disasters

Back in the Summer of 69

September 29, 2015 by Billy Coffey 1 Comment

That dry season I told you about a couple weeks back is nothing more than a memory now. It’s been raining here for so long that people can’t even remember when it began. Days upon days, one long and soggy line. The creeks are full and the grass is back; everywhere you walk makes a squishy sound. No downpours, at least not yet. Just that steady sort of falling water that starts out making you feel comfortable and ends up sinking into your bones. The ground is saturated now. I hear more rain is coming, the kind that keeps interrupting the radio with screeches and buzzes and warnings of rising rivers and washed out back roads.

Whenever these parts are hit with this much rain, invariably someone will mention 1969. Usually it’s an old timer, like the ones who hang around down at the hardware store or on the benches outside the 7-11. You’ll say hello to them and keep going for your new hammer or a bottle of Mountain Dew, and they’ll draw you in. Old timers like that have all the hours in the world to talk. And since so many of them have spent their lives coaxing food from the black dirt on their farms, weather is their specialty. Weather and memory.

“You think it’s wet,” they’ll say, “you don’t know nothing. You shoulda been here in ’69.”

I wasn’t, of course. I missed what happened here back then by three years. But I know many who were not so fortunate.

In August of that year, a tropical wave formed off the coast of Africa and swept westward along the 15th parallel into the lesser Antilles, where it became a hurricane south of Cuba. The National Weather Service named it Camille. It made landfall on August 18, crushing Waveland, Mississippi. From there Camille tracked north, through Tennessee and Kentucky. Then it veered hard right through West Virginia and into the Appalachias, where it ran smack into Virginia’s Blue Ridge.

That was August 19, 1969.

Nelson County, just over the mountain from us, suffered worst. The rains came so hard and so utterly fast that it defied human reason and nearly touched the Divine. Some even called it judgment for a people who had strayed from the Lord. Houses were swept away, cars tossed like playthings. Whole towns and families lost, disappeared. The very contours of the mountains were shifted and changed by walls of mud. In the end, twenty-seven inches of rain fell in less than five hours. The National Weather Service stated it was “the maximum rainfall which meteorologists compute to be theoretically possible.”

One hundred and twenty-three people perished. Many more were never found. To this day, their bones lie somewhere among the fields and vales. It was estimated that 1 percent of the county’s population were killed that day. Most perished not by drowning but by blunt force trauma, the water throwing them into the nearest immovable object.

The destruction and loss of life was so complete that Camille was stricken from any further use as the name for a hurricane. People here won’t even utter the word. It’s always The Flood. Nothing more than that needs saying.

Then again, maybe I’ll say a little. Because what gets added on the end of that nightmare across the mountain was the grace and kindness shown after. The government appeared en masse in the days and weeks following the storm to clean up and rebuild, but it was the untold thousands of volunteers who did most—the farmers and mountain folk and more church groups than anyone could count, people who knew those mountaintops and hollers well. My daddy and granddaddy were among them. They moved slow through all those shattered homes and marked the ones that had become tombs. They carried pistols in their hands because of the million snakes that had been washed from their dens.

For years Grandma kept a picture she’d taken of the sky on the day the Camille left on her mantle. It was black and white instead of color, but you could still see how black the sky looked, how evil. But you could also see as plain as day how in the middle of that picture the clouds had parted in the perfect shape of an angel to let the sunshine through.

It wasn’t the first time tragedy and hardship had visited this part of our world. It won’t be the last. But if there is any comfort to be had in such times, it is the same comfort that was found in the late summer of ’69—God is still there, still watching, and there will always be good people who will rush to your aid and help you repair what life has born asunder.

Weep with those who weep

May 23, 2013 by Billy Coffey 9 Comments

Image courtesy of Google Images, photo by Sue Ogrocki, AP

It’s the father I think of most, his picture I still see in my head. Sitting on that faded lawn chair in the midst of all that rubble, head buried in two shaking, dirt-stained hands. Sobbing. Waiting for his young son to answer.

