Y’know what’s kind of embarrassing? When the worst moment of your life… really isn’t that bad.
Exactly one week ago, our home in Tampa Bay was flooded by Hurricane Helene. Five feet of flood water covered our bottom level; all three of our cars were swallowed by salt water.
Now, I’ve totaled a car (or two) since I got my license in the 1990s. But three in a 15-minute timeframe? That’s a new personal record.
Worst of all, our bottom level was where I (stupidly) stored my books, photos, artwork, memorabilia, and mementos. Lots of it was damaged beyond the point of recovery. I don’t even know how you can quantify the value of, say, a photo of you and your grandma that captured the only really good day we ever had together. She’s been dead 30 years, so there’s not going to be a do-over.
You just gotta take the L, I guess.
It's particularly disheartening because I tend to remember things via association. Like, if I’m holding an old t-shirt in my hands, I can instantly remember where I was when I bought the shirt — who I was dating, what I was doing, where I was going. But without the shirt, those memories are lost forever.
The item was the key.
People are also like that. Have you ever visited an old friend, someone you hadn’t seen in many, many decades? When you were apart and doing your own things, you still had memories of each other, of course, but something magical happens when you reconnect. His key opens your memories, and vice-versa. Together, you can remember so much more than you ever could apart. It’s almost like the Pentagon protocol, where you have to turn the keys together to launch a nuclear weapon.
One key isn’t enough.
Of course, it was a lot easier to store old photos in a box on my bottom floor than my old friends. (Less messy, too.) But it was a huge mistake. One of the worst of my life. And now that those items are all gone, my memories will be going away with them.
It's just a matter of when.
Yesterday evening, about an hour before “The Thrilla in Vanilla” (a.k.a. the Walz/Vance VP debate), our power and a/c came back on for the first time since Helene struck. I’m absolutely stunned the a/c unit was salvageable. It had been literally inundated by the ocean! But I guess they’re surprisingly durable.
Watching our cars die was the worst. Have you ever seen a car get flooded?! Little by little, the electrical system goes all haywire: First, your alarm goes off. (And on. And then off again.) Then, your seats begin moving forward and backward on their own, like they’re being controlled by poltergeists. Next, your car windows roll up and down. It’s very depressing! Your car is in its death throes, succumbing to the inevitability of the rising tide.
And then it goes silent… forever. Two or three days later, your car’s interior is all covered in mold.
Related: Surviving Hurricane Helene
So, last week was pretty bad. Easily one of the absolute worst weeks of my entire life. (I don’t even want to guess what the final cost will be!) But you know what? In the grand scheme of things:
Nobody in our family died.
We got through it.
Tomorrow’s another day.
God knows best.
And maybe — just maybe — our tomorrow will be better than our yesterday.
Getting flooded isn’t fun. There’s a Biblical quality to it, as if the Almighty Himself is specifically punishing you. But it’s nowhere near as bad as a child dying. Or losing a loved one. Or being diagnosed with cancer.
It was just stuff.
And stuff comes and goes.
Just like the tide.
