Cole's family get through the grief of losing him.
"That’s what the ministry is about is bringing love into those situations so that you're going to have the loss, you're going to remember the loss," Braestrup said. "It's going to be, it's gonna hurt and you will have the love. You can't subtract pain, you add love, and that's all we've got and it's enough."
Braestrup said the Warden Service lives by this rule of thumb, something she believes it will help guide the grief of losing the first Maine law enforcement member to murder in 30 years.
"We can’t subtract grief, but we can add more love," she said. "As Gene Cole’s family, his comrades, his friends walk through the valley of the shadow of death, they don’t have to fear evil; they will not be alone."
Braestrup said she knows that because she lived it, and she’s poured that experience into an inspiring novel: Here if You Need Me. She has written four other books — her most recent was Anchors and Flares.
Braestrup will be at Cole's funeral Monday representing the Maine Warden Service. She'll likely give Sheryl Cole some heartfelt advice.