9/11 and Katrina

Like most people, I remember exactly where I was on 9/11. I was working a help desk for a hospital system, and the phone unaccountably stopped ringing. I could make outgoing calls, but after a while I wondered if there was some problem with the phone, so I went to go ask the folks in the control room if they knew anything about it. Half the department was huddled around the TV, watching replays of the first plane hitting the tower. Then the second plane hit. I left the room and sat by my silent phone, playing spider solitaire. After a while I went back to the control room, and watched the replays of the towers falling. Then I ate lunch, caught up on some projects I was working on, and went home, having answered maybe 5 calls all day.

A week later the magnitude of it really sunk in and I completely lost it.

Years ago I was diagnosed with PTSD and dissociative disorder. The Readers Digest version of that is when bad things happen, my first reaction tends to be to check out, mentally. It’s a defense mechanism that lets me function on a surface level but without feeling emotion. I’m basically recovered, but I still catch myself depersonalizing sometimes. It’s a habit I fight off when I notice it, but the key is to notice it.

We came home two weeks after Katrina, bought a new refrigerator and some chainsaws and got to work getting our home, and the homes of family and friends back in order. I joked about it all, and tried not to notice the smell. That indescribable Katrina smell that seemed to soak into everything and made me want to gag on my MRE. After a while it went away, or maybe I just stopped noticing. I’ve focused on helping with the cleanup and rebuilding my business. I know several people who lost family, in St. Bernard and in the 9th ward. I don’t have any connection with anyone who died in Lakeview, just with people whose homes were destroyed, so I focus on that. My church was in that neighborhood, and we’re pitching in on the cleanup every weekend, block by block.

Yesterday I posted the video of the 17th St. Canal break, and I wrote about the property and businesses that were destroyed and the havoc it caused - is still causing for so many people. But as Paul at Wizbang pointed out in an email, there was something in the video I didn’t see. I missed something important. It was right there, but I didn’t let myself see it until a couple of hours ago.

That’s not video of houses flooding. That’s video of people dying.