Shokufeh is... home

Another home gone

Two days ago, in the time it took me to run a few errands, a family's life together was splintered and crushed by a bulldozer. How did they make the decision to tear down their home? How much water entered their house 9+ months ago? How long did it sit in the house? How much wind damage did they sustain? How much mold grew? How long was it before they were able to reenter and assess the damage? Did they ever come back to see the damage, or did they pay someone else to deal with it? Were the contents that I could see, mixed in with the jagged boards that once were the walls, once treasured, or just things that they just endured? Are they now things they associate with a lifetime ago? Do they plan to rebuild, or did they sell the property? Have they dispensed with living in New Orleans?

So many questions run through my head and I'll never know the answers. I didn't know the family, or even remember what the house looked like, but that didn't stop me from crying as I drove past - once, when half the house was still standing, again, when the lot was just a pile of rubble being dumped into trucks. It was so strange to see furniture mixed in, but I then realized that leaving it there was a rather effecient way to dispose of everything at once. It's not unusual these days to come across homes being torn down, but the street is usually closed, so you just have to guess what the bulldozer and billows of dust mean. I've thought that the street closures were for our physical protection, but now I see they protect our emotions as well.