My blood runs blue …….

I will confess that I intended to start this morning out with a rant.

I wanted to shout to the world what a bad decision the CBS network brass made to end one of their best programs ever.

We lost Blue Bloods as of last Friday evening after 14 years, and it was like losing an old friend. Several, actually.

Especially for those of us who’ve spent most of our lives in ‘police families’, who’ve lived with and lost loved ones we know dedicated their lives to serve and protect.

My father was a career law enforcement officer. He believed in what he did and he knew, despite so many obstacles over time, that it was a job somebody needed to do and he was up to the task.

He raised and provided for a family in spite of those night shifts and extra hours and cold, lonely nights, and those of us in that family appreciated it every single day.

Ultimately, I wore a badge myself for a while and experienced some of what my daddy had to deal with day in and day out, and I developed a better understanding of what “being on the job” was all about.

That Friday night show with Frank Reagan and his family around the Sunday dinner table was titled “end of tour,” and those of us who’ve seen friends and relatives carry their duty to the end know exactly what that means.

It’s a finality so very much pronounced and it hits you right in the heart.

That’s what CBS discarded on December 13, a Friday the 13th those of us who loved the show won’t forget.

I’d seen all the hoopla about it, how the cast and crew hoped that the CBS execs would come to their senses and let the show keep running, how most of them even took pay cuts to help save a program that, honestly, wasn’t faltering at all.

A network honcho was quoted as saying that, basically, the program “had been on long enough,” whatever that means.

Those of us who connected with Frank and Erin and Danny and Jamie and Eddy and Joe and Henry and Abigail and Baez kind of knew, like they did, that in the eyes of corporate lackeys we’re all expendable, I guess.

It’s a shame that we live in a world like that, but it’s basically true.

Maybe at some point we’ll wake up and find that it’s been a dream and that everything’s going to be okay.

Or not.

A whole bunch of us would like to think that another savvy network will pick the show up and carry on, like they’ve done to lesser programs over time.

Whatever happens will happen and life will go on.

But there’ll be something missing, and that’s just plain sad.

“No matter the hardship or the loss, this family does not stand down. Ever,” Frank once said at the dinner table.

Yeah, yeah, I know it was Tom Selleck the actor speaking those words, but for all those years the actors who brought us the Reagan family and friends will tell? you that, over that time, they became family.

And we appreciate the fact that they shared that sentiment with the rest of us.

God bless ‘em and keep them all safe.

Thanks for what you gave us, guys.