Last week, telling a friend that it looked as though my family had escaped major loss, I told her I had a case of survivor's guilt. She suggested that it might be too early for that diagnosis. She was right.
It's funny how the littlest tidbits of specific information about my family get to me. Last night I learned that my brother's 100-year-old home sustained serious damage. Something went through the roof, and through the attic, giving a skylight to a home that was not previously provided for one.
And Mom and Dad will probably not have enough insurance to cover their losses, either. (This hits me the hardest because Dad was edging toward retirement--he's already way past the usual age for it--and this will eat up what they had hoped would provide for their needs in extreme old age.)
But then you read more and more about the families who lost really everything, and maybe can't find their loved ones...
Our Vietnamese sisters report that this is an even more traumatic experience for their families. In some cases, it is the third time they have lost everything. One sister's family was from North Vietnam, and lost everything in escaping to the south, and then with the fall of Saigon and the aftermath of that, they again left everything behind to come here. And now a whole Vietnamese community is again in a refugee situation. I was reading in the Tribune about that today; the article pointed out that many of the Vietnamese in Louisiana had earned a living through fishing and shrimping, and the hurricane pretty much wiped out those means of livelihood for at least a generation. The shrimp "crop" was devastated, even if a boat or two happened to weather the storm.
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We all think of New Orleans as our "soul" city, for it had so much character and life.
My prayers are with y'all who claim New Orleans as their real hometown.
I have not heard anything from Galatoires only that they plan on opening up a branch in Baton Rouge to give those evacuees a taste of home.
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