Not a week goes by in this city without a mention of Hurricane Katrina. The storm devastated this region 18 years ago but the pain and loss still seems immediate and deep. Has the city reckoned with what happened, much less the US of A?
People mourn the loss of family photos in “the storm.” All of them. Imagine not having a single memento of your pre-2005 life.
Houses still bear the telltale X from rescuers, dated weeks after the storm.
People are forever marked, too.
A NO East chef refuses to make any plans during hurricane season in case his parents need rescuing.
A barfly tells of weeks holed up with whiskey and firearms, feeding a dozen cats and waiting for help that never came.
As a yankee outsider what I see and hear are unhealed wounds, not just from the storm, the water, the debris, the heat, the rotting, the waste, the fear and anger and loss. But the way this city, this proud and joyous people, were left for dead, left to rescue themselves and rebuild mostly alone, hindered by predators legal and not. And now tens of thousands of visitors descend each week to party and play, imagining the loud and vibrant city is as it ever was.
The pain is part of the psyche, I think. The beauty of uncertainty. But how wonderful it might be, to not have to be so resilient.
‘how wonderful it might be to not have to be so resilient’…powerful thought there
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