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