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Two years ago today, Hurricane Helene hit Western North Carolina. Sometimes I look at what happened in my own community and wonder why some people were allowed to suffer so much while others, including me, were okay. I don’t really know how to reconcile that. It seems unfair that some of us lost so little while other people lost everything.
In a strange way, God let me experience a tiny blip of what it feels like when normal life disappears, even though I didn’t really suffer. I lived without electricity. I experienced being trapped in a town with absolutely no way to leave. Roads were gone, and we had almost no communication with the outside world. I didn’t know when we would be able to get out or when help would be able to get in. I didn’t know if I would see my siblings or Jordan again.
I remember realizing that I might have to figure out how to provide for my family and friends. What did we have? What did we need? How long could we survive on what we had? I regretted all the ways I wasn’t prepared. At times, I wondered if this was the end of the world as we knew it. I also felt like I had to do everything I possibly could to help my community, because what if help wasn’t coming?
I remember feeling angry thinking about the rest of the world going on like nothing had happened. People were watching TV, going shopping, going out to dinner and living their normal lives while people here were suffering. Some of them probably had no idea what was happening to us. Our entire world had changed overnight, but outside of these mountains, life just kept going.
But help did come. The electricity eventually came back on. Roads reopened. I went back to work. My family and animals were okay. My life went back to normal. For me, those fears eventually became memories instead of the reality I had to live with. I still struggle sometimes with the guilt of knowing that I got my normal life back when so many people didn’t.
Two years later, some days it almost feels like a bad dream. Then I walk our land and see more than 60 acres of flattened timber we still haven’t cleared. I look across the mountains and see the scars that remain. Bridges are still missing, roads are still closed, and houses are still destroyed. People are still without homes and grieving people they lost. Those are reminders that while Helene became something in the past for many of us, for others, life never went back to normal.
I think about people who go through a disaster believing they are only being displaced temporarily. They think they’ll eventually get to go home. Then they find out there is no home to go back to. It is buried under rubble or completely gone. Sometimes the people they love are gone too. I don’t think I really understood before Helene how a disaster can become something terrible for one person, while for someone else it changes everything that comes after.
And now I find myself on the other side of something I was once angry about. Somewhere in the world right now, people are living through the worst days of their lives. They may be wondering if anyone knows what is happening to them or if help is coming. Meanwhile, I go to work, buy groceries, and live my normal life.
I don’t say that because I think we are supposed to feel guilty every time we experience something good while someone else is suffering. I just understand it differently now. The rest of the world wasn’t necessarily ignoring us. Life keeps moving outside of the place where the disaster is happening, even when it feels impossible that it could.
I still don’t understand why I was okay while people so close to me lost everything, or why my life got to go back to normal when so many others didn’t. Maybe I never will. But when I see suffering somewhere else now, I remember what it felt like to wonder if the rest of the world even knew we were there. Maybe He let me experience just enough to never forget.
