Spring will come
. . . and we will bloom again.
This past month images, reports and new stories of the sweeping wildfires raging in Los Angeles have cluttered my mind and clenched my heart. Instead of being inside of a natural disaster, I am on the outside looking in.
I watch in horror newsreels of thousands of acres of homes, buildings, livelihoods burned to ashes in mere hours. I am aching for the people of Los Angeles knowing first-hand the trauma, tragedy and grief journey ahead of them.
David Kessler, a grief expert, worked to help victims of the L.A. Fires unpack their complex and overwhelming feelings of profound loss and sadness for the people of Los Angeles. In this zoom (Help with Grief & Trauma after the LA Fires) he helps victims of the fire and community better understand their “Grief Brain,” and understand the immense swirl of emotions pusling through them.
His words ring true and offer validation as he explains the individual grief people are experiencing who lose their homes but also the collective a community feels at the loss of familiar landscape and cherished places and also the secondary grief people feel as for the loses their close loved ones and friends have experienced. The bottom line Kessler notes is, “Greif is a change you didn’t want.”
While the type of natural disaster is different, the devastation of loss and the range of emotions and feelings seems strikingly similar for us here in Western North Carolina.
Here in Swannanoa, we soldier on. Each day there are small signs of progress, more debris has been removed from roadsides, land is being cleared and reseeded, and a chuunk of Old Highway 70, washed away and filled with gravel for the past four months, has finally been paved.
However, we still have no functioning grocery store here in Swannanoa. The main bridge that connects Old 70 to New 70 and access to I-40 that washed away (and was broadcast on thousands of T.V. screens across the nation and world) is still in ruin. The banks of the Swannanoa River are crumbled with scraps of metal and trash and debris still clings to the trees lining our roads and rivers.
I’ve grown more accustomed to the rerouting of roads, the inconveniences, the new normal of driving through a ripped and ragged landscape.
During a winter storm several weeks ago, gusty winds tore down the mountain and howled through the hollers, snow covered everything for a few days and the landslide two roads above us looked like a ski-slope from afar. As the power flicks on and off I am triggered. Will we lose power again, what wicked plan does mother nature have in store for us next?
Just when I am feeling so down and blue, the gray skies of winter and stark landscape grating my soul, I read about the 10,000 Tulip bulbs donated to Swannanoa by a company in the Netherlands. These bulbs were gifted by the company “Dutch Grown” and have been planted in my community. (Dutch company donates 10,000 tulip bulbs to Swannanoa for hurricane recovery effort). Just as I have seen so many people come together here to support each other, lift one another up and offer unflagging sweat labor and love, many are doing the same in Los Angeles.
The Tulips sent from the Netherlands are set to bloom this April, and a small seed of hope takes root in my heart, sweeping away the sadness for a moment. Spring will come and as the saying has been (and more pertinent than ever before) Come Hell or High water, our community will one day bloom again too.