He’d been there for hours, combing through what the tornado had left behind. Shouting his son’s name, calling him home. What remained of the elementary school in Moore, Oklahoma, was little more than piles of twisted wood and steel. Still, he believed his son would be found. Other children had been pulled from the wreckage, why not his?

But as the hours drew on and the shouts dwindled, what hope he had began to fade. His son was still somewhere in there. His boy. That thought—the sheer, horrible knowing—was enough to hollow out what was left of his heart. As I sat there in the comfort of my living room, surrounded not only by a whole house but a whole family as well, I watched the tearful reporter say this man would not leave until his son was found. Alive or dead.

We cannot escape these stories. We hear them on the news and read them in the paper. We see accounts of the dead and the survivors online. The news is everywhere now, as close as the phone in your pocket. Maybe that’s why I’m still thinking of that father some three days later. Or maybe it’s simply because I have a son as well.

He’s gone now, I suppose. The last I heard was that everyone had been found and all the bodies recovered. Twenty-four people died in Moore, ten of them children. I suppose his son was among them.

But I still see that father there, sobbing in that chair.

Pray for them. That’s what I’ve heard, and from everywhere. It’s what the governor of Oklahoma said—“We need prayers.” They do. We all do. And in the days and weeks to come, what will happen in Moore is what happens so often in this country in times of need and catastrophe. Friends and strangers will open their hearts and their pocketbooks. Streets will flood with volunteers. The rebuilding will begin.

Ask that broken father, he’ll probably agree with all of that. Then he’ll probably say it’s much easier to rebuild a town than to rebuild a life.

Pray for Oklahoma. I’ve said those words myself. I’ve read the thoughts of many with regards to what that tornado meant and where God was and why He allowed it. Me, I’ve written nothing. A part of me feels like no one else should have, either. We don’t know where God was. We don’t know what He was thinking. And honestly? If that were me sitting in a lawn chair, screaming for my son? If all those pontificators would have come to me and said it was all for some greater purpose? That God won’t give me more than I can handle? I would’ve strangled each and every one of them.

I saw this Facebook comment in a recent article: “If prayer works, there wouldn’t be a disaster in the first place. So please keep your religion to yourself.”

Not true, of course. Prayer is a mystery designed to change us more than our circumstances, and we accomplish nothing by denying that God is sovereign over all. But I understood the sentiment. A part of me was even tempted to share it. But keeping my religion to myself? No.

We don’t need less of God now. Now, we need Him more.

I wouldn’t have told any of this to that father. I wouldn’t have wanted to hear it myself. Not then. What I would have done was just sit. I would have called out his son’s name and I would have wept along with him, because we need to weep with those who weep. That requires no answers and no empty platitudes, only a heart willing to be broken so that on one far day it may be filled once more with hope.

God’s catastrophes

April 8, 2013 by Billy Coffey 1 Comment

I suppose you could say it all started for Tommy back when the river took his house. That was six years ago, more or less. Tommy can’t remember if it was six or five. Or seven.

He does remember the house was a bargain—two bedrooms, two baths, 1200 square feet. And then there was the land—ten acres of woods that thinned out right at the river’s edge. Tommy always wanted a place like that, out in the country where everything was slow and the only sounds were the coyotes and the birds.

He settled in and got used to his new life. The divorce had been tough on him (all divorces are), but now the papers were signed and he was ready to move on. Tommy fixed up his new house with some paint and new furniture. Added a deck on the back so he could sit there in the evenings with his dog and watch the water drift by. Tommy said he loved that deck. Sitting there watching that water made him realize that things will always keep moving, that the bad that might be here now will be behind you soon enough.

Tommy was there for three summers when it all happened. It began as a front coming up from the Gulf, welcome news for the farmers and their dry fields. The weatherman said the next two days would be wet ones and that we should all spend the time sharpening the blades on our lawnmowers. Tommy didn’t do that. He couldn’t sit on the deck and watch the river, so he pulled the recliner around toward the window and watched it from inside.

