Words of solace from a Katrina survivor

From the incredibly talented Ian McNulty , words of solace from the survivors of Katrina to the survivors of Sandy

Excerpt:

It was early November 2005, about two months after Hurricane Katrina, and I’d been back at my New Orleans home for a few days before I spotted my first neighbor. She’d come back for her own first look at her house and at our neighborhood, all of which had been flooded by the levee breaches here.

I was relieved that she was okay and I beamed happily at her. She smiled back, reflexively it seemed, because a moment later, she started shaking a little as tears gathered in her eyes.

“Can you believe it?” she said. “I mean, what are we supposed to do now?”

Her question hung there as we both gazed around. By this time, the floodwaters had long since drained away, leaving what had been an old, colorful neighborhood of homes and businesses, churches and schools as a blanched, shattered, stained, debris-strewn landscape that was dead quiet, with no other people to be seen.

I hugged her, because she was crying now and because I had no other way to answer. I didn’t know how anyone could possibly begin fixing the total mess that had suddenly engulfed our lives.

Originally posted by NJ dot com