Corporal Matthew “Ty” Snook
When I cried at the Delaware Division of Motor Vehicles last week, it wasn’t because the line was so long and the agency was staffed with sloths, but a far deeper reason. I even cried when I had to make the appointment to visit the DMV. The building was closed from December 23rd until March 1st and is now only open by appointment because, in late December, a shooter went in there and killed a young police officer.
The victim, Delaware State Police Corporal Matthew “Ty” Snook, was shot in the back. According to news reports, he pushed a DMV employee out of harm’s way and advised people to run before being struck again by the gunman.
This was the same cop who called me about the letter I had sent to the gynecologist who removed healthy tissue from my body without consent. That predator in a white coat had called the cops because he “felt threatened” by my writing. During Corporal Snook’s call with me, the cop listened attentively and believed me at a time when every institution protected my abuser. He even complimented the two-faced cartoon I had made of the duplicitous practitioner, saying, “It’s actually pretty good!” I felt his solidarity over the phone. So I feel sad when I think about him being in an ambush shooting, and that his wife and a baby have to go on without him.
Losing someone who showed us real recognition can be hard. When a person responded with respect and belief when it was important, the relationship carries meaning even if it was brief. When that person is suddenly killed, the nervous system registers not just the loss of a life, but the loss of a point of safety and acknowledgment that had become part of the environment. This is why the sadness can come up strongly when visiting a place associated with them, like the DMV building.
Grief is the body and mind registering the existence of a relationship and the absence of the person who held that place in the relational field. Our sense of steadiness is partly built through these connections, and when one disappears abruptly, the system reorganizes around that absence. My sadness for his wife and child also reflects how our nervous systems are oriented toward the well-being of others in our group; when violent death breaks those bonds, the mind naturally keeps returning to those tied to his life.
It helps to deliberately acknowledge the safe connection, remembering the specific moment when he listened and took me seriously. The fact that someone in a position of authority responded with basic decency and belief is a vital part of my story that does not disappear because he died. Grief settles more gradually when it has somewhere to go in relationship, such as sharing the story of what they did that mattered. This keeps the relational thread present, allowing the nervous system to hold both things at once: the reality that he is gone and the reality that the interaction was real and meaningful. The sadness, often triggered by places connected with the loss, simply means the relationship mattered.
After the DMV process, I felt the need to do something physical with my feelings, so I bought summer-blooming flower bulbs. Planting flowers has historically been a way for me to honor the memory of my shipmate friend, Ed, and I believe planting them in memory of my connection with Matthew Snook will bring a similar kind of healing.
Planting the bulbs is a grounded way to give the grief somewhere to live, acknowledging the relationship instead of trying to push the grief aside. When someone stood with me in a moment when nearly everyone else in power closed ranks, that interaction carries weight, and the mind keeps returning to that gap because the point of support mattered. The act of planting also places my body in contact with the environment, moving the grief through action, which helps the nervous system settle because it turns loss into something relational and visible.
Creating this living marker preserves the fact that someone in a position of authority chose to listen when others protected the abuser. Each season the flowers appear, the memory of that moment of recognition can surface alongside them. The loss will soon carry the image of something growing because of the respect he showed me, allowing the grief to sit alongside the acknowledgment that the brief connection left an important mark.