Watched it rain. Then pour. And then the pour became a deluge.

The weatherman said the system stalled over the mountains, churning in a big circle the kept dumping water onto the valley. It rained nonstop for those two days. We all felt like Noah.

By the end of the first day, the river was swollen. By the beginning of the second, water was spilling over the banks. By mid-day, Tommy’s house was gone.

He managed to get out the most important things—pictures of his kids, his dog, the motorcycle. The rest was soaked or swept away. Including the deck, which was soaked while it was being swept away.

Tommy thought his new life would be better than his old one. But as he stood in what was once his front yard a week later, he figured he thought wrong.

There was little doubt in his mind it was God’s doing. The Lord sent the rain, the Lord kept the rain there. The Lord watched as Tommy’s house ended up floating down the river. It was His will, Tommy thought. Had to be. Because if it wasn’t, then that meant the rain was bigger than God. Tommy hadn’t been to church since he was a boy, but he said he knew enough to know God was bigger than the rain.

He knew enough to realize as well that if God allowed all that to happen, it must have been for a reason. I think that’s what kept Tommy going in the months that followed. The insurance check arrived. He used it to buy another house, this one with no river in sight. He settled in once more, with new furniture and new paint (not a deck, though, as this house already had one). Things started looking up. Tommy considered it the start of his third life, and he was glad to be putting the first two behind him. Somewhere in the midst of all that newness, Tommy did something else. He took a drink.

He’d never held much fondness for alcohol. A beer at the ballgame and maybe a shot of liquor during poker with the guys, but nothing else. To hear him say it, Tommy still can’t explain why he decided to pick up a six-pack at the 7-11 that day. He just did. And wouldn’t you know it, the last one tasted even better than the first.

Like I said, that was six years ago. More or less. Tommy can’t remember.

And as it turned out, his third life was even worse than his previous two. He lost his job because of the drinking, which has also started to affect his health—“Can’t have a beer without a smoke,” he often says. He spends his days sitting on the sofa with his dog watching television. The Price is Right is his favorite.

I guess that’s how it goes with some people sometimes, sad as it may be.

Tommy says it’s all God’s fault for sending that stupid rain. It was a catastrophe, he says, and there’s little doubt it was.

But he’ll also say the drinking was his idea. God didn’t have anything to do with that. Which is why I think the catastrophes that God sends are ones we can overcome. It’s the ones we send upon ourselves that we crumble under.

After the storm

November 1, 2012 by Billy Coffey 5 Comments

Now comes the hard part. At least, that’s how I see it from where I sit. Granted, where I sit is a warm home with a fire blazing. We have power, we have food, we have gas in the truck. Yes, we’re fortunate. Unlike the five million or so others who still have no power.

We all knew Sandy was coming, and I believe we’re all the better for it. My grandparents once said there were no extended weather forecasts in their day. Meteorology counted for little more than a telegraph from the next town over, or that old adage about red sky in the morning, sailor take warning. Storms back then were worse, they told me, because you didn’t really know what was coming. I think that’s true. Nowadays, at least we can set ourselves before the punch is thrown at our jaw.

Probably like you, I watched it all from the comfort of my living room. Listened as the weathermen and weatherwomen spoke of nothing like this ever happening before and how whole stretches of land would be swallowed and how many things would never be the same. And just as in every instance of oncoming doom, there was a curios sort of excitement mixed with fascination that made some do pretty stupid things. And when Sandy finally came she came just as it had been predicted, washing away and blowing away and prompting us to remember that we really aren’t the ones in charge at all, that there are bigger monsters than the ones who hide under our beds, ones more real.

And when it blew and poured we all spoke of the devastation and the fear and the utter sadness, and just after there came the stories of those who saved lives and property out of sheer heroism—the first responders, the national guardsmen, the ordinary people who were made great by extraordinary circumstances. If there is a silver lining in times such as these, I think it is the reminder that there resides in us better people than what we normally are.

