Everything Starts Where it Ends

I stopped to put on a bright orange t-shirt that was given to me as I was walking out of the Bellevue Church of Christ. I don't remember what it said, it didn't matter to me. Even if it had, I would have forgotten it anyway, because in a few minutes everything that I thought was important would disappear.

There was an older man waiting for us in the driver's seat of an old beat up bus, drinking a can of generic-brand ginger-ale. He was staring at us from the top of the three steps in a way that only an old bus driver drinking generic ginger-ale could. I climbed the towering steps, smiled and walked down the aisle. I took a seat mid-way down on the left-hand side. For whatever reason, I've always felt more comfortable on that side.

I don't think anybody knew exactly where we were going. We just knew we were going there together, and I was okay with that. After several generic questions from strangers wearing the same orange shirt that I was wearing, the engine started winding down and I heard the old familiar sound of a bus' air-brakes. We were there.

The unmistakable grating of metal going across metal signaled to us that the door was open and that it was time to go. Like lemmings, we all stood up and waited our turn to walk down the three steps. I stepped down and my left foot landed on the loose gravel at what used to be called "River Plantation."

At first glance, things didn't look too bad. We climbed up a small hill that the bus driver cruelly parked at the bottom of and saw several people in blue shirts. The hierarchy was immediately clear; the leaders in blue, the lackeys in orange. Aside from the color, our shirts looked the same. Or so I thought - I didn't read their shirts either.

A man in blue must have given some directions because about ten people in front of me grabbed a wheelbarrow that had a rake and shovel in each and took off walking down the road. I didn't hear any instructions though, and neither did anyone behind me. We all hoped that we too were supposed to do the same, so at the risk of being singled out, we quickly grabbed our own set of tools and followed along in the mile-long procession.

As soon as I started walking, the devastation was immediate. There were piles upon piles of rubble. Along the main road was a long snake-like trash-heap that easily measured ten feet across and several feet high waiting for the trucks to come and pick it up. This mound went up the road, around a left-hand turn and out of my sight.

I peered into the open windows of countless houses as I followed in line. The only things that I saw were 2"x4" framework, overworked fans and contractors. These people had lost absolutely everything. Reality was rapidly setting in.

After walking several more blocks of seeing nothing but the same ripped apart home time and time again, we finally made it to where we would begin working. The piles of trash were above my head and they were all around me. And the stench ... wow. The stench was indescribable. What made it worse was that I now know firsthand what someone's ruined life smells like.

There were already several people there working, so we all immediately jumped in to action. We didn't need a man in a blue shirt this time. Our job was simple: load up our wheelbarrows one small, humbling load at a time and push it to the main road where it would be picked up by heavy machinery.

Simplicity is never what it seems to be. The weight of reality came crashing down with every scoop of my shovel. I was picking up splintered pieces of another person's life and throwing them into a pile to be destroyed permanently.

I was the last person to see some of these family photographs.

I was the last person to read the signatures held within a yearbook from 1982.

I was the last person to see their trinkets from their vacations.

I was the last person to read their favorite framed scripture.

I was the last person that these people ever expected to be touching their belongings.

But that's reality.

Who knew that on a Friday the forecast would call for rain, and on Saturday communities would be calling for help? Not me, and certainly not them.

We were all like ants - coming and going from the same place while following the same lines. Load after load after load we finally got rid of two massive piles that would have easily filled an entire town home from bottom to chimney. I was exhausted, sore and mentally drained, but there was still so much to do.

After a quick bag-lunch (for those playing at home: it was a homemade chimichanga, a bag of bbq potato chips and a Little Debbie Swiss Roll) we went around the corner to another road. On this back road, everyone's lives were stacked up in their side lawns. We were to move it all to the road where a man on a Bobcat in a blue shirt and absolutely no regard for safety would periodically come by and recklessly push it all to another, more centralized pile.

I was dragging bathtubs to the street to the tune of shattered glass as the guys next to us were heaving curio cabinets onto the asphalt. There were several grime covered toilets, presumably from the flood waters, that shattered as they hit the ground. There were dressers full of a younger girl's clothes and other belongings that was thrown into the road. Expensive vases were being tossed and then ran over by an erratic Bobcat, while what used to be a tiled bathroom wall laid idle on the pavement.
















*Behind and beside me lay the ghosts of hundreds of shattered lives.

After hours upon hours of this routine, the day was over. It was heartbreaking having to leave - there was still so much to do. We could have been there for two weeks straight and still not even be halfway done. It's incomprehensible to see something of that magnitude. Everything sounds awful on the news and the photographs all look terrible ... but you don't know the half of it until you're there. Until you see first hand how much these people have lost. Until you put everything they've ever worked for onto a dirty shovel ...

Humbly, we all walked the same mile-long walk back to their base-camp while our shovels and rakes noisily bounced in the wheelbarrows. My shoulders were slumped and my feet felt like they were made of lead.

Filthy, sweat-covered and exhausted we climbed back onto the waiting bus. I shared the same smile with the same old man as he gave me the same stare and drank the same generic drink. Halfway down the aisle, I took my seat. It was on the left.