There is nothing I can write about safety that has not already been written.
Except the truth….
I read constantly what the cost of an accident is to a company. You read what someone who can write an article says about the cost of an accident to someone’s home life. But it’s just written to make you think safer.
No one can put a pencil to paper and tell you the cost of an accident.
Everything changes… is the true cost of an accident.
The wives, every one of them, has a new mindset. Every wife sees the world differently then they did the morning before the accident. They treat everyone around them differently. The people that tell the wife, “We have your back”, at some point go back to their own lives. The phone stops ringing, the veil of darkness drops like a curtain that never raises back up.
Daughters lose their Superman. The path Thru life becomes unsure steps, choices become harder. Bad decisions follow worse decisions. The one person who protected them is gone; the wall of safety no longer exists. Home is where pain lives. The relationship with mom and siblings becomes a broken glass on the kitchen floor.
You cannot count or even estimate the cost of the accident.
The sons follow in dads’ footsteps, always trying to prove something that hides at the top of the next pole. Or they fall thru the crack in the floor, lost, bitter, heart full of distrust and hate. No one ever spends time talking to him, just talking.
Families fracture, moms try to move forward but no one can be who the injured or deceased lineman was. They can’t ever be the dad they are trying to replace.
The cost of the accident cannot be measured at home.
The cost carries thru generations, when the family that has been destroyed by the accident have all passed away that accident still lives….
I don’t believe in posters, in speakers, in bosses. That preach safety.
I believe in you
Thomas Palmer - Lineman