K + 5 - Moving Beyond

Revisiting this post from last year:

It's 8:00 pm on 28 August 2010.    Five years ago today, we were on the road to Perry, FL and only a mere 4 hours into our evacuaton.    We had not yet even made it to Mobile from from Pass Christian  and though, we did eventually make our destination after 13 hours in a caravan of two cars, two trucks, two boats, 6 cats, a dog, and 6 humans and a sea of humanity surrounding us, what I witnessed on the road I can only describe as a cross between the Twilight Zone and Apocalypse Now.

We managed an hour nap before getting up to watch on TV as the storm rolled in,  making landfall at Pass Christian/Bay St. Louis on 29 August 2005.    I can't even begin to describe what I was going through during the drive, later as we watched what we knew deep down was the end of things as we knew them  and how I felt (how all of us felt) when we returned.   It is and was a place I do not want to revisit save for the reunions and it is a place I pray we never have to visit again.  

So, today it is time to  focus on spirit, friendship and renewal.  And, dare I say, it is time to move on, at least for me anyway.

I often wonder where we would be if not for Katrina because I know we all had plans.  Everyone knows what I am talking about.   There are things we expected to do in those coming years and yes, if not for Katrina we might have done them and we might still have our things, our homes, the places we had before.....   But for me,  it is what we wouldn't have had  for which I am most grateful to Katrina.    GRATEFUL????    How can I be grateful when I (we) lost everything?   Oh, there is so much.....

Katrina's destruction was extensive, uninmaginable....  unfathomable if you had not seen it first hand.  There is no picture or film that can truly capture the devastation as seen by the survivors and we are all survivors.   

But.... in that devastation we discovered things.   Not material things though.  Intangibles...

We found a strength within us that we never new existed or most have never had to look for.    

We realized our true friends.   We know who will  be there even  in the darkest of days.

We discovered  an indomitable spirit that is our community, our Gulf Coast.   We came together to rise above an adversity like no other.

We found ourselves...hopefully to never be lost again.

Peace
:-)  T