She's Home............

At last! My friend returned home Monday after vacationing in New Orleans and being caught in Hurricane Katrina. The pain in my heart has eased, but not yet gone. While she has returned home safe, I still believe there is a long road ahead for her.

I can hear the sadness in her voice. She is quite and withdrawn. She has changed. How could she not? I know, odds are, I will be told 100+ times that I can't possibly understand just what she and her husband have gone through and how it has forever changed their lives. I know she is right, and no matter how hard I try it may just never be enough. But I believe with all that I am, that sometimes we go through things to learn a life lesson. Who knows what the lesson is? Perhaps it's to have a little more faith, or maybe a little more patience, perhaps to draw the two of them closer together. And sometimes, I believe we are placed somewhere at a certain point and time to benefit others as well. I believe this was a large part why she was there at that time.

I hope as time goes by, her memories of Katrina wont be just about all the pain and sadness but also about about what she has gained and learned. I hope the people that surrounded her and gave her courage will be there in 5, 10 and 20 years down the road as true friends. I hope that they will not disapoint her and what she believes their connection is. I hope in a month, or a year or five years, when everyone else in the world has moved onto whatever may be the latest breaking news, I hope she will have a peace within her and know within her heart, that she is a survivor, a giver. And that at a time when her life ceased to be as she knew it, she came through with flying colors. I also hope she knows that while I may not have been there with her, my heart was........ I hope she knows that no matter what, "I" will be there in 5, 10 and 20 years.

Enough of this Bullshit!..........

It's fast approaching midnight on Thursday night. I'm tired and exhausted. I've been watching Katrina news on t.v. all day. I have been searching for my best friends face on the screen, and nothing. I've visited dozens of websites typing her name in every 'Search' box I can find, and nothing. I haven't heard from her since Sunday. She had just arrived at the Superdome when she had called. I can't fall asleep, I can't get the images out of my head. I feel like puking . I feel like part of me is missing, my heart hurts...........

If I read one more friggin' blog bitching about our President and our country and how all of this could have been prevented, how much better another party could have dealt with it, I really am going to puke! It is people like you that destroy the very core of what we as Americans should stand for, unity in the face of crises; regardless of the friggin little box you checked at the DMV or on your voters registration card! Now is not the time to climb your pitiful political platforms casting stones. You want things to be different? Then do something other then your spewing your armchair politics! Get off your ass and do something positive. Build up our country rather then tear it down. And for God's sake just once take a deep breath and think before you speak. What will make this country stronger rather then divide it during this awful catasrophe, before you spout your dissatisfaction of this country I love and I call home! PLEASE!!!