The stench of grief, loss and shock are everywhere
permeating the area with smells of red tide and salt water
that had crept into places that were never meant to know water in that way.
Private areas of people’s lives
brutally exposed on their front lawns.
Furniture strewn about, floorboards, kitchen cabinets,
waterlogged stuffed animals
a piano that still had songs left in it.
You can see where the water line came up –
a line that was never meant to be formed
on such a beautiful white linen chair.
My neighbor said the water came to their front door
and then to the back –
like an unwanted intruder just as the sun had set
and darkness was creeping in.
They ran around trying to save anything they could
but it was too late.
Water pushed through the walls,
dogs on the couch, pure panic.
Time ran out. We never thought it could happen to us.
We never thought it could happen to us.
The trees speak of a terrible wind
with gusts of up to 100mph.
Uprooted and laying on their sides
Just like many of us are feeling.
The trees weren’t prepared for this;
neither were the people.
We had dodged several bullets in the past
and thought the shield, the protection would continue.
“Shields up” is a common term on weatherboards for Tampa Bay
when there is a threat of a hurricane.
But the shield disappeared, leaving us vulnerable
And two storms hit
one that brought surge, the other wind.
These streets that I returned to after evacuating,
had memories of my childhood woven through them.
They had once felt like paradise
but now looked like they had been overtaken by some beast with no boundaries.
The stressed looks on people’s faces as they dealt with the mess
on their property –
The looks that said, I never thought this would be me,
I never thought this would be me.
The words that I heard continuously repeating on a loop ….
I lost everything, I lost everything, I lost everything.
Our houses and our emotional bodies were flooded, full to capacity, overflowing.
We needed to wait for the water to recede,
in our homes, our neighborhoods and our hearts.
We needed time to heal.
Two storms in two weeks.
What a mess, what darkness, such deep levels of loss and despair
But isn’t there some beauty to it all as well, a divine order?
Some beauty and grace in this level of loss and destruction –
the Yin and Yang. The darkness is always close beside the light.
We can’t have one without the other –
for we enter the storm as one person and come out of the storm as another
We have been forever changed, altered.
Could this be an invitation?
To feel it all and let the ravages of an inflamed Mother Earth
Teach us about the vulnerabilities and depths of the human spirit,
The true bond of community.
For if we allow ourselves to truly feel it all during the darkest days,
The joys on the other side are that much sweeter.
And we remember how precious it is to just breathe a breath,
See ourselves in each other
And open our hearts to the fragility of the human experience.
We never thought it could happen to us.
