Anniversary

I usually am not the type of person to remember anniversaries of traumatic events. However, this city lost so much and so many in the tornado last year, that you can't get away from it. It's in the paper, on Facebook, in emails, and along the roads where there are huge empty places where houses and businesses used to be. There are still places where the debris has not been torn down. Our home did not suffer any damage. We were out of power, couldn't use cell phones, and a tree from our yard went down and fell across the street. A mere inconvenience. It was still traumatic. My younger son was home from college. Watches and warnings were all around us that afternoon. I took my purse, a radio, a lantern down to the basement "just in case."
When we started seeing the first warnings for the tornado that came through Tuscaloosa, we started moving downstairs. One of our dogs has hip problems and bad knees, and will not go down stairs. My son picked up that 85 pound dog and carried him down. We sat in my husband's "office" downstairs and watched the live videos of the approaching storm on television. My husband and son are both ham radio operators, so the radio was on.  I should mention that my husband was at work in the Emergency Management office, so we were hearing reports from them as well. Then someone at the office said "tornado directly over EMA" and there were no more messages from them. I didn't know it until later, but at that moment the two story building where Tuscaloosa environmental services and emergency management were housed was having it's top story ripped off, vehicles in the parking deck were being smashed into a corner, the sanitation trucks and recycling facilities outside the building were being trashed, rubble was falling over the entrances and exits on the first floor, and water was starting to come down into the EMA office. Their 'new' EMA office that my husband and many others had worked so hard to get prepared and had such great facilities for communicating with other agencies, seeing city-wide camera views and having space for volunteers to come in and help out. Gone in seconds. I didn't know any of that until the next day when my husband came home briefly. I didn't know the full extent of it until weeks later.
At home, we were still watching it on TV. Then the storm noise outside picked up, the power went out, and we heard the tree fall in the yard. We sat there in the lantern light for a while, then my wonderful son went out to check our immediate neighborhood. He has had so much safety and EMA training, I didn't really worry about him going out. The dogs and I stayed in the basement and found a local radio station that was still able to broadcast, and the news wasn't good. So many cell towers went down that getting a call out to anyone or receiving one was about a 1 out of 5 tries thing. Our neighborhood had some damage, but not devastation. Immediate neighbors were all okay. We came out of the basement, opened windows to let some air in and spent the rest of the night listening to the radio coverage (those guys did a great job) and occasionally dozing off. My older son, who lives twenty miles out of town, got a call from his wife that she was okay, but the roads out were blocked by downed trees. He drove into town, picked up his brother, and they went off with a chain saw to help. They got about a mile before they ran into impassable streets and it took a couple of hours for them to get back to our house. They weren't able to help that night, and others cleared the road around my daughter-in-law's workplace. I think she actually got home before my son did.
The next morning my husband came home to shower and change clothes, and took my younger son back to help him at work. They had set up a temporary working space in some of the facilities at Bryant-Denny stadium.
The story goes on and on and on and on. It has been going on for twelve months now. It will keep going on.
This 'event' that took place in minutes took away so much. It continues to affect us. I read a blog post this morning from a friend whose house had to be rebuilt while they lived in an apartment. All the details and frustration that accompany that are incredible. He wants it to just be over.
I agree with him. I want it all to be over. Better yet, I want it to never have happened.
I am so grateful that my husband is alive.
I am so grateful that my son was at home with me.
I have many friends who had major damage to their homes. I am so grateful that it was only their homes, and they are still alive.
I did not know any of those who died. It doesn't matter that I didn't know them. Their deaths still are such a big part of the communal grief here.
We are all ready for this to be over.
We all wish it had never happened.