I know I talked about change a lot in my last post but here I go again!
Yesterday, Tim and I went to visit Jon in Tuscaloosa. He has been involved in an intense May class and the only time he could come home was while I was at the beach so I missed him. I wanted to see him and I also wanted to see Tuscaloosa, a city I am very fond of and has recently been devastated by a tornado. The tornado passed very close to where my son lives. Let me say that watching on live TV as a tornado heads straight to where your son is sitting is an awful, helpless, sickening feeling! He was spared but other students were not.
We drove into town from one direction and left by another and both ways were hard hit. Tim and Jon had been back with supplies and to help out but I was in the middle of finals when all of this happened and although I felt like I was being held hostage at school I fulfilled my obligations there before turning my attention elsewhere.
The devastation was monumental. Whole neighborhoods wiped out, piles of rubble as far as the eye can see. Businesses gone, landscapes changed. But to remember that people were also lost made the view even harder to look at. Tuscaloosa will never be the same- it will recover but it will have to change and find a new normal.
Jon’s friend Jamie came to visit him last week. Jamie is in med school in South Alabama so their visits are few and far between. When Jamie mentioned different places to eat, Jon had to continuously say, “It’s not there anymore, it’s not there anymore.” Even when we went to eat at a place we knew was still there, the sign said to please be patient , they had lost employees, many because they had to relocate in order to find a place to live. It has affected everyone.
I am home and it is getting dark and stormy outside. None of us will ever see a storm in quite the same way. All of us are changed, even if in a small way.
This is not really what I sat here to write but …
