Photograph of Candlewood Subdivision, Rocky Mount, NC - September, 1999
We’re expecting a hurricane tonight or early Saturday. It’s been quite a while since we had a hurricane, but a lot of people in our community still have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder because of the horrors of Hurricane Floyd back in 1999. A very good friend of mine lost her home and many of her possessions in Floyd. At least she didn’t lose a loved one as some of my students did. The problem with Floyd was the flooding, not the winds. Huge parts of my town were completely under water. In some sections where there are retail stores, you could see refrigerators and dryers floating around. Graveyards became unsettled and there were caskets floating around, even some decaying dead bodies that had come free from broken coffins. Swine pools that normally keep the waste of hog farmers from contaminating the water supply were flooded and mixed right in with the water supply. People were stranded in the attics of their homes, waiting for rescuers to come and saw through the rooftops to get them to safety. Some people were just washed away in the tide of the raging river. Pets were washed away, too. It was devastating. It wasn’t nearly as widespread as New Orleans after Katrina, not as many people were affected, but it was just as traumatic for our small community.
So, when we did have a hurricane coming a couple of years ago, even though it wasn’t expected to be too bad windwise, nor was any flooding expected, still people were terrified. No one expected the floods that happened in 1999 with Floyd either. My friend who had lost her home in Floyd was frantic about moving things in her new house up to the second floor in case there was another flood. She was going to travel to Raleigh to stay with her daughter’s family, but she was scared to death to leave her home unattended. I felt so bad for her. All the weather reports indicated that this wasn’t going to be a bad storm. Logic told her that the kind of flooding we had with Floyd would not be likely to happen again in her lifetime. After all, they had called that flood a hundred year flood, estimating that something that severe would only happen once every hundred years. But still, in spite of all her mind knew, her heart and soul were deathly afraid. There was nothing I could do or say to calm her. She probably will be forever affected by the devastation of Floyd.
Life is like that. Bad things happen. And they often happen to very good people who don’t deserve it. But as the Bible says, and particularly this applies to Hurricane Floyd, “The rain falls on the just and the unjust.” Sometimes very bad people seem to have all the luck, thriving while the rest of us good people don’t. Take the rich oil companies getting even richer by the minute while some of my students can’t fill their cars with enough gas to come to class and have had to drop out of school. In the end, it doesn’t matter if you live a good life or a wicked one. Things happen. And once they happen, they have lasting effects.
I know I have eating issues that reach back to traumatic events in my childhood. I know what some of the events were, and some I only have a vague notion of what they were because my mind has blissfully not allowed me to remember. But I see the effects of those events right now in my life, every day. I so want to be free from those events. I dream of those horrible things that I don’t really know about. I want to slumber silently and wake up not affected by all that has happened back then. Can Post Traumatic Stress Disorder be cured? I think it certainly can be helped. I think time is a big healer. Eventually, the fear subsides a little. Maybe even it can leave entirely. Some have to go through therapy to get help. But I believe with all my heart that it can be overcome, especially if we want to overcome it. It might not be easy, but it could be worth the effort.
So, Hurricane Hannah is threatening to make landfall along our coastline. We, in all likelihood here, will only get some wind gusts and a good, soaking rainfall, which we need anyway. But my friend is panicking, remembering how she was taken by surprise and terrorized by Floyd. In her mind, no matter what the weather folks say, it could happen again, and maybe she’s even thinking that it will happen again. So, she prepares and moves things to protect them, and she reluctantly and fearfully goes to stay with her daughter again. There is Hurricane Ike out there that she fears, too, even though the weather folks say it will probably land in Florida, not up here in North Carolina. And there is Hurricane Josephine, too, which the weather folks are expecting to just fizzle out before it reaches land. That doesn’t quieten the fear.
The best advice anyone can heed when an impending hurricane is coming is to “prepare for the worst, but hope for the best.” That philosophy works for most folks. So, since I was one of the fortunate ones not severely affected by Floyd (my son was cutting our grass while neighborhoods nearby were using boats to travel around) I do the necessary preparations: I have bottles of drinking water available, batteries for flashlights and portable radios, and enough human and dog food to keep us going for a few days if we lose our electricity and don’t have a way to cook food. I prepare for the worst. I expect the best. And for my friend, I just stand by and let her know that I understand the lasting effects of trauma. Sometimes standing by is the most valuable thing you can do.
Stumble It!