Things We Lost in the Flood

It has been almost six years now since Katrina, but I still keep remembering things I once owned and loved, that I lost to Katrina. My house was totally flooded and destroyed. It is a bit of a shock to realize, over and over again, Oh yes, I once lost everything I ever owned. Or to think, Hey, where's that thing I ... oh yeah. Katrina. Sometimes I forget for a while, and then I remmber again. That is unpleasant.

Still, I count myself lucky -- damned lucky -- that all I lost were things. Well, and my job. But I got that back.

But so I don't keep forgetting things and then remembering things I lost again, like a senile old person, I'm going to start keeping a list here of the Things We Lost to the Flood. So I can check it and then maybe I won't keep remember/forgetting.

• All the letters my friend Rebecca sent me while we were in college. We had a rather unusual epistolatory friendship. Those might once have been important historical documents. Completely destroyed.



• A small flat stone my Dad gave me from the bank of the River Thames last time we visited London. It was juts a stone, but my Dad gave it to me, and I kept it from the time I was twelve until I was forty. Washed away.



• The Dear Jane letter my college semi-boyfriend wrote me when I was in the process of crashing and burning out of New College. Twenty pages, front and pack, of narcissistic self-justification. Still, I can't blame him, it was a wildly dysfunctional relationship. I still think of him fondly. That's why I kept it. No paper survived of course.



• The gray flannel cape my Mom had custom-made for me for my twenty-first birthday. Trying to salvage any of the clothes that had sat in that water was unthinkable.



• A wedding ring quilt that my grandmother had made. She is long dead so there won't be anymore quilts.

These are the kinds of things whose loss really hurts, not the random books and DVDs and furniture. Things which were one of a kind, which were particular to me and my life. Irrepalacble things. I have plenty of things now, but I don't have many irreplacable things, things which take a lifetime to accumulate, and twenty-four hours to be completely obliterated. There are many others. I'll add to the list as I remember them.