Just Give Me One More Storm | Diary of a Grieving Mother

Note from Mary-Jo:

Some storms leave destruction behind. Others leave memories. This is about both.

What I wouldn't give for a good thunderstorm right now. Been raining for days, but if it's going to be gloomy and gross out, at least let it be interesting.

I've always loved storms. Although Hurricane Katrina put a crimp in that for a while.

Still, the winds blowing through the trees, the rain, the lightning spiderwebbing across the sky. It was all so fascinating. There's beauty in it.

I think that's why I became a meteorologist.

Although, at nineteen, I didn't realize that meant working in a building without windows for most of my career. I thought I'd be chasing tornadoes like my favorite movie back then, Twister.

Of course, after I became a forecaster, learned all the physics and atmospheric dynamics, and did the job for a few years, I watched the movie again.

Oh man...

So many things wrong in that movie.

Eh, even then, I still loved it.

Katrina, though, she changed the game. August 2005. I was stationed at Keesler Air Force Base in Mississippi, teaching meteorology and physics.

Hurricane Katrina - August, 2005

We all saw her coming.

We knew we needed to leave.

But the evacuation order came too late.

Gabe was two, and Aidan wasn't even a year old.

Instead of evacuating, we were forced to shelter on base.

I remember standing in the middle of our living room with Aidan on my hip, turning in a slow circle before we left. I prayed the first home I'd ever bought would still be standing the next time I saw it.

We sheltered in one of the buildings on base along with hundreds of other people—families, children, military members.

There was one tiny window in the access door where we took turns watching the storm arrive.

The water rolled across the flightline and kept coming until it reached our building.

Eventually everyone was pushed onto the second floor as the water rose, and power failed.

Parts of the roof tore away.

The winds sounded like a freight train running directly over us, sending people crawling beneath desks and tables.

Water poured down the stairwells like waterfalls as rain swept through the damaged roof.

Eventually, it stopped.

The fear gave way to something else.

Heat.

The air-conditioning was gone.

Our children became sick, and we tried cooling them off by running water over them in the bathroom sinks. As we sweat and worried about our dwindling resources, the commander's wife would come in to talk to us, fully bathed, food in hand, pretending to be one of us. I remember how surreal it felt.

Like we were in a movie.

Days passed before we could contact our families because every phone line was down.

Finally, on the third day, the commander allowed one person from each family to leave and see if they still had a working vehicle.

A friend of mine found a little something in the back of his car when he went to check. A case of beer sat fully intact in the back of his vehicle. The winds had launched it from the Class 6 (the base liquor store) right through his back windshield.

It was hot beer, but went down nice and cool.

Since our car worked, my husband at the time went to see if our house was still standing.

It was.

But our neighborhood wasn't.

Two houses south of ours, every home had disappeared all the way to the back bay.

The storm surge had come off the Gulf, poured into the bay behind us, and swept over the homes in its path before finally reaching ours.

The house had survived.

Everything inside it hadn't.

About a week later, we were finally allowed to leave.

If you had more than half a tank of gas and a working vehicle, you could take your family somewhere safe before returning.

So we brought the boys to stay with family in Ohio. Then we came back to deal with what was left.

Getting to our house was nightmare fuel.

The debris was piled so high we had to wait for a bulldozer to clear a path down our street.

Walking through the front door felt like a punch to the chest.

The floodwaters had left quite the mess.

Black mold covered nearly every surface.

Even the air smelled different.

Death hung over everything.

It took months to gut the house and rebuild.

You know what's crazy? About a month after the storm, we got a phone call. A woman in northern Mississippi, hours from our house, had found Aidan's hospital bracelet from when he was born tangled in the debris around her home. What are the chances?

The pile of debris on our front lawn stood taller than the house itself.

Then insurance denied the claim.

We didn't have flood insurance because we lived in what was considered a 100-year flood-free zone.

Homeowners insurance called it flooding.

As a meteorologist, I knew it wasn't that simple.

This wasn't standing floodwater.

It was wind-driven storm surge that came in with the hurricane and then receded.

None of that mattered.

So we rebuilt ourselves.

Drywall.

Insulation.

Flooring.

Appliances.

One piece at a time.

By the time we brought the boys home, we had a house again. Just not much furniture.

So all four of us slept together on the living room floor.

I had night terrors for six months because of the insulation incident! I was the only person small enough to get behind the tub and install insulation. It covered me. For a week every shower felt like little knives cutting me all over.

Life is funny.

My boys grew up loving storms too.

They don't remember Katrina.

They've lived through several hurricanes since then, but nothing like that one.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/a67aed_66c46a3f54c94055a8adaef70f0488bc/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

Whenever thunderstorms rolled through, we'd sit together in the garage watching the rain pour down and the trees bend in the wind.

The boys had their little fold-out chairs.

I'd have mine.

And when the lightning got just a little too close for comfort, we'd all run inside.

A couple of times we even ended up squeezed into the bathroom tub waiting for the storm to pass.

Keeping those boys inside was always a challenge.

They loved the excitement.

The danger.

Always wanting to be right in the middle of whatever was happening.

I couldn't blame them.

They got that from me.

And I got it from my dad.

So yes...

I still love thunderstorms.

The sound of the wind.

The beauty of lightning stretching across the sky.

But more than that...

I miss those evenings in the garage.

The rain pounding the driveway.

The trees dancing in the wind.

Two little boys sitting beside me in their tiny chairs, watching the storm like it was the greatest show on Earth.

That's what I want to feel right now.

I'd just like one more thunderstorm with my boys.

But Mother Nature can keep her hurricanes.

—Mary-Jo

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From the pages of Diary of a Grieving Mother