Cookies

Nashville is cleaning up after our horrendous flood of last week. My friend and neighbor has made cookies, brownies, fudge, and bread to take to the flood victims in our area. Over the course of several days she graciously allows me to accompany her, and we drive up and down one devastated street after the other distributing her goodies to volunteers and victims alike. We hear one tragic story, and then another, and I realize yet again that we each walk our own versions of hell. I am not the only one suffering. I am not the only one who is going through challenging times. I am not the only one who has lost a child. Other people have unrecoverable losses, too.

As the days progress the piles of refuse in front of people's homes grow ever larger. Some piles completely obscure the house behind it. This is all these people have. Everything they own is in a ruined pile of stenchy slop in front of their house.

But as I look closer, as the horror of the miles of trash grow more distinct, I see the individuality, rather than the generic. There is a tall, narrow set of wire shelves. Over there are two dining room chairs that might be salvageable. There is a metal picture frame that is not too badly damaged. Across the street I see a set of slimy glass vases that look unbroken. Colby would have loved this.

I miss Colby every second of every day but even more so now, here, because Colby would have loved these piles of flooded trash. I can see him walking the streets, talking with the home owners and volunteers, pitching in to help pull a dresser through a door, and directing a car through a particularly narrow spot on the road. With the combination of helping others and finding free stuff that might could, maybe, someday, be cleaned and re-used, Colby would have been in his element.

As someone in my online support group recently wrote, we grieving parents miss seeing our kids grow and develop through the natural stages of life. Colby would have loved to open his own thrift store. I will never get to see him do that. I will never get to see him help these flood victims or turn twenty-five, have kids or grow old. But worst of all, Colby will never get to experience these things either. Not that he would have enjoyed the pain and suffering the flood victims are enduring, but he would have loved the aftermath, the helping, the process of rebuilding. And he so would have loved all the "stuff." Even if it was covered in flood slime.