A detective's mother got used to it.
She got used to picking through the pile of unripe overpriced apples at the grocery store and suddenly feeling her heart pound hard and loud in her chest when she heard the sirens roar past outside into who knew what.
She got used to trying to trying to figure out that damn Google so she could get all the most helpful cleaning tips to take out sweat stains, coffee spills, gun powder residue and blood from first patrol uniforms, then suits and finally dress blues, because her kid's dry cleaning bill was getting too high.
She got used to unexpected last minute family dinner cancellations and carefully wrapping up a plate in plastic to put in the refrigerator, all the while in the back of her head some desperately ignored whispering voice wondered if this time would be the time no bone weary child wolfed it down cold hours later while standing quietly in her kitchen trying not to wake her up before heading off to another shift.
She got used to seeing the sparkling happy eyes that had once looked up to her so long ago without a true care in the world become bitterly worn and slowly darkly haunted with all its soul crushing evil weight.
She even got used to the terrible dull righteous anger she felt every time she thumbed through the crinkling shiny pages of idiot fashion magazines at the hair salon and overheard the sneering moms whose always safe kids who had always safe jobs flipping burgers, filling cereal boxes, or sitting in office cubicles badmouth her kid's job.
A detective's mother got used to all of it and more.
But what she never got used to was the pride.
That caught her sharply new every time.
And it was what made all the rest of it bearable.