What do you keep in your basement? The Flood, Part Three

What do you store in your basement?

I wandered back up the road saying hello to anyone who looked me in the eye as I walked past in my proper clergy collar and jeans.  Just half a block away from the church, I thought.  On the way there it was time for me to check in with the community tent, the crisis relief centre that was set up at the Tennis court in the field across the street.

There were police, city workers and, on those first days, some remarkably young looking military troops in khaki greens and berets.  It didn’t seem odd to see them there since walking through the neighbourhood after the flood looked like walking through a war zone.  In a way it made sense that they were there.

At a table sitting beside a frazzled city worker was an elderly man.  He caught my eye because he was so…so proper.  He sat erect with grey, wavy hair and a slightly unkempt mustache.   I seem to recall a tweed jacket – but I might be filling in that detail.  I may not recall the jacket exactly…because his other attire was so….alluring.

He was wearing an ascot.

A man in an ascot at the crisis centre table.

The man is in my periphery.  I’m a little glazed.  I’m walking past the table and a young soldier (12 years old, may be?) asks me if I could please cross to the other side of the road.

“We’re dealing with an incident over here” said the nearly adolescent soldier.

So I walk away from the park and make my way back to the church – back to home base.

A few minutes later in the office one of the police officers who I had met before comes in clutching to handwritten pieces of paper.  

“An incident report, can I use your copier?”

Of course.

“An old man”, he says, “showed up at the community tent with a live grenade.”

Yup.

An old man in an ascot PLUS an ‘incident’ EQUALS an ancient but live grenade being rescued/redeemed from the relative safety of a basement.

So, I ask again, what do you store in your basement?

 © Tara Livingston

What do you keep in your basement - The Flood, Part Two

What do you keep in your basement?

During my conversation with the recent widow he mentioned the names of some of folks I know.  They're just around the corner, he said.  So I walked.

I walked through a film of mud, trying not to look at the story high pies of once private lives on every lawn I passed.  Those mud covered items, now all greyish brown, were once beautiful things proudly displayed for guests.  Now they lay in piles, waiting for the dumpster to arrive.

I stand for a moment in front of the home I am about to enter.  It’s shocking.  Once beautiful, ornate cabinets and curio’s sit covered in sewage waiting to be taken away.  I walk through the muck that covers the floors asking hesitantly if the owner is present.  She sobs when she sees me.  She recounts all that they have lost.  The main floor was flooded five feet up the walls.  Everything – everything, is gone.

And she thanks me for coming as she lays her head on my cheek again.  Thank you so much for taking the time, she sobs.

As if I had something else to be.

And I leave.

I am aware as I walk away that I am emotionally detaching a little bit – self-protection, to be sure.  The reality is going to hit me hard.  But not today.  I can’t break down today.

At the next house a brigade of young people passes bucket of muck up from the basement, out the front door and into the dumpster.  I see the folks I came to see.

I can’t tell their story.  Too much loss.  Too much sorrow.  I just can’t.

As I leave their home I snap a picture of the river which has not yet receded to within its banks.  I’m tempted to take a picture of the piles – of the lives – in the yards as I pass, laid bare for all to see.  But I can’t.  It’s so…personal, so private.

Just as I get close the crossing the road, the one that will take me back to the side of the road where ONLY the basements were lost (oh the devastation) I see yet another pile.  This one is partially hidden behind a hedge.  It is one of the older homes, surrounded on all sides by the giant, newer houses.  Behind the hedge I glimpse at the pile as I walk by but something catches my eye and I stop in my tracks.

A box.  A little bigger than a shoe box sits on top of the pile; just teetering there. Balanced there so carefully, a simple box with “Top Secret” written in a child’s scrawl.

Top Secret.  For that I stop.  For that, for the first time, tears spring to my eyes.  A child’s most precious, most private things on display for all to see.

What do you put in your basement?  What boxes do you have hidden from view?  If the banks of the river broke, what would float up for all to see?

What do you put in your basement?

© Tara Livingston

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