It's late in Florida. I finally received some news about my parents just before midnight here and it wasn't fabulous. Praise God Mom and Dad are still safe and dry, staying in their trailer inside a friend's barn. I'm going on very little information, but it seems they made it back to the house today and discovered the water damage was severe. The entire first floor was submerged and the message they left on my brother's voicemail said they aren't sure if they can live there anymore. The phones are still out, save one cell phone at the Grange Hall, where a lot of the flood victims from the Boistfort Valley seem to be gathering.
I can't express how hard it is to keep this all in perspective. It's all just stuff--a house filled with things--and what really matters is that the people I love are OK. It is incredible to me that the river I played in as a child--the one that watered our garden during the dry summer months and the banks of which served as the only playground I ever knew as a little girl--has overtaken my childhood home and most probably left it uninhabitable. I think about my mom and how she must have felt when she surveyed the livingroom she had just redecorated in time for our family Christmas gathering--new furniture, paint, carpet all likely destroyed by mud and moisture. I wonder if any photo albums or my grandmothers' dishes are salvageable. I know I'll likely catch up with Mom during the next day or so, but it's a helpless feeling I have tonight, not being able to tell her that it's OK to grieve for those things because we've attached both memories and hopes for the future to them.
Again, I am so grateful for my parents' good health and the stable foundation they've created for themselves to be able to pick up and move on no matter what the fallout of all of this. I pray tonight for those who truly lost everything and have no idea where to go from here or how to get there.
For some detailed coverage of the flooding in my hometown visit www.chronline.com.
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