Here in the mountains there was rain and wind and snow but little else. For that, we are all thankful. But my thoughts turn to my Yankee neighbors. Because as I said, now comes the hard part.

They’ve taken the punch, you see. Taken it square. And that sense of determination and the will to pick up and move on is kindling. Such a sentiment is unique to humanity and speaks of the holiness that dwells in us—we will not be beaten. We will rise again. We will be better than we were. It’s a desire that can carry us through horrible times and build bridges between ourselves and others were only chasms once were. Few things unite us more than disaster. I suppose that could be seen as both a supreme blessing and a great sadness.

The storm may be over—broken up over western New York, perhaps, or tossed back out to sea to be swallowed by the Atlantic. But even now there are darker clouds and colder winds growing. I’ve read that food is growing scarce and gasoline scarcer. Power to many places won’t be back online for a week or more. And November in New England is more akin to January most everywhere else.

In that regard I suppose the storms we face in our lives are no different than the storms we face in our hearts. In the beginning we endure them through adrenaline and determination. In the aftermath, we endure them through faith and work. And though I would never answer for you, I will say from my own experience that the after is usually worse than the during.

That is why my prayers will be with them even more now.

God is good

April 27, 2011 by Billy Coffey 23 Comments

So evidently the valve that sends water from my pipes to my refrigerator has been leaking for about a year and a half. Not gushing, mind you. I would notice gushing. Dripping instead, and one drop every six seconds to be exact (I’ve counted). You can’t hear dripping like that, not amongst the noises of a stovetop, a dishwasher, and the normal chatter of a normal household. That’s what I tell myself. And though I also tell myself I should have known something was wrong—very, very wrong—I counter by asking who in the world makes it a habit to look behind their refrigerator?

Ten drops of water per minute for 547 days.

Know how many drops that is all together? Almost eight million.

Know what eight million drops of water can do to those parts of your home you can’t see? Grow the sort of mold that resembles something out of the X-Files. Scary mold that kills people.

And apparently, it’s now everywhere in my home.

I called The Guys (there are always Guys, those who make their living solving most every problem one can have, even X-Files mold). They came over the other evening to check things out in the deep recesses of Casa de Coffey. They were polite, almost sorry they had to be there. I was sorrier. They spoke in soft tones and carried Buck knives on their belts. Almost every Guy I’ve ever known has carried a Buck knife on his belt.

They took air samples and pictures, showed me what was happening. Asked if we’d had any recent health issues. They brought in an air scrubber that hums with all the stealth of a jet liner and said to keep it running every day all day.

Guy 1 and Guy 2 took turns relaying the bad news. Two walls would have to come down. Cabinets and floors would have to be replaced. A quarantine zone would have to be put up, which meant we’d have to go elsewhere to live.

“As far as cost goes…” Guy 1 looked at his boots. I looked at Guy 2, who had suddenly taken a great interest in the painting on the wall beside him. I’ll admit that was the moment my palms began to sweat. “…well, it won’t be inexpensive. I can’t give you a number until we get the air samples back. But it’ll be okay. We do this all the time.”

It’ll be okay.

We do this all the time.

The Guys left with the promise they’d get in touch once the lab finds out exactly what sort of poison we’re all inhaling. A nice thought, that.

Normally in such circumstances—as if such circumstances could ever be thought of as normal—I would be freaking out. Big time. But I’m not, at least not yet. Mostly because of what else happened around here the day we found our creeping mold.

Stand on our back deck and turn your head to the left and you’ll see some woods, beyond which lie the western half of town. That’s where the tornado hit. Hurling and destroying and whipping and gnashing through neighborhoods and farms and leaving behind a scene that one would literally take your breath away.

Just on the other side of the railroad tracks live one Amish family in particular. Their house burned the day after Christmas. No injuries, but most everything else was lost. True to the Amish way, relatives and strangers from as close as next door and as far away as Ohio showed up to rebuild everything. It was quite a scene, one that made the front page of the paper. The sort of story that made you feel good inside.

