What do you keep in your basement. The Flood - Part One

On Thursday it was cloudy.  While we enjoyed a year end BBQ in the South West of Calgary it even started to rain.  By the time I got into my car to leave they were already talking about evacuating areas along the banks of the rivers in Calgary.

It wasn’t our rain that began the flood – it was the rain in the mountains that swelled the rivers.

It was the rivers that caused the flood.

By Friday the area around the Church had been evacuated.  Living so far South I had no access to either the Church or anyone who’d been affected.  The roads were closed.  I offered ministry both in song and presence at the evacuation centre near my house.  Two nursing centres from Bowness gathered in gymnasiums in a Rec Centre.  Wheelchairs, oxygen tanks and med cars along with some very confused seniors.

So we sang

And they sang.

And we smiled

And some of them did, too.

By Sunday we had confirmed that while out church building had remained completely unaffected, the surrounding community was completely evacuated, saturated and empty.  Arriving on Monday morning was like going through a war zone.  Everything – streets, lawn, cars, and homes – was covered with either a thick layer of muck or a fine layer of silt left behind when the river began to recede back towards its banks.

As one of the only untouched buildings that still had electricity and hot water we began by opening the doors.  Come – charge your cell phone.  Come – use the computer.  Come – wash your hands and splash your face with warm water.  Just come.

By early afternoon we had arranged a brigade of volunteers to put on a dinner.  The least we could do was to feed all of those who, throughout the day, had shovelled mud, emptied basements, scraped sidewalks and wiped down cupboards.  Come – and be fed.

And in the evening they came.  Mud covered, weary bodies and glazed eyes, they came.  home owners and friends, city workers and volunteers, they came.  And we fed them.

I’d been around to see those closest to the Church.  Do you have a safe place to live?  Do you have people to help?  Is there anything we can do?  We’ll pray for you and come for dinner.  It all felt like so little.

“Excuse me, do you know where this corner is?”

Nope.  There is no such corner.  Those two streets don’t meet.

I travel with these two ladies – volunteers who were dropped off in the war zone – and eventually we find the house.  They had been told that an elderly man was sitting on the curb in front of his house overwhelmed by the damage and distraught by the recent loss of his wife.  I called the office, did a revers look up and suddenly we had a name to go with the story and the house.

We find him.  He’s OK.  I send the volunteers away with thanks.  We sit, he talks and we find some distant connections.  His wife died in January.  47 years married.  The details are heartbreaking. 

And on the day of the flood…

All of his memories of her literally floated to the surface.  All of the memento’s from years gone by, all of her clothes that he couldn’t yet part with, all of the reel to reel tapes from so long ago suddenly appeared at entrance to his basement.

What do you put in your basement?  Are there things that you can’t quite bear to part with?  Are there boxes filled with sentimental memories? 

So imagine that one day, they float to the surface, covered in muck and leaves and soaked with water and sewage – and all in an instant, those memories long forgotten, demand all of your attention.

What do you keep in your basement?

© Tara Livingston