“This was my life”

It is hard to fathom the destruction that the floods of Florence left behind. Yesterday, we traveled one of the roads that has just been reopened.  All along the way, debris is piled high.  And it is this way all over our county.

Bulldozers and dump trucks will come and pick it all up at some point but almost two months later, folks are still cleaning up.  We drive along and see houses all open, windows up and doors wide open.  People are trying to dry things out.  And there is no need to lock anything up since there is nothing left to protect.  A favorite restaurant is now a pile of rubble. The owner and all his employees have lost their livelihood and they won’t get it back.  

A small trailer park looks like a ghost town, with vacant windows and doors, all dark and smelly.  The people who lived there will have to try to go back.  I can’t imagine moving back into a trailer that was filled with filthy water.  But they likely still owe on the trailers, and they probably have nowhere else to go.

All kinds of stuff is piled up by the road:  refrigerators, sofas, family Christmas ornaments, pink insulation, photograph albums, baby clothes, furniture passed down for generations.  And it is all ruined.  

Friends told me of one woman standing in her front yard.  She pointed to the shell of her house and said “That was my house.” But then she looked at the pile of stuff out by the road and said, “That was my life.”

It is heartbreaking.