Now, just a few months later, their farm gets hit by a tornado. The new house is damaged, but not nearly as badly as the grove of oaks that ring it.

The mother and father were on the news tonight. Standing on their front porch, he with his long beard and she in her homemade dress. Smiling as they answered questions that bothered us all.

The mother answered for them both when she said, “God is good.”

Yes, that’s what she said. God is good, despite it all.

My family and I are making plans to find a place to stay for a while. Insurance won’t cover the cost (seepage, they said, which seems to be a fancy word for You’re On Your Own). We’ll have to take a loan out for the repairs.

It’ll be okay. That’s what The Guys said. I believe that. Trouble comes to everyone uninvited. It barges in and kicks up its feet and announces that it’s going to stay awhile. It says, “What do you think now?”

When it does, I’ll give the Amish mother’s answer.

“God is good.”

Go out in the world and live

March 28, 2011 by Billy Coffey 17 Comments

Taylor Lane Anderson, a fellow Virginian, became last Monday the first known American to have died in Japan’s earthquake and tsunami. The twenty-four-year-old had spent the last two and a half years fulfilling what had become her dream—to teach English in Japan.

The story in the newspaper was accompanied by a photo of the street on which she was last seen. It was that eerie time just after the earthquake and before the wave hit. Taylor was riding her bicycle home from an elementary school in the city of Ishinoma-ki.

Use your imagination, and you will see houses and storefronts and perhaps children playing on the street corners. You will see that strange combination of resistance and joy that defines human life everywhere, that sort that makes you feel melancholy but happy to be alive.

That’s not the picture the photograph displays, however. All you see is death and destruction.

Though I do my best not to, all I can think of is her last thoughts as that wall of water came rushing toward her. I like to think it was fast. I like to think it was over before she knew it was upon her and that she didn’t suffer.

Derek Kannemeyer is a French and English teacher at St. Catherine’s, the school which Taylor once attended. In the article, he described his former student’s philosophy of life this way:

“You’ve got to go out in the world and live.”

This is the first time I’ve written about the events in Japan. I’ve wanted to ever since it happened, but I just…couldn’t. There are a great many things in this world meant to be written about by better writers than I, and what happened in Japan is one of those things. It raises questions in me about the things I believe and why I believe them. I’ve done my fair share of questioning God and shaking my fist at Him.

You should know better, I tell Him. Why didn’t You do something?

People smarter than me have been asking that question for a very, very long time. I suppose they always will.

Me, I have no answers. There is a lot in Christianity that must be accepted on faith. It is a rock you can break yourself against, that can tear you to pieces, unless you realize there are answers only God can know and you never will.

I still struggle with that.

But today I am thinking of Taylor Lane Anderson, whose life was cut short by shaking earth and raging ocean, but who still chased and managed to grab hold of her dreams. Her death was a sad tragedy, but knowing she died doing what she loved somehow takes a bit of the sting away. In the end, death that comes out of fulfilling our purpose is something to which we should all aspire.

I still question God. I doubt neither His existence nor His love, but I do His ways. They are higher than my ways, Isaiah said, as His thoughts are higher than my thoughts. I believe that. But believing that also brings a mixture of calm and fear, and I don’t believe I’m the only one to feel such things.

It is a scary time to be alive. There just seems to be so much going on—so much bad. There are days when I feel as though a black cloud hangs over this world, rumbling and swirling and ready to dump catastrophe upon us all. It’s easy to wake up in the morning and wonder, “What’s next?”

I’m sure I’ll wonder what’s next again, sure I’ll look up hoping to see the light and instead see that black, swirling cloud. When I do, I’m going to remember Taylor Lane Anderson. I’m going to remember the way she lived her life.

Because no matter what happens, no matter what fear entangles us, we’ve got to go out in the world and live.

Not only survive. Not just get by.

Live.

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