Three Years Later

I'm taking a little break from Sassy's story to wish everyone a safe and happy Labor Day.

I'd also like to just ask everyone to take a minute and remember the victims of the devastation that occurred on the Gulf Coast 3 years ago this weekend, with Hurricane Katrina.

I'm not usually the type that says things like that. Of course when I hear about tragedies occurring around the world, I stop and think about the people affected, their loved ones, their lives. Three years ago, though, the tragedy affected my family, my loved ones, and my life.

You see, my grandmother moved to the Gulf coast in 1997. It was something she and my grandfather had always planned on doing, but he passed away long before they had the chance. He passed away before I was born. My grandmother and my uncle decided to make that move. Grandma was in fabulous health, great spirits, and ready to get away from these midwestern winters.

Grandma moved to the small town of Waveland, Mississippi. She seemed so happy there. She lived in apartments that we all thought were pretty rough, many in the complex were government subsidized, but she always sat out on her front porch and watched the traffic on Highway 90 go by. Then she'd walk over to the Circle K for ice cream or coffee. We have visited maybe 20 times in the past ten years, and we always looked forward to going to the little restaurants she'd picked out, or going and blowing all of our money on the nickel slots at the casinos. She was always up for anything, that was what made our time with Grandma so special. She'd get in the car and ride as far as we wanted to go, to do whatever we wanted to do, and it brings tears to my eyes to think of her reaching inside her little coin purse to try to pay for dinner or gas or coffee or anything she thought we may need.

Time went on, and of course her age started to creep up on Grandma. Sidenote here: My grandma was seriously always the coolest woman in the room. My friends called her Grandma Bon Jovi because of her habit of nodding her head to the beat to basically any music on the radio. I called her Granny Grunts because of the noises she made when she got up out of her chair. She usually called me by my mother's name, and eventually I stopped correcting her. I figured it really could be worse. Once she told my husband that he looked exactly like Osama bin Laden. He...couldn't...look...any further from bin Laden, but...we let it go. Grandma loved her red wine that came in the gallon jug, and her Miller High Life. She thought these things helped to keep her creative. We just let that go, too.

The last time we visited Grandma before Katrina, we knew things were really going downhill for her. She couldn't really remember our names, and she just seemed so much...older than what I'd remembered. We'd just been there about 6 months prior, but a fall and a hospital stay had taken their toll. We were staying in a beach house we'd rented for the 4th of July, Grandma's 90th birthday. We had the most amazing week, and my husband and I even took our video camera out on the beach at night in the middle of Tropical Storm Cindy. Little did we know what was coming next.

Skip forward to August of 2005, and the news that Katrina was going to be big. Bigger than we'd thought originally. My uncle evacuated Grandma to Illinois to wait out the storm. She went to my parents' house, and I went to sit with her. I'll never forget sitting and being completely glued to the coverage. We watched Anderson Cooper as he discovered the body in the house near Waveland. We watched with horror as the levees in New Orleans broke. We worried when we heard that my uncle's girlfriend ended up trapped in the roof of a home, while she waited to be rescued. And we cried when we realized that the towns we'd come to love and to call our second homes were literally...gone. We cried when we learned of the people who'd stayed to try to ride out the storm. My grandmother's apartment was probably at least a mile off the Gulf, and when someone was able to give us an update, they found that she had water standing to the ceiling and she'd literally lost everything.

Those words, "lost everything," usually bring to mind pictures of the houses that were destroyed. The cars that washed away. The heartbreaking stories of the pets that couldn't be saved. "Lost everything" means so much more to me. I lost my grandma with that storm. Not physically. She's still with us, although in a nursing home suffering from late stages of Alzheimer's Disease. But I lost the grandma that knew me. The one that loved to listen to me play the piano. The one that would let me sneak wine glasses full of chocolate ice cream to bed while we watched Johnny Carson. The one that reminded my mother and I that no matter what, "this too shall pass." The one whose eyes would light up when she saw my son after his open heart surgeries and her amazement at how healthy he was.

We still visit the Gulf Coast. In fact, we still plan to end up there one day. I still dream of a coffee shop on the gulf, and I believe somehow we'll get there.

People are rebuilding. It's a long, arduous, expensive process. But homes can be rebuilt. Cars can be purchased. Things can be replaced. There are those of us, though, living hundreds of miles away that can't "rebuild" what we lost. We "lost everything." And that, my friends, is what I'd hope for you to pause and remember today.

Here are some pictures from USA today. I'm sure you've seen them all. I'm just asking that you don't forget.