102. What IF?
Hurricane Katrina has definitely left an indelible mark on our psyches. Who of us has not thought, "What if it happened to me?" "What if I couldn't find or reach my loved ones?" "What if I had lost all of my personal possessions?" Can anyone truly fathom the utter helplessness and desperation caused by a natural disaster of such magnitude? No, of course not, though our hearts and minds are heavy and there is no escape from the daily barrage of constant news reports.
I'm reminded of a time, during 1969, after I had graduated college and relocated to San Francisco to find my way in the world and to be near my first serious boyfriend. Several months later my mother cleaned out my room and packed up all of my personal belongings, which she intended to put into storage. She lined all the boxes to be stored against one wall, and against another wall she placed a few boxes to be donated to Goodwill. She went to work, leaving my younger brother home alone to deal with the Goodwill pick-up.
In typical fifteen-year-old fashion, either not hearing properly or not paying close attention to my mother's instructions, my brother erroneously gave away ALL of the boxes. They waited one week before calling me, hoping to retrieve the boxes, but to no avail. They knew what reaction to expect from me and how deeply upset I would be. I received her phone call before going to work one morning.
I immediately began to scream and sob hysterically. I was so distraught that my employer excused me from work. I began calling Goodwill myself, instigating my own search and dealing with "their system." Since most of the boxes were filled with personal papers and photographs, "of no use or value to anyone," I was told that they were taken to the dump. News traveled fast and in no time I had a team of good friends all volunteering to drive down to Los Angeles to help me start digging through the city dump. I didn't go to work for the entire week.
My entire history of existence was in those boxes. Years of diaries, photographs from my earliest childhood collections, every single pressed flower corsage or posy ever given to me by anyone, my earliest endeavors at creative writing, etc., etc. These items all sound utterly worthless and meaningless, but to me their value was immeasurable--all one-of-a-kind items, never ever to be duplicated again by anyone for any purpose. I cried for weeks. I fell into a state of total depression.
Latest Articles