Remembering Hurricane Katrina

As you all may know it has been three years since Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. My family finds its roots in Biloxi, Mississippi. Relatives of mine live from New Orleans to Georgia along the coast. At the time the hurricane hit, my grandmother was in a care facility on the coast of Mississippi, and my mom had just returned home from caring for her. The night the hurricane found land I could actually feel the earth change. I remember watching the news in my mom's basement, chills up and down my arms, and weeping at the devastation. We didn't have contact with the coast for over 3 days, and had no way of knowing about our grandma. Many of the care facilities were abandoned while nurses fled the hurricane site in order to save their own lives and their families. People, like my grandmother, were left with few or no people to care for them. My mom took the next flight out of Salt Lake to Mississippi. My grandmother's condition worstened, and shortly before her birthday on October 12, she passed away in my mother's arms. That weekend my cousins, aunt and uncle, and my sister and I flew to Mississippi to meet my mom and prepare for the funeral. As much as I had prepared myself to bury my grandmother, I had not prepared myself for the absolute destruction of the coast. The landscape mirrored my families feelings of loss and sorrow. Moss covered trees and flowering bushes, were all burned from the salt water. Two story homes were washed away leaving nothing but pots, broken dishes, water damaged photographs, and memories. Cars were hanging out of trees, or were crashed into the sides of homes. My grandmother's home, less than a block from the shore, was lost. The first floor had been gutted by the storm, and all that remained of my grandma was her bedroom and the guestroom on the second floor. The treasures I found in those rooms I will keep today and forever.
Before we flew home, we spent time in the neighborhoods surrounding my grandmother's home volunteering. We picked up debris from people's yards and the street. In the end, many were dead, and many more were displaced or lost. On this third anniversary, people have still not been able to return to their homes, debris still litters yards and streets, and another hurricane threatens to make landfall on Louisiana.
I share this story not for sympathy of me and my family, but for support of those who have given their lives to rebuilding the south.