Katrina: Five Years Later - The Day We Left

One year ago today, I wrote the following entry describing our last day in New Orleans before we evacuated to escape the path of Hurricane Katrina:

Today is August 27th. For most people, unless it's your birthday or anniversary, it's just any old day in the peak of the hottest time of year. For me, it is the day we said goodbye to the New Orleans we always knew. It was on August 27, 2005, that after a long morning of volunteering in City Park with my accounting firm, Mark and I decided we should get a head start on evacuating just in case more people decided to leave on Sunday. At the time we decided to leave, we weren't really even worried about this storm they called Katrina. In fact, I sort of chuckled to myself when my friend and co-worker (who being from California was petrified of hurricanes) wasted no time and told us as we were packing up our volunteer supplies, that he was heading to Houston, he'd see us at work on Monday. Since you know how this story ends, it's not hard to realize that Monday never came. That was the last time I saw Kris - he didn't return to New Orleans.

A little shaken by his decision to leave, I think everyone else there that morning started thinking "Gosh, maybe we should go too." So we went to the grocery (Robert's in Lakeview) and picked up water, flashlights, and snack foods, and we readied ourselves to head to New Iberia, LA where we figured we'd party for a couple of days with our gracious hosts, the Pellerins. We stopped by the house my parents had just purchased and tried to talk them into evacuating with us, but they were comfortable in just going to stay at a hotel downtown if things got too bad.

We straightened up the house a little. We put my wedding dress "high" on top of a dresser about six feet tall, and we pulled my VW Passat (my first car and graduation gift from my parents) a little further up in the driveway just in case there was street flooding. After all, my Uncle Sam's house had been through Betsy and it didn't flood, so we didn't have anything to worry about. Why take two cars - it only clutters the roads - that's what I told Mark that day. Just as we were about to leave, I joked with Mark "what if this was the big one?" I ran back in the house and grabbed our wedding albums and all of my handbags. Ha - if it does come and we don't have jobs, I could sell them off one by one I teased Mark.

We chatted and laughed as we drove through the streets of Lakeview and off on our little weekend getaway. I didn't look around. I didn't stop to cherish the memories I had made on the streets and in the homes of that quaint piece of heaven we call Lakeview. I didn't even notice driving by the home I had grown up in that my parents had just sold. I just sat in the car as my world went by and I didn't even see it.

And in the gut wrenching days that followed August 29th as we realized that our sweet Lakeview had been filled like a bowl with ten feet of water, I wished I had taken the time to really look around. I wished I had not taken for granted that the places I loved would be there when tomorrow came. And although four years later, Lakeview is on the mend, it is a different place. The streets that you knew like the back of your hand are lined with different homes. The pecan tree in the backyard of the house I grew up in that still had Mardi Gras beads in it from a game we played at my 8th birthday party called "throwing Mardi Gras beads into the pecan tree" is gone, as is the home itself. If I could only see it one more time. Just to really take it in. I would do anything for that.

So I guess my thought for this Thursday August 27th is not to walk aimlessly through your day. Enjoy every minute of it. Truly appreciate everything you see today that is something so normal you'd only know you missed it if it was gone tomorrow. Really see your world and all of the people and places in it.

Long Live Lakeview!

It is hard to believe that one year has passed since I wrote this.  It is even harder to believe that it has been five years since the day we left. That it has been five years since we lived in a world not tainted by the realities of The Storm.  Five years since we stood in line at Robert's that Saturday and shouted "stay dry" to the checkout girl as we walked to my Passat.

 

About two years ago, we were home for a Saints game, and I needed to pick up some mascara.  Robert's had just re-opened that weekend, and it was the most convenient pit stop on my way to my parents' house.  I had expected to walk into a new and improved version (a mini locally owned Whole Foods, if you will).  And I did.  What I had not expected was my reaction.  It hit me that at that moment I was standing in the last place I stood before we dropped off my car and drove away.  It was as though, just for a moment, it was still August 27, 2005.  Before the levees broke and the water rose.   It was as though in that moment, all was right in the world.  And  I couldn't move from that spot.  And I started sobbing.  Me. All by myself.  In front of the floral aisle. 

 

In any other place in the world, I would have looked crazy.  But here.  Here we all knew that feeling.  Of knowing how much was lost.  Our town, our businesses, our homes, our innocence.  A lovely gentleman around my dad's age saw me and came over.  He put his hand on my back and said, with tears in his eyes, "it's ok baby, we all feel the same way." 

 

And as I walked through the store, I saw that he was right.  I was not the only one whose eyes showed the signs of raw emotion.  And maybe we were crying out of sadness.  We all mourned the lives we lost.  But I think we were also crying because finally, we were home again.  We stood in a place that was familiar and good and rebuilt.  And if one family could re-open their business, surely others would follow.  There was hope in that. And there was promise that one day our lives would feel whole again.  That slowly, the pieces of our broken lives, of our broken hearts, would mend.  


And while my heart still aches around this time of year, it is most certainly on the mend.