the quiet of sunday.

my sister wrote about her recent visit to southern illinois.

we were raised in the area

where the ohio and mississippi rivers meet in confluence.

she went to salvage items after our mother's death.

as trustee, she went to gather:

jewelry.

papers.

collectibles. 

she went, not knowing what she was heading into.

she drove into the flood.

my brother's name was mentioned

in many news articles.

he stayed in the flooding city of cairo

because he believes. 

he supports that dying city.

his business is there.

his faith and his life are there.

in the words of my sister:

We headed back to Cairo. At the monument shop, my brother was sitting running his hands through his hair. No real news. A 20 foot sand boil had erupted, the water was over the road (I knew that, we drove through it), the water was now at record highs on the levees. I had found one bit of news on the internet....the crest was predicted at 60.5 on Sunday, but heavy rains were predicted, too. The ACE was set to blow the levees in Missouri, but the two states were in legal battles....save the farmland (130000 acres of prime farmland) or save Cairo (12% unemployment, 70% black, 50% of the children below the poverty level, mostly abandoned buildings these days). My brother tried to call the sheriff's office, there was a voluntary evacuation notice out. The mayor and the council were already gone. There was no talk of saving anything from the historic buildings in town, the documents stored in the library or the customs house. We sorted through the business papers, tried to decide what to save if it flooded. How do you decide what to save from a building that was built in the 1920's and had papers going back at least that far. My brother made hard decisions, I packed up monument design templates going back to my father's day, as well as new ones. George sat at the desk that had belonged to my grandfather and held his head in his hands for a minute. His wife was out of town helping out his daughter and he had been up since dawn digging a grave. He was overwhelmed but still going. If the levees broke though, the water would be up to the second floor of the building, built in 1922. He showed me pictures from the 20's. The first record book where my grandfather kept his receipts and practiced writing his name (he only had a third grade education). We packed up cemetery maps, unpaid order records (which outnumbered the paid ones, it seemed). He tried to call people he knew in-between times, and finally the police office where he found out there was a mandatory evacuation order, by midnight tonight. Once one left, they were not allowed back in. He sighed. Still no news of whether they would blow the levees and the thought in everyone's mind was that Cairo would be left to the flood. We packed up what we could in the two trucks. What was essential, what could be replaced?
We left to go back to the farm, he left to go to Mass, at historic St. Patrick's church. On the way out of town, I saw an elderly black man, sitting on his porch, with a rifle in his hand. To prevent the police from moving his out of his house? Or to prevent looters? There was a lot of sadness in the air, tenseness....

That night, my brother came down to the farm house and we talked quietly of the past. Sorted out things of my mother's to send to his children, and to our sister in Alaska.

****

as i read these words

i felt empty.

hollow.

sad.

grateful.

mea culpa.
mea culpa.
mea maxima culpa.

and all this on a day when others are celebrating.

i celebrate my life.

my family.

my faith.

********