I’m sitting in my hotel room in Atlantic City, having what can be best described as my first true Golden Girls moment. If you’ve ever watched the show, when they had a problem, they ate cheesecake, in their kitchen, no matter what time of day it was.
Except, I’m eating mine alone, crying.
I just got back from Belmar, New Jersey. My friends Dawn and Elizabeth live in Belmar. Hurricane Sandy was not kind to them. I’m here on a mission for social good with the Social Media Moms group and we’re here because so many in our group were affected by Sandy and her wrath. Their homes had to be gutted and stripped. They had to replace everything.
But they were lucky.
They are alive.
Today, I had time to explore Belmar and parts of the Jersey coast affected by Hurricane Sandy. I talked in depth to owners of local businesses. I heard their stories of struggles with FEMA and their own insurance companies. People whose homes are still standing empty, because even though they had all of the insurance, they had flood insurance, they can’t repair their homes.
Why? Why are their homes still empty after all this time? Why haven’t they been able to start work?
It’s pretty simple. One says it was due to flooding and their flood insurance, which they have, should cover it. The other says no, it’s due to Hurricane Sandy and we’re not covering an act of nature.
But, I digress.
And maybe I do that to avoid what I know is going to make me curl up in my chair and go fetal from the pain I feel for the people affected by Hurricane Sandy.
I saw a green X today.
The green X. The mark of death. The spray painted symbol to let people know someone died. I stood and looked at a house, knowing this act of nature, God, what have you, is where someone died due to the brute strength of nature at her most tempermental.
I don’t know why they didn’t evacuate. No one knows their story. We don’t even know their name. But we know that whomever lived in that house, gave up their life. Who is they mystery person? Why did they stay? Why didn’t they listen when ordered to evacuate?
Those questions rage in my mind. Why? Why? Why?
I can’t answer why, but I wish I could. I wish I had a pipeline where I could answers magically delivered to me from the great hereafter. I think that’s a wish we all have.
But I know today, I wanted to see more than what has been rebuilt. I needed to know and experience what the people who live here deal with on a day to day basis.
I had to know they are rebuilding and recovering. But I’m also having to deal with the hard reality of death, featured prominently in front of me with a spray painted green X.
And this afternoon, as I deal with this hard, cold, reality with a piece of cheesecake, I know my life is irrevocably changed. My problems are minuscule, and the sacrifices I make are inconsequential to the one I saw today.
The sacrifice of life.