You've seen it, but it doesn't make it any easier. All the pictures and movies and stories and images and stats. But you still gasp when you see that house on top of a car. A year after the fact, and New Orlean's Lower Ninth Ward is still devastated. Driving through and it took me a moment, a long moment, to realize that those fields going by the windows, with 4 foot tall grass half covering concrete stairs, were actually hiding the foundations of houses that no longer exist. And then the ones that do exist are so broken it's almost more painful. Where are these people now? I walked around a house where you could see the flood line 3 inches below the top of the door and inside you could see dishes still strewn about the kitchen, and broken records and books lying on the floor. No-one's been back in that house since the flood. And the desperately sad thought, maybe there's no-one left to go back in that house. But it's beautiful to hear a guy talking about returning to New Orleans and rebuilding his home. To hear him talking, with a tear in his eye, about children once again playing in the streets. To laugh at the pride he showed for his football team, the Saints, home at last. And to wonder how people go on.
Maybe it's easier to go on... when there's nothing left to go back to.
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