Lhunpaurwen's Ramblings

Ember is officially a Decade Dog today. 10 years old and just as silly and spazzy as the day we first got you. You don't act a day over 2yrs. My gross, disgusting Dogmeat creature. I love you. Here is to many more years of the joy and happiness that is you.

10 years ago my life changed forever when Hurricane Katrina made landfall along the Gulf Coast of Louisiana and Mississippi. I lost my lifelong home and everything in it, as did many others in the effected regions.

"Get over it" some people say as they sneer at those of us living here because "the region is known for flooding and hurricanes". I want to point out that the areas that were most drastically effected by the hurricane, were areas that actually *NEVER* had problems on the scale we saw in Katrina. Slidell ( where I lived ) was north of the Lake Pontchartrain and in the 22 years I lived there, we never, *ever* flooded or had severe hurricane damage at our house.... until Katrina.

We were far enough (about 6 miles ) inland and above sea level to where it had never been an issue. Same can be said for the hardest hit areas in Mississippi, from Gulfport, to Waveland, on through Biloxi. Unless you lived right on the lakefront or beachfront or in a low area, the worst you had to worry about was wind damage as opposed to severe flooding. Even many places that did get water, it was normally only a few inches to at most 2ft or so depending on where you lived.

To those people who would still sneer, I point toward New York and Hurricane Sandy. They weren't expecting a hurricane to bring severe flooding and damage either, and like many of us across Louisiana and Mississippi, they lived in an area where it wouldn't normally have been a problem. Should they have "gotten over it" because "they chose to live there"? Those same harsh words sound vastly different when applied to a similar situation, don't they? Katrina was a far larger, more powerful, and far more destructive storm. Not just New Orleans suffered, where most damage was done because the levees/seawalls failed, and water rushed in - in most cases hours after the worst of the storm had already passed. Slidell didn't have levees/seawalls or need them, and neither did cities in Mississippi that were destroyed. It was likely tornadoes spawned from the storm, as well as the storm surge itself that at times was pushed 6 to 12 miles inland ( carrying boats and everything else it swept away with it mind you), that caused the most destruction across multiple cities and across multiple states.




It's very difficult to talk about what I went through during that time, and what I witnessed others go through. It's been 10 years since it happened, but it still feels as raw as if it were yesterday.


I've been living out of boxes for the past 10 years because I don't have a home of my own anymore.

I have been living by the good grace of others a majority of that time. It leaves one with intense mixed emotions. Full of thanks and gratitude. Yet never feeling like you really belong. Never feeling settled. You know it is only temporary. You'll collect all your boxes and go somewhere else soon enough, so why bother to unpack anything?

Or worse now that I am living in New Orleans again. I dread the warmer months now and the storms they might bring. Having to pick and choose what to take if we have to run from a storm. You can't take it all when you run from a storm. Knowing you might lose everything all over again. I can't describe how gut wrenching it is.

I would rather live anywhere but here. Further inland, maybe up toward Baton Rouge. But family and their livelihoods are here and their support is here. None of them have ever talked about wanting to move elsewhere, and I don't have the luxury to choose since I am currently not able to hold work and support myself with my health problems.


I never had a chance to really properly grieve. Never had a chance to really properly recover and heal the damage done.


You learn to let go as much as you can and move on.

I moved some stuff into the attic and organized stuff that was already up there to make room. Sore and exhausted, but it was worth it. I found some boxes containing stuff from school days that mom had apparently brought over here without me knowing and put in my aunt's attic. I decided to take a look to see what was there. Some of it old art and stuff which made me go "awwww".

In one box I found an amazing surprise. . . all of the composition notebooks that I used in junior high to write bizarre fan fiction crossover stories in! They weren't all lost in Hurricane Katrina like I always thought!! I took a few minutes to look through them, and ooohhh the memories! Even markers where friends had been reading as I wrote each chapter. The writing was horrible compared to what I can do today, but wow. Now to decide if I really want to transfer it all to electronic form as I had always planned to do, give it a serious facelift, and publish it somewhere.