I can certainly relate. I lost, completely... my entire house to a hurricane back in '08. And that headline... "I haven't cried yet..." Is so true.
I didn't break down until i saw the (not there) house a second time a month later. Walking around my property... other people's things scattered everywhere, someone's kitchen flloor, their sink still attached to some pipes, smack in the middle where my living room... was.
I didn't have anything to go thru. I prepared for the hurricane. Put everything from outside... inside. Even tho the house was on pilings, i put everything inside the house that i could... high up... so the water wouldn't get it. But i didn't believe i would get that much water in my house. The storm surge isn't going to be that bad.
Yeah, i'm probably going to have a mess to clean when i get back (family and i evacuated)... i even mentally told my house... see you in a few days... i looked around while at the door fixin' to lock it up... hoping eveything will be.. okay. And in the middle of the night, in the darkness, with only a small bag of clothes and toiletries, we fled.
Some 400 miles away at a hotel, watching the news a couple of days later, we heard of the destruction.
For a week they wouldn't let us come into town. I was so curious... not worried, because my house has been thru many hurricanes... i was just curious to see what damage i had... and i was anxious to see my things, if they are okay.
I simply refused that fucker of a storm...took my house...and everything in it... completely.
So we (family) look and look around. We pick up anything we could dig with and scour a quarter mile radius. We find some of our clothes in the sludge, rotted, here and there. My brand new washer and dryer, not a year old a block away, badly beaten.
My pictures, my photos, from so many years... gone. I was so wishing to find those, maybe i can salvage a few... no. Looking, digging, crying... please let me find them... they are in a big tupperware box... if i could only find that box.... no.
Neighbors standing, looking in disbelief. walking around, poking and proding... digging... looking for anything that looks familiar, from their homes. I find a little glass knick-knack thingy... intact.. partly in the sludge. It's not really dirty... i put it on a tree branch laying on the ground. Maybe someone walking by will recognize it as theirs and be happy to see it.
As i walk up a block or so, i can't believe what i see. A little glass jewelry box ( i kept cotton balls in) i had on my dresser in my bedroom... sitting on top of a piling laying on the ground... intact. Someone put it there as i did just a little while ago... with someone else's knick-knack. Bittersweet, i pick it up, tears... i whisper, 'my God, what happened'
To this day i think of that house as almost a person. I cry to the terror it went thru when that fucker hurricane was beating it down and finally the ocean surge finished it off.
But i am grateful we are alive. We didn't stay for the hurricane, but some did. And only some survived.
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