From serious to silly:
The major department store is closed still but no word from them as to when they will re-open. No effort is made to reassure customers.
No bookstore, except used paperbacks. Paperbacks smell of mold. Charity shops have books but the mold smell is there, too.
If you are marginally housed, it gets worse. Couples stay together because housing is unavailable. Domestic violence increases.
Children who've been thrown from pillar to post get academic awards. I find this amazing.
If you need to put Ma or Pa in a nursing home or assisted living facility, you'll have to displace them further by driving hours to get them a place. We don't have the infrastructure for the elderly anymore.
You overhear a conversation between physicians discussing how the government should give a subsidy to doctors because the amenities of a doctor's life are impaired and doctors are leaving the area.
You wait in long lines for everything.
You think of New Orleans and want to cry. Not for the first time.
Nationally, people think that we've rebuilt and life is just great down here.
The post office is open and doing o.k.
P and C 1, along with P and C 2 are waiting for their homes to be finished. Great stress in being out of one's home.
Post Traumatic Stress kicked in around Month 6. Observing friends and acquaintances cope is painful. Some are doing so very well, others are not coping anymore.
We should get free depression meds. Use us for a group study.
Mr. W. stopped drinking, cleaned up his life, began working and re-established good relationships with is children. Praise God!
Every guest preacher from beyond the Zone preaches the same sermon about how God loves us and God's Purpose is Being Worked Out Even in the Destruction. Some of the sermons are quite good.
If you don't live here, you don't understand. This is said often. Not a good thing to think but true in many respects.
I need more coffee....
Yours,
St. Casserole
8 comments:
{{{{{Hugs}}}}}
I can imagine what you describe, having spent a brief time there. I am amazed at how people survive this kind of misery. And I think guest preachers shouldn't say anything much beyond "I'm sorry I'm not walking this road with you more faithfully." Just my .02.
Oh St Cass....I'm torn between deep gratitude that, no, I really don't understand what it must be like and sorrow that I don't understand, so can't respond in any way that's half adequate.
But I do send my ongoing love and prayers and hugs xx
I simply cannot imagine and I am so sorry.
And Lexapro is a miracle drug.
(((St. C)))
One of the things I feared when coming down there was that it was awfully nervy of me to think I had something to say to people from the pulpit. And yet it was a good thing to give a preacher two weeks off! I'm sorry it's still so hard.
I thought about you yesterday when I got into a conversation with a woman while we were waiting for our appointments at the salon.
She is from Metarie, but now is traveling regularly back and forth to Houston as her company is in the process of relocating here permanently. Her grown children are also planning to move to Houston.
She said that they had left Metarie just a month before Katrina due to a hurricane warning and so expected that they would be able to return after Katrina as well. But it wasn't to be. She talked about what she would do differently -- bring more cash and move her furniture upstairs.
But she has no intention of returning to the NO area. She said that they lived in the "bowl" and she couldn't imagine ever doing that again.
She told me "you just can't imagine what it's like to have everything swept away." She's right, I can't.
((((St Cass))))
(o)
And I feel a coward that I've not made it past Slidell.
I have a very close friend in Lake Charles who lost everything in Zimbabwe years ago; just moved his family to Lake Charles to take a new appointment in June -- and then Rita struck.
So now, he's lost everything again -- except for his family. The sheer scope of it all is overwhelming.
My friend who lived in NO -- they lost nothing except a couple of trees and a few roofing tiles. She's a nurse and was at the hospital for 3 weeks. She's now in a mental health facility because of what she's seen -- survivor's guilt mostly.
I have another friend who has left her church and returned "home" to Atlanta for a while. It's just too much.
I have empathy, and I know that I cannot really understand. And so many times I just don't know what I can do.
So I pray. And do what can be done through denominational structures.
Post a Comment