Thoughts on the 10th Anniversary of Katrina

     My family will never forget Katrina. The storm damaged the Pascagoula, Mississippi home where my wife lived in form the second grade on. My widowed mother-in-law, already showing signs of dementia, eventually agreed t let a nephew pick her up and take her to safety in Mobile, Alabama before four feet of water seeped into the home. (Disclaimer: this is NOT a picture of the home, but from another in the same community that was more heavily damaged. Her home was structurally  all right and was sold. It has been remodeled and look very nice).

     Fortunately, my deployment to Germany ended in April 2005. Within a month I accepted a teaching position and in the summer had begun serving steadily in a small parish. Also, I resumed writing the dissertation that had been on a holding pattern for over a year.

     Then Katrina hit, and the post-storm debacle followed. A week after the hurricane, I drove a small truck with our son (not yet 16) riding shotgun down to salvage  what we could. My wife followed, driving her mother who had flow up to South Carolina. Her sister drove down from her home to meet us in Mobile.

     When I arranged at school to take a personal day, and explained the reason, someone who shall remain nameless told me to "Have fun". For once I held my tongue.

     When we arrived in Pascagoula, we were met by a combat zone. While I had never been in one, there was devastation all around. Damaged houses, fallen trees, piles of rotting garbage of all kinds along the curb, and housing shells for those who chose to stay behind.

     After a long day we loaded what we could in the truck and headed back to South Carolina. My mother-in-law went from an apartment to several assisted-living and full-care facilities. My wife juggled seminary and everything else with caring her her mother. Four years later she buried her in Pascagoula next to her husband.

     Katrina and the response to it exposed and/or worsened some rifts in America that have not been fully-mended. when I think that time will, someone says something about something else and the rifts grow wider.