Too many stories to tell just one.
Like the springer spaniel whose owners left him behind but the attic stairs down in case floodwater came in the house, thinking they'd be gone a day or two. The pup survived 3 weeks in the attic, with water up to the ladder's top step and no food. Today, the re-plumped pup is understandably wary of strangers, but also, a great testament to the will to survive.
I think about the house where most of the contents were gone but a calendar still hung on the wall, the page for August, 2005 with each day marked off up to the 28th. There were a couple of batons left in the closet, the girl was a twirler. A rosary was left on the window sill. When we put it out on the curb with a pile of trash, we didn't realize the black box, about the size of a gallon gas can, held cremated remains of a long-gone family member. But one team member found an identical box, so that sent us out to dig through the pile and retrieve the other one.
Ashes to ashes.
Monday, my first day back at work, I was still having trouble adjusting to my normal life. The focused, intense physical labor, the closeness of my team members, the emotional impact of being immersed in the inescapable reality of mortality and impermanence--it's hard to reenter the everyday world after that. I miss them. Sweating and getting Sheetrock dust in my eyes and itching from fiberglass insulation and working harder than I knew I could. I miss it.
I looked around and realized my personal office at work is the size of a FEMA trailer that an entire family lives in. The trailers still fill parks and line residential streets. About 12,000 families still live in them, and sometimes get tossed out of them in the middle of the night by the authorities for flimsy reasons. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17575595/
When you meet the people rebuilding their homes in Gentilly, or step into a FEMA trailer and take a good look around, which takes about 2 seconds, you realize this is America, too. We want to think those people still living in FEMA trailers are different from us. They are the victims of their corrupt government. Or lazy. Or another regrettable fruit of ignorance and poverty. Anything to console yourself that they are not like us. Anything to let you hold them at arm's length and tell yourself what happened to them can't happen to you.
But, if I lost my job, my home, all my possessions, and the insurance money was not immediately forthcoming, how long could I afford to live in something better than this? And what if this same fate struck all of my immediate and extended family at the same time? Where would I turn for help?
